Following the Trail: From Blood Tribe to the Supreme Court
How a neo-nazi campaign targeting Haitians in Ohio led all the way to the Supreme Court.
On Thursday June 25, 2026, the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, granted Trump the power to terminate the Temporary Protective Status (TPS) of hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians living in America. The ruling clears the path for Trump to extend his mass-kidnappings and deportations to over 350,000 people from Haiti.
Trump and his admin’s focus specifically on Haitian migrants isn't by chance. What brought them into his focus was one of the most outward facing neo-nazi groups in the country, Blood Tribe. During the summer of 2024, Blood Tribe led a months-long propaganda and terror campaign against the city of Springfield, and specifically, its Haitian community members. During that Summer, what began as a facebook post from a woman in Springfield making an entirely fake claim blaming a missing cat on Haitian neighbors, then grew into internet rumors of Haitian migrants eating local pets and animals. Although these rumors were completely fabricated, it gave white supremacists the fuel they needed to drive a national outrage based solely off of racist conspiracy theories and misinformation.
Blood Tribe seized the moment as an opportunity to spread their anti-Black hate and to grow their own image. The false rumors were relentlessly pushed by Blood Tribe week after week. The rumors were intentionally paired with other racists theories and misinformation, in a concerted effort to create a larger outrage against Haitian immigrants fueled by white supremacy. These racist Telegram and Gab posts from a relatively small neo-nazi organization have now, two years later, culminated in a Supreme Court decision supported by the president and his followers. In the US, we now live in a timeline where nazi telegram chatrooms can lead directly to government policies enacted at the national level.
Blood Tribe
Before speaking about their influence, it’s important to give a brief summary of who and what Blood Tribe is. Blood Tribe is an explicit neo-nazi organization. Founded by former marine Christopher Pohlhaus in 2021, their goal since inception has been to position themselves as a vanguard to instill a fourth reich in the US by any means necessary. Their motto is “there will be blood”. Unlike other white supremacist organizations who self-censor their language and intentions in an attempt to appear palatable, Blood Tribe marches publicly wearing matching red and black outfits with faces covered, carrying swastika flags and rifles, giving nazi salutes, and shouting racist slurs through megaphones. They also have a history of showing up to pride events in a similar fashion. On more than one occasion, their marches have resulted in assaults on passerbys.
During their most recent large-scale demonstration in Little Rock, AK, they were detained while trying to leave the area. The full police report can be found here, which contains the full name and address of each member present that day who tried to hide their identities.
Targeting Haitian Immigrants
According to Blood Tribe’s self admitted No.2 in charge Keith Elflien, the group had been “monitoring” Springfield for up to six months prior to that summer. What seemed to make them publicly focus all of their attention on Haitians living in Springfield however was a post by popular propagandist / stochastic terrorist Chaya Raichik from her Libs of TikTok account, which they reshared themselves.
The post attempted to portray the city of Springfield as a town overwhelmed with Haitian immigrants, followed by a news story of an 11 year old boy who was killed in a car accident the previous year by a 60 year old Haitian immigrant. Seeing this as an opportunity for the group to exploit a tragedy to peddle their own racist beliefs, they chose to begin a campaign of actions, constant online misinformation, and targeted attacks which would stretch into 2025. Their main telegram channel, where they primarily operated online, quickly became filled with anti-Haitian posts and rumors during July of 2024. All of their attention at this time was given to put Haitian immigrants in Springfield to the forefront of public discourse.
What would have normally been just a drop in the ocean of internet stories coming and going became a spark for neo-nazis to build and grow a fire that pulled in all of the racist conspiracy theories popular in small chat rooms, and brought them into a national conversation.
Eventually, they took their propaganda from online postings to real world presence. On August 10, 2024, they held an unannounced anti-Haitian rally and march in Springfield. About a dozen masked members, some holding swastika flags and some open-carrying rifles, marched through town, before pausing to let member and former marine Drake Berentz give a speech through a megaphone to a mostly empty city sidewalk.
After this speech, they marched to a nearby Jazz & Blues festival, where they chanted nazi slogans and, in at least one case, aimed their rifles at a Haitian family attempting to leave.
Following this march, attention on Springfield and its Haitian community began to grow significantly as Blood Tribe’s march received attention from local news stations and the internet. Chris Pohlhaus and Blood Tribe celebrated, and claimed in the days afterwords that they would be back.
Two weeks later, on August 27, Drake Berentz and three members of the group showed up to a City Commission hearing. At the meeting, Berentz threatened city leaders, saying to them that “if you keep importing Haitians, things will get worse”, and that they had “been warned”. His short rant included much more expletive racist tropes and slurs than these included quotes before he was cut short and removed from the city council chambers.
According to the complaint filed on behalf of the City of Springfield against Blood Tribe in an ongoing lawsuit against the group, soon after the City Commission hearing,
“The Blood Tribe made good on these threats. Soon thereafter, the City of Springfield and its residents received at least 33 bomb threats, the vast majority of which included complaints about Springfield’s Haitian immigrants. 4 Hospitals, clinics, elementary and middle schools, universities, private residences, and businesses received anonymous emails and telephone calls purporting to identify the location and detonation time of explosives in each of the respective facilities. Many City residents, including young school children, were forced to evacuate their buildings. And even though the bomb threats proved to be false alarms, they were frightening and disruptive and required the City of Springfield to expend extensive resources to assure the safety of the City and its residents.”
Blood Tribe’s summer long campaign to target Haitian migrants in Springfield sparked the large online outrage toward the Haitian immigrant community they had hoped for. It also brought in other neo-nazi groups to Springfield itself. Proudboys, AFN (Aryan Freedom Network), KKK, and Patriot Front all eventually held actions in Springfield later that summer.
Fueling this fire was a facebook post which went viral, in large part due to the massive spotlight Blood Tribe had helped to put on Springfield’s Haitian immigrants. The post claimed that a neighborhood pet had gone missing, and the blame was put on local Haitians. This false posting began to fuel an even darker and completely fabricated rumor of Haitian community members eating neighborhood pets and local animals. Blood Tribe boosted these false rumors as much as they possibly could.
On September 6, nearly two months after Blood Tribe began their constant fixation on Haitians and Springfield, far-right figurehead Jack Posobiec shared the same false rumors Blood Tribe had been sharing to his audience of millions on X from his popular “End Wokeness” account, along with an image of a Black man that had been falsely spread as proof of Haitians eating animals from local parks.
Four days later, the anti-Haitian sentiments cooked up and relentlessly spread by Blood Tribe hit their widest audience yet. During the September 10 presidential debate between Trump and Harris, Trump said at the podium to an audience of tens of millions “In Springfield, they are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They’re eating – they are eating the pets of the people that live there." Trump’s hatred of Haiti and its people has a history longer than this, but what’s notable is that his statement was specifically about Springfield and the false rumors Blood Tribe helped amplify, with Trump finding common footing amongst a group of avowed Nazis. JD Vance also made a post on X to millions more, in which he repeated the same false claims regarding Springfield’s pets and animals, then followed it further with racist talking points that until then had largely remained to the confines of neo-nazi telegram chat rooms. His tweet was in response to a post targeting Haitian immigrants in the US with TPS specifically.
Blood Tribe members celebrated what they claimed as their own personal victory, and took personal credit for all of the attention that was now being given to the Haitian immigrant community in Springfield. Emboldened by what they perceived as popular support, they escalated their targeting of Haitians in Springfield both online and in person. On September 28, another dozen members led by Drake Berentz marched to the home of Springfield’s mayor carrying swastika flags, taunted the mayor, then marched to city hall while claiming “Springfield is property of Blood Tribe”.
During this time period, they also were leading a doxxing campaign against city officials, business owners, and residents that they accused of supporting or helping Haitian migrants. Targets of Blood Tribe were “sent suspicious packages designed to look like bombs, left harassing voicemails, sent hateful emails, demeaned the residents and their families on social media platforms, used dating apps to send men looking for drugs and sex to their homes late at night, and publicized their personal information, such as their telephone numbers, email addresses, and home and work addresses, all the while actively encouraging others to harass and intimidate them.”
Blood Tribe has continued their fixation on Haitian immigrants, though have pulled back from mostly any actions or public posts due to a lawsuit brought on by the city of Springfield, Ohio against them for “a campaign of harassment and intimidation motivated by ethnic and racial hatred”. The lawsuit began in February 2025 and as of this writing is still in the process of going to a jury trial, with a tentative trial date set for April 2027.
Court Decision
In short, The supreme court decision centered on the validity of Haitian immigrants' abilities to claim TPS in order to avoid deportation. Temporary Protective Status is an immigration designation given to immigrants whose home countries are too dangerous to safely return to, whether it be environmental or social conditions. In November of 2025 Kristi Noem, acting as secretary of DHS, made the decision to terminate Haiti for TPS. In response, five Haitian nationals with TPS status sued to prevent Haiti’s TPS status termination with the District Court of Columbia. The District Court granted them relief. A quote referencing this decision was included in the recent Supreme Court ruling
“The court also ruled that the challengers would likely succeed on the merits of their equal protection claim because both President Trump and Secretary Noem made statements that suggested racial animus against “Haitians and other non-white foreigners.”
The motivations of Trump and Noem being race based were centered during the supreme court ruling. While the right wing majority dismissed, excused, and denied any racial motivations, Justice Kagan spelled out some of the quotes Trump had said regarding Haiti and Haitians. The quotes are indistinguishable from the same exact language Blood Tribe used in their chatrooms and social channels during the Summer of 2024. In her statement, Kagan wrote, “ The evidence they have offered includes statements by the President so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print.” Afterwhich, she shared:
"So here are some of those statements. Haitians are “eating the dogs . . . . They’re eating the cats. They’re eating—they’re eating the pets of the people that live [in Springfield, Ohio].” 2 App. 802; see id., at 644. And: Haitians are also eating “other things too that they’re not supposed to be.” Id., at 698–699. And: Haitians in the United States “probably have AIDS.” Id., at 698. And: Haiti is a “shithole country,” which is “filthy, dirty, [and] disgusting.” Id., at 698–699. And: Haitian immigration is “like a death wish for our country.” Id., at 698. And: Haitians, along with some others, are “poisoning the blood” of our country. Id., at 698. And: “Why is it we only take people from shithole countries” like “Haiti [and] Somalia”? “Why cannot we have some people from Norway [and] Sweden?” Id., at 699. The majority briefly replies that those remarks are not “overtly racial,” ante, at 21, but it is hard to know what that means. Haitians are Black. (Norwegians and Swedes not so much.) The references—of filth, disease, and primitiveness—are shot through with racial stereotypes and tropes. It is hard to imagine the statements being made today of any White community."
In a recent public post in response to the Supreme Court decision, Blood Tribe again took credit for creating the target put on Haitian immigrants.
Where Do We Go From Here?
When the same words being written in a nazi telegram chat are not only the words the president is speaking, but also being used to drive national policy, it acts as a greenlight to fascists to act even more overtly. Racist conspiracy theories like the Great Replacement theory, once confined to white supremacist chatrooms, are now mainstream beliefs held by Trump and his administration.
Each day, America slips further and further toward unveiled fascism. Where antifascists are labeled terrorists by the government, and given decades in prison. Where non-white immigrants are targeted, kidnapped, and disappeared. Where neo-nazis armed with rifles and carrying swastika flags, whose group motto is “there will be blood”, are left to feel validated by the president and the supreme court for the views they hold.
In this America, the results of an economic system incapable of satisfying basic human needs such as housing and health are blamed on the most disenfranchised populations, rather than those with power. It doesn’t matter what’s true or accurate, only that people or groups have the ability to direct the fear and anger many hold toward a target of their choosing. In this case, the group was Blood Tribe, and the target was Haitian immigrants. Without recognizing this direct line and strategizing for how to neutralize it in the future, its repetition is inevitable.
Recommended Reading:
We Will Free Us
