Dave McCormick exaggerates Charleroi, Pa., population growth from immigration

Claims about growing numbers of Haitian immigrants in small communities have spilled over from Springfield, Ohio, to the small Pennsylvania town of Charleroi. 

Republican Dave McCormick, who is running for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, said an increase of immigrants in the town stems from "weak immigration policy" of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. McCormick is running against incumbent Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat.

"Take the small town of Charleroi, which has grown by 2,000% due to an influx in migrants," McCormick said in a recent post on X.

He continued, saying, "Roads are dangerous, schools are overwhelmed and police are struggling to keep up with the surge." President Donald Trump also mentioned the small borough 30 miles south of Pittsburgh during a Sept. 13 rally in Tucson, Arizona. 

McCormick’s post links to reporting from the conservative outlet The Daily Wire, but his post misrepresents what the reporting says.

McCormick said Charleroi "has grown by 2,000% due to an influx in migrants." 

The Daily Wire article links to an article by a local CBS station in Pittsburgh. The article, from this past May, states that the "immigrant population in Charleroi has grown by more than 2,000%" in the last two years, not the town’s population as a whole.

For the whole town of Charleroi, which had a population of about 4,230 as of the 2020 census, a 2,000% increase would mean the population has grown to more than 88,000.

In an email to PolitiFact, McCormick campaign spokesperson Elizabeth Gregory said the post was "obviously a typo" and said the post links to an article with the correct statistic. 

It’s true that the immigrant population in Charleroi has grown in recent years, and estimates range from 700 to 2,000 new immigrant residents. But city officials said the population hasn’t grown by as much as McCormick said, and they said it hasn’t overwhelmed the city.

The number of English language learners in the Charleroi Area School District has increased sharply since the 2019-20 school year, Superintendent Ed Zelich said. The district has enrolled 225 students learning the English language, mostly in elementary school, Zelich said. In the 2019-20 school year, the district had 12 students enrolled in English language learner classes. 

That’s about 19 times the number of English language learner students in the last five years — or an 1,800% increase. Total student enrollment went from 1,424 to 1,567 in the same time frame, a 10% increase.  

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Zelich and English Language Learner Coordinator Mark Killinger, who is also the elementary school principal, said the rising number of students who do not speak English in the school district has not been a major challenge. 

The school has received more state funding as enrollment has increased. Killinger said the school has adjusted staffing and schedules to accommodate more English language learners, but he said it has not been a problem for the school.

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact number of new immigrant residents in Charleroi overall.

Charleroi Borough Administrator Joe Manning said he estimates about 700 immigrants have moved to the town in the last several years. The immigrants, largely from Haiti, are in the U.S. through a legal pathway, known as Temporary Protective Status. The designation allows immigrants from certain countries that are considered unsafe to be granted temporary authorization to live and work in the U.S.

Immigrants have moved to the town in recent years for employment, many at local meat packing plants, according to officials and local reporting. Haitian immigrants also began moving to the town as early as 2017, Manning said. 

Some sources put the total number of new immigrants, not just from Haiti, three times higher. The Mon Valley Alliance, an economic development group in the area, estimated the immigrant population in Charleroi has risen from around 100 to around 2,000 since 2020, CEO Jamie Colecchi said. That would represent a 2,000% increase in the immigrant population, but not the city as a whole. Most of those people are from Haiti and Liberia, Colecchi said.

A recent Observer-Reporter article cites an April 2023 survey by Getro Bernabe, who works as an immigration liaison in the region, and estimated there were about 2,000 immigrants living in Charleroi from 44 countries then.

Manning said citing a 2,000% increase in the number of immigrants can be misinterpreted, as it is an increase in what was an already small number of people. 

"It could be a little alarming or misleading," he said. "It’s nothing that's overwhelmed the community or anything like that. It has been a significant increase in the population and a significant increase in the amount of immigrants that have settled here." 

McCormick said the Pennsylvania town of Charleroi has "grown by 2,000% due to an influx in migrants." A 2,000% increase would mean the town added more than 80,000 people.

McCormick’s campaign conceded that the post was false, calling it a typo. But the post is still up with no correction. 

Town officials said 700 to 2,000 immigrants have moved there over recent years, and there has been a significant rise in the number of students who are learning English in the school district. 

But the population of the city as a whole has not increased by 2,000%. We rate McCormick’s claim False.