‘Springfield, Ohio, is caught in a political vortex, and it is a bit out of control’

In this city thrust unwillingly into the white hot center of Donald Trump’s immigration wars, conspiratorial fervor lept from internet memes into the humdrum tasks of everyday life. Just since Tuesday, bomb threats shuttered city hall, closed a middle school and forced the evacuation of two elementary schools. Even the city’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles and the Ohio License Bureau closed Thursday.

As its own senator and the former president trafficked baseless claims that immigrants in this blue-collar swath of Ohio have been abducting and eating pets — something the...