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Haiti clearly holds a place in the heart of Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine. He has been to the country at least 25 times with his wife, he said at a news 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 has respect for the Haitians who came to the US legally and found work in Springfield.

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

DeWine further said that Haitians came to Springfield because business owners there had difficulty finding workers after the COVID-19 pandemic.

But while he defends Haitians working legally in Springfield under temporary protected status because of the violence and humanitarian crisis following storms and an earthquake there, DeWine wants to disconnect them from the larger immigration and border debate that is fueling Republican policy debate in 2024.

“The immigration issue and the border issue are obviously fair game,” DeWine said in the PBS interview, and it’s a refrain he has repeated in press conferences and interviews in recent days.

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

Without specifically criticizing former President Donald Trump or Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, DeWine said their persistence in spreading false rumors about animal abuse by the Haitian community is “very hurtful to these men and women who work very, very hard.”

Their comments are also having an effect on the rest of the community. Ohio state troopers are in Springfield schools this week after dozens of bomb threats — some from abroad and some from within the U.S. — put the community on edge.

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

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

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

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Vance told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday.

Vance later clarified: “I say we create a narrative, which means we create the American media to focus on that. I did not create 20,000 illegal immigrants coming to Springfield.”

And on this point, there appears to be an ocean of disagreement between Republican leaders in Ohio, who argue that Haitians are filling a desperate need in Springfield, and Trump and Vance, who, like Vance, argue that “thousands of residents have had their lives ruined” by the arrival of the Haitians.

Like DeWine, Springfield Mayor Rob Rue has also been at pains to set the record straight about the role Haitians play in Springfield. Rue chose his words carefully during an interview Tuesday when CNN’s Boris Sanchez asked if the attention Vance’s story has generated has been helpful.

“It’s brought a lot of negative attention to our community,” Rue said, adding that he did so many interviews to make sure people “listen to the real and true story of Springfield.”

Rue and DeWine both noted that while the community is indeed facing a strain on its infrastructure — from staffing schools to protecting the public through vaccinations and arranging for driver’s licenses — there’s a bigger story at play.

“We’re a beautiful city. We’re not a terrible city. We’re not falling apart. We have tension and stress and we’re trying to figure it out, but none of the attention that’s been given to Springfield, Ohio, is helping us,” Rue said, noting that state troopers were in his city’s schools just because of the threats received in the past week.

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

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

Rue put it another way, saying that a visit from any presidential candidate “would be an extreme strain on our resources, so I would be fine if they decided not to end that now.”