Charleroi Was Adapting to an Influx of Migrants. Then Donald Trump Weighed In

Kevin Kuzma was in the middle of filling t-shirt orders at his screen printing shop in Charleroi when a new customer walked in.

Kuzma couldn’t figure out what the customer, a Haitian migrant, wanted to order because he spoke little English. So the customer called a friend whose English was a little bit better. “He wants to put his name in a what?” Kuzma said loudly into the phone. “A crown?”

Kuzma and the customer, whose name was Avion, worked together to find a suitable image of a crown. Then Avion gestured with his fingers on the computer screen to tell Kuzma to make the picture bigger. Kuzma told Avion that his customized sweatshirt wouldn’t be ready until the next day, which disappointed Avion.

“If I have nothing to do, if I was sitting here doing nothing, that’s not a problem, I can do it today,” Kuzma said. “Right now I have my hands full with about three or four things that I have to get done today.”

Business has been increasing at Mon City Apparel, Kuzma said, in part because of new Haitian customers, like Avion. Most of them don’t have cars, he said, so they walk to his store. “They seem to celebrate birthdays on a high level,” Kuzma said. “So a lot of times they’ll come in for birthday shirts.”

Weekends in downtown Charleroi are bustling with people now, Kuzma said, unlike anything he’s seen in the 15 years since he moved to Charleroi from New Jersey. Within two blocks, five new businesses have opened up that are run by or cater to Haitians. Kuzma said they have spruced up a downtown that was blighted with empty storefronts.

“They’re welcome customers to me,” he said. “I don’t have an issue with them.”

But Kuzma has heard some long-time residents complain about the immigrants — without saying anything specific about what problems they’re causing. Many of those same residents, he added, used to complain about the town’s slow demise. Charleroi’s population has declined every decade since 1920, from a peak of more than 11,500 to a little over 4,000 in 2020.

Then the Haitians started arriving.

{snip}

It’s not entirely clear when that trend began, though locals say they began noticing a spike in the population between three and five years ago. Nor is it certain how many Haitians live in Charleroi today.

But some local leaders estimate that the new migrants — most of whom are Haitian — have increased the population of Charleroi from around 4,000 to more than 6,000. There aren’t any hard numbers, according to the borough manager, Joe Manning. But Gregg Doerfler, the mayor, estimates that immigration has increased the population by more than 50% in the last several years. That would work out to a roughly 1,500% increase in immigrants since the 2020 census, which counted fewer than 200 foreign-born residents living in town.

Manning said that until recently, any discontent expressed by local residents has largely been confined to social media. For example, Facebook commenters chimed in on a recent local news story about a local businessman who paid for seven Haitian high-school students to attend their first prom. Some commenters celebrated the news, but a few asked why native-born Charleroi students weren’t receiving free tickets

The online bitterness didn’t seem to affect the town, Manning said: “Nobody showed up at borough council meetings to complain or to bring anything to our attention.”

Then, last week President Trump weighed in. “The small 4,000-person town of Charleroi, Pennsylvania — have you heard of it?” Trump said during a press conference in Arizona. “What a beautiful name, but it’s not so beautiful now. It has experienced a 2,000% increase in the population of Haitian migrants under Kamala Harris. So, Pennsylvania, remember this when you have to go to vote.”

Trump added that Charleroi’s “schools are scrambling to hire translators for the influx of students who don’t speak not a word of English, costing local taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

{snip}

And some local leaders like Manning are worried that Charleroi could be turned into the next Springfield, Ohio. Mike DeWine, the governor of Ohio, recently had to call in state troopers to try to help quell the uproar in Springfield after Trump falsely accused local Haitians of eating cats and dogs.

Several Charleroi leaders and civic organizations have criticized Trump for his remarks. Kristin Hopkins-Calcek, the president of the Charleroi Borough Council, said Trump was exploiting the town for political gain. Just days before Trump’s remarks, Charleroi’s leaders learned that a glass factory known for making Pyrex dishware would close and move to Ohio. More than 300 jobs were in jeopardy after more than 100 years of production in town — the latest crushing blow to the local economy.

{snip}

Sean Logue, the chair of the Washington County Republican Party, said Republicans aren’t attacking the Haitian people. “They have a reputation for being churchgoing and for making the most out of their opportunity,” Logue said. “So we’re not demonizing them.”

Instead, he said, Democratic leaders are to blame for allowing the immigration without providing the town with support.

“[Trump] did not say that the Haitians are the ones responsible for it not being beautiful,” Logue said. “What he’s saying is that it’s a small town and has problems. And a few thousand Haitians showed up and the town’s being forced to pay for them.”

State and local Republicans have piled on. Republican Senate Candidate Dave McCormick said in a statement, “Roads are dangerous, schools are overwhelmed and police are struggling to keep up with the surge.”

{snip}

And one local Republican, state Sen. Camera Bartolotta, has stood out among local Republicans for her willingness to defend the Haitians. Bartolotta declined an interview request because she said she was out of the country. But she defended Charleroi’s Haitian community on X and Facebook.

“For some of these people saying awful things about these Haitian immigrants, I’d ask them what it might’ve been like for their parents or grandparents or great grandparents who might have come from another country and spoken a different language,” she wrote on Facebook. “How about the Italian immigrants and how they were treated when they first came over? Or the Polish? Or the Irish?”

{snip}

Even if the complaints by politicians so far have lacked evidence or been incorrect or misleading, that doesn’t mean the town had totally accepted the Haitians before Trump spoke.

Jason Jackson, 42, doesn’t like that he can’t communicate with the Haitians. He wonders if the recent sewage smell in town is related to their arrival {snip} And he asked if the Haitians brought the ubiquitous spotted lanternflies to town {snip}

Jackson does pressure washing for a living and can’t find anyone to help him but said he wouldn’t consider hiring any Haitians because of the language barrier. They make him feel uncomfortable, he said. “There’s so many pouring in that … it’s just cluttering up things that used to not be so cluttered.”

Jackson, who is Black and from North Charleroi, said some of his customers have spoken in a way that made him think they don’t like Haitians because of their race. “They’re used to the only black people in this town being from North Charleroi,” he said. “And now there’s black people everywhere. I’m sure it’s burning them up.”

Eva Ross was at a social services agency in Charleroi on Monday trying to get a new low-income apartment in a neighboring town. She’s lived in Charleroi for 20 years, she said, but in the last few, her neighborhood’s demographics have changed. “My whole neighborhood was white and now it’s all Haitian,” she said.

“I’m not racist,” she said. “But I came down Fallowfield [Street] a couple of months ago. There it was like on a Saturday or Sunday evening, real nice out. Everybody was on the streets walking. I probably counted 40 people walking from one end of Fallowfield to this end of Fallowfield. Not one white person.”

She doesn’t like how long it takes to buy something at the Dollar General near her house now because, she said, Haitians struggle to communicate at the register.

{snip}