Six days after terrorizing the city of Springfield, Ohio, with baseless stories about Haitian immigrants kidnapping and eating people’s pets, Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance admitted the stories were intended to promote a particular narrative.

“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 on Sunday. Days earlier, Vance had acknowledged that “of course it’s possible that all of these rumors turn out to be false” – an admission that implies he doesn’t care whether they’re true.

Since former President Donald Trump and Vance focused their campaign on lies about the “deportation” of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, city buildings, schools and local festivals have had to be evacuated or canceled because of bomb threats. When asked if he condemned the threats against Haitian immigrants, Trump did not even have the heart to say that the threats were false, and instead simply went back to spreading misinformation about the migrants: “I don’t know what happened with the bomb threats. I know the city was taken over by illegal immigrants, and that is a terrible thing that happened.” Aside from showing not even the slightest hint of concern for the residents threatened by bomb threats, this statement was also false: The Haitians in Springfield live and work there legally with green cards, humanitarian parole and temporary protected status, a legal immigration status for people who cannot safely return to their country of origin. Trump has vowed to deport them anyway.

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The reward the Haitian community in Springfield is receiving for doing exactly what Republicans want legal immigrants to do—work, support themselves, contribute to their community—is a smear and intimidation campaign. Contrary to Vance’s claim that he is making up “stories” about a community to alleviate the suffering of Ohioans, the Trump campaign is actually using that suffering as a license to justify violence and harm. This is the Trump campaign’s most commonly used rhetorical device: point to someone’s suffering and then offer state violence against a disadvantaged group as a solution, using Americans’ problems as an excuse to harm people they knowingly hate.

Trump and Vance have claimed that Haitians were “dumped” in Springfield, that they entered illegally, that they spread disease, and that they eat people’s pets. These have long been staples of anti-immigrant rhetoric, regardless of the immigrants’ origins. They are attempts to use shocking, sickening anecdotes to trick people into thinking they’re right. Vance has now essentially admitted that he makes up “stories” for a larger purpose, but it’s worth examining these allegations a little more closely to find out what that purpose is.

“We know that the Haitians who live in Springfield are legal. They came to Springfield to work. Ohio is on the move, and Springfield has seen a big boost with many companies coming here,” Ohio Republican Governor Mike DeWine told ABC News last weekend. “These Haitians have come to work for these companies. The companies tell us they are very good workers. They are very happy to have them here. And frankly, that has helped the economy.”

There are a few things notable about DeWine’s comments. For one thing, the Haitian migrants came to work and have benefited the city’s economy; they were not “dumped” there. The arrival of the Haitians has not hurt Springfield; it has helped revitalize the kind of city Trump and Vance claim to want to help. The Republicans’ claims about disease and pet eating appear to be completely baseless—the author of the Facebook post from which these stories originated has publicly apologized for sharing them and acknowledged that he has no evidence to support their claims. As my colleague David Graham notes, the arrival of the Haitian workers has helped fuel an economic boom, exactly what Vance says he wants for his home state of Ohio.

There are only two grains of truth in Vance’s complaints about Haitian migrants. First, a local boy, Aiden Clark, was killed last year when a Haitian driver accidentally rammed Clark’s school bus — though Vance has falsely labeled his death a “murder.” Aiden’s father, Nathan Clark, has condemned “morally bankrupt” politicians and “hateful people” for trying to exploit his son’s death to stoke racism against Haitians. Second, the influx of workers has strained local resources: The New York Times Earlier this year, it was reported that the new arrivals had put pressure on housing, health care and schools. This is, of course, how economic development works: people come, lured by the promise of lucrative employment, and then services expand to meet demand. These services, in turn, create more jobs and opportunities – a virtuous cycle.

While the arrival of Haitian workers who have fueled Springfield’s economic boom has caused problems, those problems are obviously fixable – through investments in housing, schools, infrastructure, etc. – that would benefit all other Springfield residents. Deporting the workers, on the other hand, would harm the city, destroy its economic boom, and tear the community apart. And city leaders are not calling for their deportation. Springfield’s Republican mayor, Rob Rue, called the threats a “hateful response to immigration in our city.” He himself has received death threats for defending the Haitian community.

So the question is: Why are Trump and Vance so fixated on deporting the Haitians?

One reason is that Trump has a particular, well-documented hatred of Haitians. The former president referred to Haiti as one of the “shithole countries” from which the United States should reject immigrants, in favor of immigrants from countries “like Norway.” Trump has also previously complained that Haitians “all have AIDS.” Trump’s hostility toward Haitians extends to other black immigrants as well—he is also reported to have complained that Nigerian immigrants, if allowed to stay, would “never go back to their shacks.” Nigerian-Americans are the most educated immigrant subgroup in America, and Haitians, as David Bier of the Cato Institute has documented, have higher employment rates than native-born Americans and are much more likely to join the U.S. military than other immigrants or native-born Americans. Trump apologists have repeatedly insisted that Trump simply wants immigrants who can contribute to American society, but Trump himself ignores the contributions of black immigrants in favor of his own deeply ingrained stereotypes about blacks.

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Another reason is that Trump and Vance appear to have no interest in helping anyone in Springfield or anywhere else. Their actions point to a political theory of the election, namely that fearmongering about immigrants, especially black immigrants, will get whites to vote for Trump. They also point to an ideological theory of the nation, namely that America belongs to whites and that the country would be better off poorer and weaker as long as it were also whiter. Trump and Vance have a concrete political agenda to socially engineer the nation through state coercion and make it whiter than it is now: mass deportations, the abolition of birthright citizenship, and the denaturalization of American citizens. This agenda is not only immoral, but would ruin the American economy. Republican lawmakers in Ohio are defending the Haitians in Springfield because they understand that their displacement would have terrible effects on their city and state—the same terrible effects that Trump’s agenda would have on the country.

Trump and Vance’s statements suggest that they believe it is better to let dying Midwestern cities languish than to revitalize them and share the wealth with black people. And they seem to be betting that enough American voters in enough swing states believe it is better to be broke than integrated. In exchange for those fearful votes, a second Trump administration would shower tax cuts on the rich, raise taxes on everyone else, drastically reduce regulation of big business, and further undermine unions while driving cities like Springfield further into decline.

That message, however clearly stated, is not as appealing as they would like. To justify their hatred of Haitian migrants, Trump and Vance have chosen to vilify them as pet-eating savages. Saying, “We’re going to invest more in these communities to make sure they continue to prosper” would not have been good enough. It would not have addressed what Trump and Vance see as the real problem, which is not poverty, addiction, lack of affordable housing, or job loss, but the mere presence of Haitians on American soil.