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Students in Logansport, IN are struggling after thousands of migrants move in
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Students in Logansport, IN are struggling after thousands of migrants move in

LOGANSPORT, Ind. (AP) — Thousands of migrants from Haiti and dozens of other countries have arrived in this isolated Indiana town of 18,000 in just a few years.

Angry residents say they no longer feel safe in the once-sleepy downtown area and their children are being driven out of schools by new students who can't speak English and need lots of help.

They blame Vice President Kamala Harris and President Biden.

“Do something. Our community can’t stand having so many people here,” Candice Espinoza, 32, a local photographer, told The Post when asked what her message would be to the Democratic presidential candidate.

Nancy Baker, 44, a mother of two, was more explicit about what she would tell Harris: “Get off my property.”

“I don’t see how she can stand behind Biden all the time, and she dodges every time someone asks questions.”

Cheyanne, a 16-year-old honors student from Logansport, dropped out of her public high school and enrolled in an online school after teachers' attention focused disproportionately on newly arrived migrants. LP Media

It's not entirely clear how many migrants have arrived in Logansport — but Cass County Health Department Administrator Serenity Alter told The Post that the area's population has increased by nearly 30%.

This would put the number of arriving migrants at over 11,000 – in a district where only 38,000 people lived in 2020.

Another rough estimate from Logansport Mayor Chris Martin puts the number of arrivals from the impoverished Caribbean nation at 2,000 to 3,000 over the past four years.

What is clear is that the number of Haitian immigrant students in Logansport schools has increased 15-fold, from 14 in 2021 to 207 this year.

Baker said her 16-year-old daughter, Cheyanne, dropped out of the local high school because teachers no longer seemed to have time for the English-speaking students.

“There were way too many kids there and it felt like they were getting more attention because they didn't speak the language or didn't understand what was going on,” Baker said.

“And because of that, she and the other kids growing up here who were struggling or struggling with certain things couldn't get the attention that they needed – the help that they needed from school,” she said.

When the former honor student's grades began to decline, Cheyanne dropped out of Logansport High School and enrolled in an online home school instead.

“You can’t focus all your resources on one group of kids and everyone else falls behind,” the angry mother said.

Nancy Baker, 44, Cheyanne's mother, said of the school: “You can't focus all your resources on one group of kids and everyone else falls behind.” LP Media

“And you wonder why these kids are frustrated, dropping out of school and getting bad grades.”

Cheyanne expressed her own frustration with the migrants, many of whom were unaccompanied minors or young men who are believed to have been lured by the Tyson poultry plant in the city.

“It feels like the teacher is so busy with them that no one else can learn anything,” she shared.

Many migrants have arrived in Logansport as unaccompanied minors — putting a strain on schools and increasing the number of Haitian migrant students nearly 15-fold in just three years.

LP Media

Baker even claims her teenage daughter was verbally abused by Haitian migrants when she went to a local cafe.

“She was walking alone and she was walking this way and two of them were walking this way, she just kind of smiled at them as they walked by. When they passed her, they started screaming for her. She turned around, looked at them and they said, 'Come here!' Come here!'” Baker said.

“She says, 'No, no, no, I'm fine.' She started walking quickly. They chased her. She had to run all the way to the cafe,” the mother said. “She’s afraid to go outside.”

Logansport is about 90 minutes outside of Indianapolis. LP Media

Baker said she no longer feels safe in her community and criticized the federal government for the impact its lackluster response to the refugee crisis is having on local children.

“We can help people, that’s fine. But not at the expense of our children.”

Espinoza, the photographer who is also a mother, said she has had her own disturbing encounters with Haitian migrants who she said regularly stared into her window from across the street.

“It's not safe. They just stare at you and don’t want to talk to you,” she said. “They stand there staring at my house with cameras on their phones. I don’t know if they’re recording what they’re doing.”

The interactions have left the mother of two so unsettled that she is afraid to leave her home and has installed surveillance cameras on her property.

She claims the out-of-towners even scared some of her photography clients.

Around 2,000 migrants from Haiti and up to 28 other countries recently flooded the small rural community of about 18,000 residents, overwhelming services such as hospitals and schools. LP Media

“My clients didn’t even get out of their car for their photo shoot. I had to take them somewhere else because they are afraid of them,” she said.

“You don’t feel easy when someone is constantly watching you.”

“They were there at night and I’m not going to lie, it scared the crap out of me. Three guys just standing in the dark and staring around the neighborhood, that's creepy. I don't care what color you are. That’s not something I want.”

Espinoza, whose children are 10 and 13 years old, has also noticed that the quality of her children's schooling has deteriorated since the arrival of the migrant students.

Logansport photographer and mother of two Candice Espinoza, 32, says Haitian migrants have a habit of staring into their windows from across the street. LP Media

She said teachers were giving Haitian students “special treatment” by taking them aside to ensure the immigrant youths understood the task, and that this was at the expense of other students in the classrooms.

“Their reading ability and comprehension will decline because they have to lower the children’s expectations,” she said.

She says she plans to vote for former President Donald Trump in part because she is frustrated with the Biden-Harris administration's lax border control policies during Harris' disappointing tenure as border czar.

“I know our state will be better if he becomes president,” she said. “Then our country will be better. He stands for the people. What is Harris doing?”

Meanwhile, Cass County health officials have sounded the alarm that the rapid population growth of migrants from a country that offers little to no medical screening is straining local emergency rooms.

“This increase has led to a drastic increase in doctor visits,” said Alter, the county health administrator.

“The hospital, health department and express clinics have had to expand their translation services to ensure medical needs are understood.”

Logansport Mayor Chris Martin acknowledged some “assimilation issues” with the influx but argued that national politicians like Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are getting little attention. LP Media

She said the conditions in which the migrants lived – sometimes with 20 to 25 people crammed into the same living space – had led to the spread of communicable diseases such as tuberculosis.

The story in Logansport mirrors reports from Springfield, Ohio; Charleroi, Pennsylvania; and other small towns that have seen a similarly confusing influx of migrants in recent years because of Biden-Harris border policies.

Martin, the mayor, acknowledged that the city was facing “some assimilation problems” due to the rapid influx of migrants, but attributed this primarily to “different cultural beliefs.”

He told the Post he wishes national politicians like Trump and Harris would recuse themselves.

“Simply put: Stop playing politics with the smaller communities. We don't like that. We don't appreciate that. We’d rather you do your job and actually do something instead of talking about it.”

Additional reporting by Jennie Taer

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