Articles written by Patrick Aftoora Orsagos


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  • Father of slain Ohio boy asks Trump not to invoke his son in immigration debate

    PATRICK AFTOORA ORSAGOS and MIKE CATALINI|Sep 13, 2024

    SPRINGFIELD, Ohio (AP) — The father of an Ohio boy killed last year when a Haitian immigrant driver hit a school bus is imploring Donald Trump and other politicians to stop invoking his son's name in the debate about immigration. Nathan Clark spoke Tuesday at a Springfield City Council hearing — the same day that the former president and Vice President Kamala Harris debated, and the city in Ohio exploded into the national conversation when Trump repeated false claims demonizing Haitian immigrants there, saying they eat pets. "This needs to sto...

  • Ohio state police to protect schools after furor over Haitian immigrants in Springfield

    PATRICK AFTOORA ORSAGOS and MICHAEL RUBINKAM|Sep 13, 2024

    SPRINGFIELD, Ohio (AP) — Ohio state police will help protect schools in a city at the center of a political furor over Haitian migrants, the governor announced Monday, while local officials canceled an annual celebration of cultural diversity in the fallout over former President Donald Trump's false claims about pet-eating. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, has denounced the debunked rumors that spread online before Trump amplified them at last week's presidential debate, saying there is no evidence of it. He said at a news conference in S...

  • An Ohio city reshaped by Haitian immigrants lands in an unwelcome spotlight

    PATRICK AFTOORA ORSAGOS and JULIE CARR SMYTH|Sep 11, 2024

    SPRINGFIELD, Ohio (AP) — Many cities have been reshaped by immigrants in the last few years without attracting much notice. Not Springfield, Ohio. Its story of economic renewal and related growing pains has been thrust into the national conversation in a presidential election year — and maliciously distorted by false rumors that Haitian immigrants are eating their neighbors' pets. Donald Trump amplified those lies during Tuesday's nationally televised debate, exacerbating some residents' fears about growing divisiveness in the pre...

  • Ohio prison holds first-ever five-course meal open to public on facility grounds

    PATRICK AFTOORA ORSAGOS|Aug 23, 2024

    GRAFTON, Ohio (AP) — A state prison in northeast Ohio says that for the first time in the state's history, a five-course meal has been served to members of the public with food prepared by incarcerated men from fruits and vegetables grown in the prison garden. Almost 60 people dined at Grafton Correctional Institution, where incarcerated men in the prison's EDWINS Leadership and Restaurant Institute hosted the event in two prison gardens: the "EDWINS' Garden" and "Hope City Garden." EDWINS, an organization dedicated to education in prisons, h...