A lifelong Republican, Jamie McGregor employs fewer Haitians than other businesses in Springfield, Ohio, but his life has been turned upside down since Donald J. Trump spread falsehoods about immigrants in his hometown.
McGregor, a businessman in Springfield, has faced death threats, a company lockdown, and posters around town labeling him a traitor for hiring immigrants after he spoke positively about the Haitian workers he employs.
To protect his family, McGregor has reluctantly decided to own a gun, breaking his personal vow against it.
[convertkit form=7288469]
“I’ve struggled with the fact that now we’re going to have firearms in our house — like, what the hell?” said McGregor, who runs McGregor Metal, a company that manufactures parts for cars, trucks, and tractors.
“We’re taking classes, going to shooting ranges, and being fitted for handguns,” he said, showing a photo of his 14-year-old daughter holding a Glock.
A fifth-generation resident of the small city between Columbus and Dayton, McGregor was struggling a few years ago to fill positions for machine operators, forklift drivers, and quality inspectors. He began hiring Haitians who had recently settled in Springfield, and they now make up about 10 percent of McGregor Metal’s 330-person workforce.
However, McGregor has found himself in a political storm. Former President Donald J. Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, falsely accused the Haitians in Springfield of stealing and eating pets. These rumors fueled resentment over rising housing prices, crowded clinics, and a perceived change in the town’s character. McGregor, who had publicly praised his new employees for their hard work and eagerness to learn, became a target.
Threats poured in, not only against him but also his family and business.
They came by the hundreds — phone calls, emails, and letters from white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and others they had never met.
“The owner of McGregor Metal can take a bullet to the skull and that would be 100 percent justified,” said one message left on the company voicemail.
“Why are you importing Third World savages who eat animals and giving them jobs over United States citizens?” another asked.
“Stack all 20,000 Haitians inside Jamie McGregor’s factory at once and force him to praise the benefits of foreign labor while being crushed to death by Black bodies themselves being crushed to death,” another said.
McGregor’s children and his 80-year-old mother began receiving hateful calls.
“We’re being hunted like animals,” said McGregor’s wife, Cameron.
McGregor said he spoke out to show that the Haitian workers had helped his company grow. He noted that the newcomers have helped revitalize the blue-collar town and reverse its population decline.
“They come to work every day. They don’t cause drama. They’re on time,” he told The New York Times in an interview in early September that helped trigger the backlash. On PBS News Hour the next week, he noted that they were drug-free. “I wish I had 30 more,” he said.
One of his employees, Wilford Renvil, has been with the company since 2021, operating a mechanical press. He fled Haiti, where he had a white-collar job at a telecommunications company, after bandits took control of his town and went on killing sprees. His attendance record at McGregor is perfect, and he has befriended his American co-workers.
McGregor Metal employs fewer Haitians than companies like Dole, Topre, and several others in the region. But executives of those companies have refrained from making public statements, even as Springfield has descended into a crisis, with bomb threats closing schools, colleges, and government offices for days.
A lifelong Republican who voted twice for Trump, McGregor said he never imagined that speaking up for his workers would endanger his family.
He also faced backlash from American workers at his company who felt maligned by his comments, some of which implied that Haitians were more reliable than other employees.
McGregor called emergency meetings at all three facilities.
“If you found what I said to be offensive, or if you took my comments personally, I’m deeply sorry, as it was never my intent,” McGregor recalled telling his employees during the emotionally charged meetings.
He explained that the Haitians he hired were in the country legally and paying taxes, contrary to claims on social media that McGregor Metal paid them lower wages under the table.
“We have different opinions and beliefs, but we’re here to make metal parts,” he told the staff. “We’re not here to debate immigration.”
F.B.I. agents showed up at McGregor Metal unexpectedly on Sept. 12.
They warned him that some of the threats on social media were credible and that he must take precautions.
They advised locking the lobby doors at McGregor Metal and implementing other safety protocols.
Security experts also advised the family to vary their driving routes to work, school, and other places, wear gloves and use tongs when handling mail, and keep the blinds drawn at home.
The family was also advised to scrub their digital footprints, install cameras, motion sensors, and alarms, and start parking rear-first in the garage, keeping the car in drive until the door is fully closed.
The hardest recommendation for McGregor was to buy a gun. More than one, in fact.
He said he had always supported people’s right to own firearms. But “I’m not a gun person,” he said, breathing deeply. “I do not like guns. I never liked guns.”
He felt heartbroken when he had to pull his daughter out of school for shooting lessons.
“It was a complete loss of innocence,” he said.
As the family tried to adjust to their new reality, ominous posters of McGregor appeared near his plants, outside a grocery store, and on poles.
They featured quotes from McGregor praising his immigrant workers, with the word “traitor” scrawled on his forehead in red capital letters.
Last week, Springfield experienced its first relatively normal week since the claims about Haitians and pets disrupted the city’s routines and created chaos. All 17 schools opened without new bomb threats, although state troopers still swept the buildings beforehand.
On Tuesday night, the city held its first in-person commission meeting since the bomb threats. Attendees had to pass through metal detectors.
During the public comment period, some angry residents aired grievances about Haitians, as they had done in the past. But the gathering was not as heated as previous ones, and several people voiced support for the immigrants and encouraged community unity.
Threats against the McGregor family and his company have decreased in recent days.
But they cannot rest easy.
“You know, things are just different now,” McGregor said, noting that he would not vote for Trump again.
“Here at the shop, you know, on a warm day, we would normally have all of our doors and windows open and the breeze blowing,” he said.
On a recent evening, when McGregor arrived home feeling unwell, his family worried that he had been exposed to a biological agent such as anthrax after handling mail.
McGregor said he was more likely just suffering from the accumulation of stress, but that did not relieve his wife’s anxiety.
“I can’t imagine living my whole life like this,” Ms. McGregor said. “You know, it’s got to end. It’s got to stop — hopefully after the election.”
A correction was made on Sept. 30, 2024: An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to the Ohio State Police officers who swept school buildings after bomb threats. They were troopers, not paratroopers.