A caller told Clark County, Ohio, officials he saw Haitians steal geese. They found no proof.

An August call to a nonemergency number in Ohio is fanning a false narrative spread by former President Donald Trump that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, are harming animals.

In an audio recording  published by conservative outlet The Federalist, a person is heard talking to the Clark County Communications Center, which covers Springfield. "I see a group of Haitian people, there was about four of them, they all had geese in their hands," he said.

The caller said he couldn’t identify the full license plate number of the car the group was traveling in. He reported the incident happened near the intersection of Water and Warder streets and involved two men and two women. Asked by the operator how many geese the people had, he said, "They each had one."

Multiple Instagram users shared a screenshot of The Federalist article’s headline — "EXCLUSIVE: Police Audio, Report Confirm Haitian Goose-Hunting In Ohio: ‘They All Had Geese In Their Hands.’" — along with the audio track.

"They fact checked Donald Trump for this during the debate," read one such post from Trump supporter and commentator David J. Harris Jr. "I wish the media would just do its job."

The posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.) 

Existence of the audio and report does not "confirm" goose-hunting is happening. Clark County officials did not dispute that the nonemergency call was real. But they have said they found no evidence — such as videos, photos or dead geese — to substantiate the claim.

On Sept. 10, Trump said during a debate with his Democratic competitor Vice President Kamala Harris that people’s dogs and cats are being eaten in Springfield, Ohio. We rated that Pants on Fire; Springfield officials said they had no credible reports of that happening.

An hour before the debate, a reporter for The Federalist shared on X his Sept. 10 article that included an audio recording of the call and a link to a written call center report that showed the operator referred the caller to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. The Trump campaign also amplified the story in a Sept. 10 press release summarizing The Federalist’s article.

PolitiFact reached out via email to The Federalist reporter but did not receive a reply. The news organization’s cofounder posted a screenshot of PolitiFact’s email inquiry on X but provided no response.

According to city officials’ numbers, Springfield, which had a 2020 population of 58,000, has received 12,000 to 15,000 Haitian migrants in recent years, many of them fleeing years of political unrest. Local officials report the rapid population growth has strained schools, housing and health care, while also leading to cultural divisions and misinformation.

"There’s a lot of bad information out there about refugees and immigration and I don’t know the status of every single person who is in this community," Clark County Commission President Melanie Wilt said at a Sept. 10 press conference during which she was asked about the wildlife abduction reports. "But by and large they are seeking asylum and refuge from a really bad situation in Haiti."

Ohio Department of Natural Resources spokesperson Karina Cheung told PolitiFact in a Sept. 14 email that the agency found "no supporting evidence" to support the claim that Haitians were abducting wildlife from local parks. 

Cheung said a Division of Wildlife officer received and followed up on two calls from people reporting supposed cases of Haitians taking waterfowl out of Snyder Park in Springfield, including the Aug. 26 report involving geese.

The other incident was reported March 27, with a caller claiming "they saw three people grab a live duck and goose, place them in a trash bag, and drive away."

"Upon follow-up, no supporting evidence was found of wildlife being illegally removed from the park in either case," Cheung said. 

Cheung shared an incident report that showed that the agency followed up on the report the next day, Aug. 27. Cheung said the agency did not find evidence to support the claim. 

PolitiFact contacted the Clark County Communications Center and the Sheriff’s Office Sept. 14 to request the audio and report, but did not receive an immediate response.

Wilt also said authorities had determined reports of abductions or killings of wildlife in local parks were unfounded. 

"That is absolutely false, " she said during the Sept. 10 press conference, "My fellow County Commissioner Sasha Rittenhouse is back there, she rode with the local game warden last week and asked that question and we have it on good authority that that is an urban legend."

Rittenhouse was also quoted in a Sept. 11 Springfield News-Sun article telling commissioners she had found nothing to support the claim: "No videos have surfaced, no pictures have surfaced, no dead geese have surfaced; there’s nothing to substantiate that it’s happening."

PolitiFact previously fact-checked social media posts that falsely claimed Haitian immigrants in Springfield were eating pets and wildlife that included a photo of a man carrying a dead bird. But we traced the image to an August Reddit post that said it was taken in Columbus, Ohio — about 48 miles east of Springfield. 

Given the claim’s virality, we wondered if geese even play a role in Haiti’s cuisine or culture. We reached out to New York’s Nadege Fleurimond, the Haitian-born chef and author of several books, including "Haiti Uncovered: A Regional Adventure Into the Art of Haitian Cuisine." Fleurimond’s answer: "No. Geese is not part of our cuisine. I have never heard of Haitians eating geese. I have on rare occasions seen geese walking around a resort property in Haiti but never have I seen them hunted or cooked."

RELATED: ‘I am afraid’: The aftermath of Springfield, Ohio, misinformation on Haitians who live there