Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., called Haiti the "nastiest country in the western hemisphere" in a post on social media Wednesday, saying migrants from the Caribbean nation, the majority of whom are in the U.S. legally, should "get their ass out of our country."
Higgins' rant on X — which was deleted hours later — came in response to an Associated Press story on a Haitian nonprofit that filed a citizen criminal charge against former President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance for their repeated baseless claims about migrants in Springfield, Ohio, including Trump's assertion at the presidential debate they were "eating the dogs" and "eating the cats."
Higgins' post amplified the debunked pet claim, which was followed by dozens of bomb threats in the city.
"Lol. These Haitians are wild. Eating pets, vudu, nastiest country in the western hemisphere, cults, slapstick gangsters… but damned if they don’t feel all sophisticated now, filing charges against our President and VP," he said, referring to Republican presidential and vice presidential nominees Trump and Vance, respectively.
"All these thugs better get their mind right and their ass out of our country before January 20th," the post concluded. That would be the day Trump and Vance would be sworn into office if they win November's election.
Subodh Chandra, the attorney representing the Haitian Bridge Alliance, the nonprofit that filed the charges, said the post “is not a dog-whistle but the trumpeting of a clear threat."
U.S. & World
He said "in a functional House of Representatives under a responsible speaker who cares about integrity, this would be addressed swiftly by an Ethics Committee investigation and censure or expulsion. But this is a House majority that indulges antisemitism and racism, so we’ll see if the Republican leadership does anything at all.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that Higgins “is a dear friend of mine and a colleague from Louisiana, and a very frank and outspoken person.” He said he'd spoken to Higgins on the House floor about the post and that Higgins “went to the back and he prayed about it, and he regretted it, and he pulled the post down.”
Get a weekly recap of the latest San Francisco Bay Area housing news. >Sign up for NBC Bay Area’s Housing Deconstructed newsletter.
A spokesperson for Higgins did not respond to a request for comment on the post, nor did a representative for the Trump campaign.
Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries called Higgins' comments “vile, racist and beneath the dignity of the United States House of Representatives” and said he “must be held accountable for dishonorable conduct that is unbecoming of a Member of Congress.”
Rep. Steve Horsford, D-Nev., moved to censure Higgins on the House floor early Wednesday evening.
"They are inciting hate. They are inciting fear," Horsford said.
"It is time to end hate and the rhetoric of hate, and that it is not becoming on any member to continue to push this type of rhetoric on any platform, let alone from the House of Representatives," he added.
Higgins' fellow Republican congressman from Louisiana, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, said, "The tweet has been deleted already and removed, but I object to the motion."
The motion was found to be out of order.
Horsford told reporters afterwards that he'd spoken to Higgins earlier and that the Louisiana congressman had told him he would not remove the post.
“He didn’t, in my view, show any remorse, didn’t understand how his rhetoric is contributing to the feeling of people being harassed and threatened and feeling unsafe in their own communities, and that is why I asked him to remove the post,” Horsford said. “He actually told me, no, he would not, and then that’s when we started the action on the floor.”
The vast majority of Haitians in Springfield are in the country legally after being granted temporary protected status by the Department of Homeland Security. Trump and Vance have vowed to end that protection and immediately deport them if elected.
“If Kamala Harris waves the wand illegally and says these people are now here legally, I’m still going to call them an 'illegal alien,'” Vance told reporters at an event in North Carolina earlier this month.
Higgins is a staunch Trump ally who's become known for using heated rhetoric, including saying last year of special counsel Jack Smith, "I’ll just say that his days are numbered and American patriots are not gonna stand idly by, good sir, and allow our republic to dissolve."
Following a 2017 terror attack in London, Higgins said anyone even suspected of being an Islamic terrorist should be killed.
“Not a single radicalized Islamic suspect should be granted any measure of quarter,” he wrote in a Facebook post. “Their intended entry to the American homeland should be summarily denied. Every conceivable measure should be engaged to hunt them down. Hunt them, identify them, and kill them. Kill them all.”
He also made headlines last year for physically removing an activist from an outdoor news conference on Capitol Hill.
He said in a post on Twitter afterwards the activist “became very disruptive and threatening, in violation of the law” and had “aggressively disrupted Congresswoman Lauren Boebert and approached her in a threatening manner.”
This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:
