Haitians have taken over the all-American homeland of Pyrex – and that could help Trump win the election

Ms. Nelson watched Trump's remarks about her city at a rally in Pennsylvania in September and remembers that she “started to cry because I thought he was going to win and she had to go back.” She adds: “When he mentioned Charleroi I just thought 'Oh no'. One of my Haitian children at school – a young girl – said afterwards, 'Why do they hate us?'”

Trump has vowed to strip Haitians of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and carry out mass deportations, leaving Ms Nelson fearful of his victory in November. “It makes me angry. It makes me sad, it worries me. It's so unfair and scary. He (Trump) demonizes them,” said the assistant principal.

The girl – who Ms Nelson describes as “smart, sassy, ​​super sweet” – calls her new mother “my pink mother” and her birth mother “my brown mother” while Ms Nelson has spent hours watching YouTube videos and learning how to She braids her foster daughter's hair, a labor of love that lasts five hours.

If Ms. Nelson has done her best to embrace the Haitian community, this is clearly a source of great tension elsewhere in the Charleroi community. The burden on schools, for example, is clear. The school district had to hire five new employees, including three teachers specializing in English as a foreign language and interpreters, at an annual cost of $400,000.

Meanwhile, several parents have withdrawn their children from Charleroi public schools, complaining that teachers were so busy communicating with non-English-speaking Haitian students that their own children were deprived of attention. “My children all fell behind. It wasn't just the immigrants, but it felt like the teachers didn't have time to devote to them,” Beth Pellegrini said after she decided to take her three children out of the public school system and send them to a charter school (which receives state funding but operates outside the state school system).

Brandon Jericho, 30, sits on his porch, the city stretching out below him, and tells me he feels like a stranger in his own city. “Over the last ten years Charleroi has been run down and now these migrants have come and taken over the city. We feel like we’ve lost our city,” he says. “I feel like we are the minority now. I'm not saying they don't belong here, but they make no attempt to integrate. They stare at us like we’re the ones who don’t belong here.”