EXCLUSIVE: Springfield, Ohio Locals SPEAK OUT on Migrant Crisis

all right s if I can get your name and your title uh Tony flood II mayor of Tremont City and um you were you were talking to me earlier about how you're connected to the the tra tragic accident where the child was killed on the first day of school can you elaborate more on that uh well I'm involved used to be involved pretty deeply with the school I mean I've had all three kids go there I graduated from there so seen the family around a lot still see the family around a lot just now they're missing their youngest son uh my son seen the bus rolled over thank goodness that he sent us a picture that morning saying it wasn't him but I actually went up and went to pick him up from the school that morning and he said he wanted to stay at the school so if anybody needed help up there he was there to help them so uh but him the boy that passed and my son were pretty good friends at school so and how how does how does it make you feel um and obviously you represent the community as well but I mean so how does it make you personally feel knowing that your son was potentially at risk because there's this bigger problem that is just coming over coming over and having having a direct impact on not just Springfield itself but the entire surrounding area I'll be 100% honest words can't describe how it makes me feel um I'm ashamed um of leaders and Leadership allowing this kind of stuff to just pretty much invade uh the lawlessness that's happened and in it and it's not just the Haitians I mean they're they're ignoring anybody driving without a license um I'm scared to death my wife works in downtown Springfield she works on East Main Street in Springfield had a bank I won't mention its name um but she's over overwhelmed with the Haitians that come in there can't speak any English they don't they do not understand our money or anything else my daughter works right beside her and I'm scared to death that one of these days I'm want to get a phone call or a visit by a State Trooper or something that they've been hit they've been rolled over for anything I mean it you get that anyways I mean any day you get in the car it's a risk but now it's even worse especially if you head that way yeah it didn't used to be that way a couple years ago is you're saying I was always scared I mean you got kids out there people that you love driving and everything and anything can happen anybody can cause an accident but the amount of them that's happening anymore and it's scares me to death you know it's and it honestly it pisses me off that we've allowed it to hit this point I mean there's kids getting killed um I'm on a local fire department up by the school and a couple weeks ago two Hans went left the center at each other and caused a wreck and a semi-truck up tied up in the power lines they knock down stuff like that that shouldn't be happening in anywhere there you go so and what would your message be to uh the rest of the country um that you know as I was kind of asking earlier that might say well this is being overblown there's there's racist tone racist reasonings behind it what what's what's your what's your response to that um I'm going to has nothing to do with race um law doesn't know a color there shouldn't be there's nothing in the law that states you know a black guy can't do this and a white guy can't do that it's not about that it's us as Citizens um the I'm trying to figure out my words here you can yeah yeah don't worry don't worry don't worry we'll let don't worry trying to think well has nothing to do with race it has everything to do with illegal acts and the amount of them it doesn't matter if you're white black green yellow if you're in this country you follow this country's laws if you live in Ohio you follow Ohio's laws if you live in Florida you follow Florida's laws and that's the same way with you Tremont city has its own little set of laws you got to follow those too if you live here or if you are here I don't go to another country and follow our laws no I got to follow theirs and that's the way it should be not and so I'm assuming you trust president Trump to handle this issue should he get back into office as opposed to Harris 100% I trust that Trump's heart is in the right place but the problem is it ain't just up to him he is a figurehead you got a house and a senate that hasn't done their job in over 150 years I think they ought to start doing their job yeah we've seen a major influx of Haitian population driving through Tremont none of them have a license and if they do they're temporary permits um obviously you can't drive on a temporary permit in in the state of Ohio on a temporary permit um I've towed many many cars because of the case that there is no driver's license um it's you know the accidents we're having around here they all can be prevented if everybody would get on the same page all law enforcement and start Towing these vehicles I know it seems like we're singling people out but we do it the same no matter what race nationality Creed doesn't matter if you're breaking the law you're breaking the law we tellw the vehicles um I'm just one person I'm the chief out here I'm the police officer I'm the road officer um we don't get no reimbursement from state or federal to be able to send people to school to have you know more officers on the road so it it makes a very big impact I'm putting in over a 100 hours every pay period just trying to keep the village safe as much as one person can do so yeah the the P the population has exploded no one knows what to do about it um I go to the chief's meetings nobody has an answer everybody has a different policy and procedure in place uh Springfield they don't they don't tow vehicles and and so that creates a bigger problem for us because now they're driving out on these County Roads and they don't have the experience to do that so we end up with accidents people getting killed you know so and what would you want the rest of the country to know about just the the spillover effect from Springfield and how as you said it's just you for the small for the small town and I mean is is this at all sustainable it's not sustainable there's no way we can sustain bringing in that many IM immigrants no matter who they are that fast it's it's impossible um it's it's we don't have the capability of keeping up with all of it so the amount of unlicensed drivers that our cops stop is unacceptable and we don't stop them unless they're speeding or doing some other kind of uh uh infraction infraction uh when we get an unlicensed driver okay if it's their car we have it towed we call a tow company they come pick it up because you're not allowed to let N license driver drive the car or the village is liable if they get in the wreck if the car belongs to somebody else we contact at somebody else to come get the car when they come to get the car if we find out they had given that person permission they get cited for unlawful entrustment okay that's what the high Revised Code states to do this subject had been brought up to the city many a times and what they call the police Chiefs meeting that our police and all the local police Chiefs meet every quarter and the city refuses to do that this is spilling out they do illegal u-turns all up and down the road I don't know how many times I about got a hit pulling out a lot myself from somebody doing a U-turn uh they drive on the wrong side of the road not just left the center I mean on the wrong side of the road this is not London England we drive on the right side of the road okay the everybody here used to go to beo Avenue to shop Walmart and everything's right there on beo Avenue now most people here go north or aband the shop because they can't tolerate the attitudes okay the pushiness the inappropriate behavior of the migrants that are in these stores nobody feels safe I've had a CCW since they first came out in Ohio and made them legal I was a former military cop okay I don't go anywhere without a weapon on me it's out of control everybody keeps yelling at federal government yeah they're the root cause but the county seat Springfield Ohio is not enforcing the law for the bad driving and everything that's caused one of our children in the school district get killed on his first day of school last year if if they would enforce that law it would cut down the amount of bad drivers illegal drivers at least would help some and the people would feel more like the citizens are getting treated equally you're going to sight a citizen for speeding but you won't sight this migrant for speeding and why do you think that is why do you think they're not enforcing well I will let Mark get into that here in a little bit because he has facts I've only got hearsay um one of the things I've been told is when they are cited after 30 days them trying to get in the court and not having an interpreter gets postponed and postponed and then after 30 days the city court just throws the tickets out okay you and I don't get that okay we're either guilty or innocent that day pay your fine go home okay so it's pretty obvious what's going on okay forget the musy stuff I'm all for immigrants uh this TPS this Mass influx is not the way you do anything and so common sense and so the is there has there been other any other spillover effects besides the bad driving oh God h I guess I'll ask I guess I'll ask him that I guess I'll ask him that but uh I I've got to I've got to be careful on how I yeah answer your question cuz I am a village official yes you understand yes okay I can tell you we have the police have cited and towed a migrant's vehicle for no license okay our courts are Wednesday nights this it's happened on many occasion but I'll name this one okay shows up the court driving his car again and no license and got caught again when he left the building it's the fourth time four of them yeah that that man's been cited for so yeah it's a spill over at what time just like the U-turn you see we have hardly any curves okay they go up over the curbs we got kids and old people up and down these sidewalks all the time they don't get mail delivery to their house it's all done by post office box at the post office so people are them down the street all the time I don't know how many of them about guy hit when their bicycl are just walking down the street have your name again please yeah Mark Sanders Mark Mark Sanders okay um and so what has been some of the spillover effects from Springfield cuz obviously a lot of attention is on Springfield itself but there is towns and stuff around here so what what and since you're local what have you seen around here in regards to all the Haitians that have come past couple years yeah probably the most impactful spillover has been the absolute shortage of housing we've had uh a lot of greed has come to the surface a lot of people that have been lifelong renters and properties have been served eviction notices or not non renewal leases and given 30 days to get out and what they'll do is instead of having a single family and a a home that's maybe a three-bedroom they'll actually rent bedrooms out to individual families so the landlord will you know technically triple his rent um by virtue of uh getting people in there and again Haitians are a very communal group so they're not really adverse to living three or four families in a home or even three or four non-families in a home um the healthcare they've decimated rocking horse which is a federally funded Clinic uh in Haitian Clinic means hospital so they've had individuals actually Dro their pregnant wives that are in labor off at the clinic and the clinics had to call the squad the squads had to haul them to the hospital for them to get birth um same as the word permit uh when it comes when it comes to uh uh getting a license permit in Haitian means permission so when they get their permit which they're allowed to have a translator to get um who will answer the questions for the individual as opposed to them actually knowing the content they'll have somebody answer for them they'll falsely get a permit they think they're done then jump behind the wheel of a car and find out they're not even close to being done um individuals in the city are are buying vehicles and renting them per day to individuals that have licenses or have permits or have nothing um so there's a lot of capitalistic thought put into this but actually criminal Behavior that's actually uh U evolving from it um and so it seems that the issue has been raised with the city many time many times tell them about your attending the meetings for is is it just being ignored or are they are they just are as you kind of alluded to or as he alluded to earlier is there just seems like well it's just the federal government there's nothing we can do I again I've tried to research both sides I've tried to walk that fence to to not lay blame blame doesn't be deserved I I think you know obviously the federal government kind of Trumps state or local policy you know Supremacy Clause is there you know and and it's being utilized um they can't prevent them from coming into town they can't prevent them from signing up for benefits if they're Fally funded benefits um I think the city's doing a lot I think they can do more I think one of the best best cases I actually last night got into a discussion on Facebook with a Springfield City police officer who insisted he couldn't tow non-licensed driven cars and you know basically tremont's doing it without any kind of blowback legal blowback German Township which is the township that tront lies in is doing it without any blowback uh Springfield is not doing it because I think there's been a kind of a standown order given by either the city manager or organizations within the city that want to make it more accommodating and more um feeling good to come here um when in turn what they do is they they're they're they're complicit to these people driving and causing accidents causing physical injury you know Financial injury and and other you know property damage to people who may have just paid off their car and have liability somebody runs into them they're not covered because the driver of the car that hit them doesn't have a license or insurance and they're out so there's there's a huge uproar for that I know some my mother-in-law has been hit I've been hit twice in the back of my truck it her car up by haian by Haitian um basically it destroyed their car didn't hurt my bum all it did was scratch my rust on my hitch so it was their loss more humorous than anything but again the police were they're they're almost they're almost morally crushed because every day they show up to five six seven of these accidents and they see this it's like the movie Groundhog Day it's the same thing over and over and you know I got you babe and every day it's the same thing um I really think and I got into a debate with the Springfield law director and at the beginning of the debate she said said that it was against the law for them to tow vehicles by the end of our debate she acessed that basically it was um officer discretion well when you have discretion in something it means you have a choice if that choice is taken away and you mandate that every vehicle that basically driven by an illegal let me back up every vehicle driven by somebody without a license um is towed you make it financially INF feasible you make it very inconvenient and you make that person think two or three more times about whether they want to do it again um and you start ticketing the people allowing these people to drive their vehicles without a license you hit them in the pocketbook and they'll they'll stop doing the wrong thing and with with a lot of attention being focused on Springfield in the in the area um what's your response to people who say that you know all of this is just being overblown it's it's because they're black you know there's racism xenophobia type thinking behind it as someone who lives in the area and obviously has experience what what's your response to that my response is if you take can defend a culture or a people or a skin tone because of that skin tone you're no less racist than if you are against that person for the same thing so that's where the racism is drawn out defending somebody irrespective of what they've done because of they're whether they're black or they're white that's true racism in its truest form um again we're not against any people we're against acts and actions and then the repercussions of those actions um um you know the people that are actually screaming the loudest or the ones that have impacted the least they've never had a family member injured they've never lost you know had a financial loss you know this District lost an 11-year-old boy the first day of school and you know I actually because of that now drive a school bus for the very District that young man um lost you know in on the for this District um my daughter wasn't in the accident but actually was in a bus that witnessed the accident she sent me a text that morning showed a school bus on its top and it said the text said dad there's been a wreck it's not us I'm fine love you and then she told her counselor later on because she want to get back on a bus she didn't didn't want to ride a bus anymore and one of the things her counselor was able to share with us is she said that if I drove a bus it would make her feel better about getting back on a bus even though I wouldn't be driving her bus but she would know that there would be kids that would be protected so now I drive a school bus for the district so again you know there are things that can be prevented that guy should have not been in the country he shouldn't have been driving he was working for a company local that was actually supplied to them by a temp agency named first diversity and who brags about placing 20,000 hati in in this area in temp temp jobs um and one of the things as far as their contract being a temp they can never be hired full-time for by that by the company they're working for so they're indentured servants they actually are ow their soul to The Company Store which is that temp agency so you know indentured servitude was something that was made illegal decades and decades and decades ago hereit's back again um so the debate between Trump and Harris it's tonight um what what do do you think that this issue is going to have an impact on the presidential election because it's obviously not just Springfield that's feeling the effects of it you know it started at the border they're all here now and there seems to be a lot of s you know that that that you've highlighted what would you want what would you want either Trump or Harris to know about this issue well the biggest thing is the indiscretions and the absolute ignorant policies of the Biden Administration has made every city in this nation a Border Town I don't care whether you're in Nebraska Florida California and Maine it's a Border Town and everyone's been affected you know impacted and I think that people need to look at two things number one is is your neighborhood still safe and number two is your pocketbook still as heavy as it was or is it much lighter um I think that first and foremost the government's drops to protect our borders and protect its citizens and they've done a very poor job this Administration done a very poor job of that and I think people need to look at that are they able to lay their head down at night relatively comfortable that they can pay their bills this month and relatively comfortable they can wake up tomorrow morning their family be safe those two questions ask those if you can answer yes or no on either one of those that should be your deciding factor on who who you're voting for and so I'm assuming you trust Trump on this issue more than Harris without a doubt 100% And that's a pretty common feeling in the area yes I drive a school bus in this distri this district and I count on one hand how many Harris wall signs I've seen it would take me a calculator and an abacus to count how many Trump signs I've seen