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Haiti is close to Ohio’s Republican governor Mike DeWine’s heart. He and his wife have been to the country at least 25 times, he said at a press conference in Springfield on Monday.

He helped found a school in Haiti named after his daughter Becky, who died in a car accident decades ago.

He respects the Haitians who came to the United States legally and found work in Springfield.

“They’re legal,” he said on Tuesday night’s “PBS Newshour.” “They want to work. In fact, they want to work overtime,” he said.

In addition, DeWine said the Haitians found Springfield because business owners there had difficulty finding workers following the Covid-19 pandemic.

But while he is protecting Haitians who are working legally and enjoying temporary protected status in Springfield because of the violence and a humanitarian crisis following storms and an earthquake, DeWine wants to separate them from the larger immigration and border debate that is fueling Republican political battles in 2024.

“The immigration issue and the border issue are obviously an issue,” DeWine said in the PBS interview, and he has repeated that refrain in press conferences and interviews in recent days.

But that’s a different problem than what’s going on in Springfield, he said.

Without criticizing former President Donald Trump or Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance, by name, DeWine said their insistence on spreading false rumors about animal cruelty in the Haitian community was “very hurtful to these men and women who work very, very hard.”

Her comments have an impact on the rest of the community, too. Ohio State Police are at Springfield schools this week after numerous bomb threats – some from abroad, some from within the United States – have left the community in turmoil.

When asked whether Trump and Vance’s comments fueled the bomb threats, DeWine was evasive.

“The people making these threats are the bad guys. They are the wrong guys,” he said.

There is no sign that Trump or Vance will stop talking about the unfounded rumors of animal abuse.

“If I have to make up stories to get the American media to actually pay attention to the suffering of the American people, then I will do that,” Vance told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday.

Vance later clarified: “I’m saying we’re creating a story, which means we’re creating the American media that focuses on it. I didn’t create the 20,000 illegal immigrants coming to Springfield.”

And on this point, there seems to be a world of difference between the Republican leadership in Ohio, which argues that the Haitians met an urgent need in Springfield, and that of Trump and Vance, who, like Vance, argue that the arrival of the Haitians “has destroyed the lives of thousands of residents.”

Like DeWine, Springfield Mayor Rob Rue has tried hard to set the record straight about the role of Haitians in Springfield. Rue chose his words carefully during an interview Tuesday when CNN’s Boris Sanchez asked if the attention Vance’s story was getting was helpful.

“It has brought a lot of negative attention to our community,” Rue said, adding that he has given many interviews to make sure people “know the real story of Springfield.”

While Rue and DeWine have both said the community’s infrastructure is admittedly overstretched – from staffing schools to ensuring the population is vaccinated to issuing driver’s licenses – there is a larger problem.

“We’re a beautiful city. We’re not a terrible city. We’re not falling apart. We’re under pressure and we’re under pressure and we’re trying to get a handle on it, but all the attention that’s being paid to Springfield, Ohio, isn’t helping us,” Rue said, noting that police have only come to his city’s schools because of threats made over the past week.

At a press conference on Tuesday, Rue and DeWine advised Trump against traveling to the city.

DeWine said the city and state are financially strained, but “if President Trump decides to come here, he will be welcome.”

Rue put it another way: A visit by any presidential candidate “would place an extreme strain on our resources, so I would be fine if they decided not to cancel the visit now.”