Donald Trump’s vice presidential candidate JD Vance has reiterated his false claims that migrants are eating pets in an Ohio town after city officials repeatedly denied the rumors.

The baseless allegations led to numerous security threats and on Sunday, Wittenberg University in Springfield announced that it had to cancel events because there had been threats against members of its Haitian community.

During his appearances on Sunday talk shows, Vance defended the false stories, saying, “The media completely ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes.”

“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,” he told CNN.

“It comes from first-hand accounts from my constituents. I say we are creating a story, which means we are creating the American media to focus on it.”

Vance is a U.S. Senator representing Ohio.

He first raised allegations about eating animals last week, before Trump amplified them during his first presidential debate against Kamala Harris.

Since then, Springfield city officials have repeatedly refuted these allegations.

Mayor Rob Rue told the BBC that the conspiracy theories – and Trump’s promise to “deport migrants en masse” – were damaging the city.

“People’s pets are safe in Springfield, Ohio,” Rue said on the BBC’s Newshour. “We have contacted the JD Vance campaign to let them know that we have no evidence that this happened, and I have made it clear in several interviews that this is absolutely not true.”

“We need to make it clear to people – especially those who have a microphone that is heard around the world – that they need to understand the importance of their words and the negative impact on the community.”

Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, called the rumors “nonsense that is simply not true” on ABC’s “This Week.”

In Springfield, three schools and other city buildings had to be evacuated last week because of threats; derogatory comments about Haitians were made in at least one of the buildings.

The police at the University of Wittenberg said on a campus Warning that an email sent on Saturday threatened a shooting the next day.

“The message was targeted at Haitian members of our community,” police said. “All students, faculty and staff should exercise extreme caution and be alert to their surroundings.”

Springfield police also said they received calls Saturday about Proud Boys members marching through the city after a video circulated on social media showing a group of men carrying flags and logos associated with the far-right group.

Vance told CBS News on Sunday that he does not side with the Proud Boys, but said the real problem is Harris’ “open borders.”

Trump, like Vance, reiterated his baseless allegations and said the city had been “destroyed” by immigration.

During the election campaign in California on Friday, Trump announced that if he was elected, there would be “large-scale deportations” from Springfield. He has promised to deport millions of undocumented migrants across the country.

Springfield, a rust belt city in southwest Ohio, has a population of about 60,000 and has been visited by thousands of immigrants in recent years.

Many migrants in the city are from Haiti and have legal residency in the United States through a federal program for Haitians.