Washington, DC – Amid an onslaught of falsehoods spread about Haitian migrants in the United States, rights advocate Guerline Jozef says she received a flood of appeals from community members.

They wanted to know what was being done to stem the tide of hateful rhetoric being amplified by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his allies.

“What are we doing? How are we going to fight back to make sure that they are protected?” Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance advocacy group, recalled asking herself.

This week, Jozef delivered what she hopes will be a resounding answer: Her organisation filed criminal charges in Ohio against Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance, for spreading false rumours about Haitian migrants eating pets in the town of Springfield.

Jozef and her lawyers say the Republican politicians’ statements amount to crimes under Ohio state law – violations related to menacing, harassment and making false alarms that have directly disrupted public services.

“These are some of the most powerful people not just in the United States, but in the world,” she told Al Jazeera, pointing to Trump and Vance, as well as billionaire Elon Musk and several Republican lawmakers and right-wing figures who have also spread the debunked stories.

The false claims have continued despite appeals from state and local officials such as Ohio Governor Mike DeWine warning of their dangerous implications.

Since Trump referenced the claims during an election debate against Kamala Harris viewed by more than 67 million people earlier this month, Springfield has seen dozens of bomb threats that forced evacuations and public building closures, as well as the cancellation of a diversity festival.

“We have to let them know that they are not above the law,” Jozef added. “Pure and simple.”

‘Calculated to cause harm’

The Haitian Bridge Alliance’s effort relies on an Ohio law that allows private citizens to file criminal charges in the state.

While it is unclear if this week’s filing will ultimately lead to a prosecution, the law requires the Clark County Municipal Court to hold a hearing on the issue.

The court will then determine if there are grounds to refer the case to a prosecuting lawyer for investigation or to issue arrest warrants outright.

If charges were to be filed and the case against Trump and Vance were to proceed, it is all but assured to run into thorny questions related to the right to free speech, which is enshrined in the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

That right does not extend to certain categories of speech, such as incitement and so-called “true threats” or defamation.

Still, the US Supreme Court has ruled that free speech extends to lies in many instances, and the First Amendment in particular has been robustly interpreted in the context of political campaigns, explained Gregory Germain, a professor of law at Syracuse University.

“There’s always been a strong First Amendment free speech protection view of campaign statements,” Germain told Al Jazeera. “So I think it’s just going to be very, very hard to convince the court that they should instruct the prosecutors to file criminal charges.”

He added that the ability of private individuals or parties in Ohio to request criminal charges is “relatively odd” in the US, making it difficult to predict how the case will move forward.

Nevertheless, Subodh Chandra, a former federal prosecutor who is representing Jozef and the Haitian Bridge Alliance, says Trump and Vance’s statements fall outside of free speech protections because they represent “relentless and persistent dissemination of lies calculated to cause harm”.

Repeated instances have shown that Trump and Vance knew the stories to be debunked, he said.

He pointed to real-time fact checks during the debate, direct contact and public appeals from local officials, and even Vance’s own apparent admission that it was justified to “create stories” to bring more attention to a subject.

“The Ohio case law interpreting the First Amendment in these statutes says that if the harm is reasonably foreseeable, the perpetrator is criminally liable,” Chandra told Al Jazeera.

“[Trump and Vance] know the power of their megaphone and platform, and that if they persistently and relentlessly disseminate these lies, that their followers will act on it.”

As it stands, the Haitian Bridge Alliance has officially requested that Trump and Vance face six charges under Ohio law. Chandra, who has previously litigated First Amendment cases, said they will soon be requesting a seventh charge of “inducing panic”.

Chandra stressed that he is not seeking to fully prosecute the case against Trump and Vance, just to convince the court that there is “probable cause” – or a reasonable basis – to believe that crimes have been committed.

He said that in his view, it is clear that such a basis exists. “If anybody else had done what Trump and Vance had done,” he said, “they would have been arrested by now”.

Election looms large

The attacks on Haitians in Ohio come amid Trump’s wider effort to hammer Democrats over their perceived vulnerability on the issue of immigration.

The US saw a massive uptick in crossings at its southern border with Mexico after Democratic President Joe Biden – who dropped out of the 2024 election race, ceding the way for Harris to take up the nomination – took office in 2021.

Trump and his allies have tied the real logistical stresses caused by the rapid growth of migrant populations in some parts of the US – as well as the outlandish and incendiary claims about those individuals – to the Biden administration’s border policies.

Demonising foreigners and migrants in particular has long proven to be fertile political ground in US elections. Democratic leaders, including Harris, have in turn lurched to the right on the issue amid Republican attacks.

“Republicans fear monger and lie about immigrants to distract from their own failures to deliver for the American people,” Congressman Gregorio Casar, a member of the progressive caucus, said during a news conference on Capitol Hill on Thursday.

He introduced a longshot bill seeking to address US policies and other root causes of migration in the Americas.

When it comes to Haiti, for example, rights groups and experts have pointed to the flow of US guns to gangs in the violence-wracked Caribbean country as one factor that continues to drive Haitians to flee their homes.

“We can create a good immigration system in this country, and we can slow some of those big spikes in mass migration by looking at ourselves first,” Casar said.

‘This is real’

Despite the pushback, the hateful rhetoric about vulnerable Haitian communities in the US has continued.

This week, lawmakers in the House of Representatives pushed for a vote to censure Republican Congressman Clay Higgins for a racist social media screed in which he described Haitians as “wild” and said they were “eating pets”.

“Nastiest country in the western hemisphere, cults, slapstick gangsters,” he wrote on social media before taking aim at the legal effort against Trump and Vance in Ohio. Haitians “feel all sophisticated now, filing charges against our President and VP”, Higgins said.

Jozef drew a direct line between comments like those made by Higgins and a barrage of verbal abuse members of her group have faced in recent days.

“I cannot tell you how many times I have been called the n-word in the last few days,” she told Al Jazeera. “This is real. This is not a joke.”

Speaking later at the news conference alongside Casar, the congressman, Jozef struck a defiant tone when she said migrants of any nationality cannot be targeted with impunity.

“We will continue to push unafraid, unbothered, sophisticated,” she said. “And we will push forward, and we will hold them, every one of them, accountable.”