Two Springfield, Ohio, universities shut down their campuses on Sunday after receiving threatening emails that “targeted Haitian members of our community” as former President Donald Trump declined to denounce bomb threats aimed at schools and hospitals in the city.

Wittenberg University said in a statement they are “taking extreme precautions” after receiving an email threatening a shooting on Saturday and are working with Springfield police and the FBI. Around 1 p.m. on Sunday, the university recieved another email threatening a bombing connected to a red Honda Civic. Police found a red Civic, but it "was cleared and found not to be involved," according to an email university police sent to community members.

"Both messages targeted members of our Haitian community," the university said in a statement. It plans on resuming classes as shceduled on Monday. 

Clark State College, whose main campus is also located in Springfield, said on Sunday that classes in the next week would move online through Sept. 20th "due to recent events in Springfield." They too recieved an email threatening a shooting on Saturday and another threatening a bombing on Sunday.

In Las Vegas on Saturday, Trump was asked by a reporter if he denounced the bomb threats rattling the community after the Republican presidential nominee and his allies spread false claims about members of the Haitian immigrant community eating pets over the last week. He declined, saying the southwestern Ohio city is “going through hell” because of its immigrant population.

“I don’t know what happened with the bomb threat. I know that it's been taken over by illegal migrants, and that's a terrible thing that happened,” Trump said during a visit with the Las Vegas Police Protective Association, which endorsed him on Saturday. “Springfield was this beautiful town, and now they're going through hell. It's a sad thing, not going to happen with me I can tell you right now.”

At a press conference on Friday in California, Trump pledged to do “large deportations from Springfield, Ohio.” And on Sunday morning, he shared anti-immigrant posts on social media, including one baselessly claiming “Illegal Alien Invaders” are being “imported” by Democrats to vote in elections, a conspiracy theory that has no evidence to back it up.

Ohio authorities have said there are no credible or detailed reports to support the debunked allegations circulated this week by both Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, that Haitian immigrants are eating domestic pets and birds in the city’s public parks. Trump mentioned the claims during a debate Tuesday with his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, prompting her to laugh and call the GOP presidential nominee “extreme.”

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, said there was "absolutely not" evidence to support the claims during an appearance on ABC News' "This Week" on Sunday and said the rumors were "unfortunate." He said there were hate groups entering Springfield in response to the negative attention and that the city's mayor had shown him a piece of literature being shared in the community claiming to be from the Ku Klux Klan.

"There's a lot of garbage on the Internet. This is a piece of garbage that was simply not true. There's no evidence of this at all," DeWine said, before praising the Haitian community in his state. "Any comment about that otherwise, I think, is hurtful and is not helpful to the city of Springfield and the people of Springfield."

After city agencies were targeted in a bomb threat, Springfield Mayor Rob Rue on Thursday called on politicians to tamp down the rhetoric.

“All these federal politicians that have negatively spun our city, they need to know they’re hurting our city, and it was their words that did it,” Rue said in an interview with WSYX.

A city spokesperson said an emailed threat claimed that bombs had been planted in the homes of Springfield’s mayor and other city officials. A second email claimed that bombs had been placed at locations including Springfield City Hall, a high school, a middle school, two elementary schools and the local office of the state motor vehicles bureau.

On Saturday, two hospitals in Springfield received more bomb threats.

Vance said on Sunday that he and the campaign “condemn” the bomb threats and called them “disgusting,” but argued that “what’s putting the residents of Springfield at risk” is that “Kamala Harris allowed 20,000 Haitian migrants to get dropped into a small Ohio town of about 40,000 people.”

Springfield, a city of roughly 60,000 located west of Columbus, has seen its Haitian population grow in recent years. It’s impossible to give an exact number, according to the city, but it estimates that Springfield’s entire county has an overall immigrant population of 12,000-15,000.

“You just accused me of inciting violence against the community, when all that I've done is surface the complaints of my constituents, people who are suffering because of Kamala Harris's policies,” Vance said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Are we not allowed to talk about these problems because some psychopaths are threatening violence? We can condemn the violence on the one hand, but also talk about the terrible consequences of Kamala Harris's open border on the other hand.”

Vance said he hadn’t visited Springfield recently, but that his constituents there are telling him “terrible things about what’s going on in Springfield.” He claimed the media was silencing and harassing residents who say “they’re eating the cats,” but the Trump campaign has not produced anyone who has made that claim.

Erika Lee, a Springfield resident who wrote an early Facebook post that helped trigger the baseless outrage, told NBC News last week that she regretted sharing false claims and had no firsthand knowledge of immigrants eating housepets. The woman Lee heard the rumor from told media transparency company NewsGuard that she heard the claim about a lost cat from “an acquaintance of a friend” and said “I don’t have any proof.”

"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 said on CNN, later adding "I say that we're creating a story, meaning we're creating the American media focusing on it."

The Harris campaign shared a clip of Trump’s statements in Las Vegas and, on Friday, shared a NBC News report about how neo-Nazis pushed the false claims about Haitians before they reached Trump and Vance. The report noted that prominent neo-Nazis were celebrating Trump bringing up the rumors at his debate with Harris last week.

“Instead of providing solutions to the American people on the debate stage on Tuesday night, Trump doubled down on a baseless, debunked conspiracy that a far-right neo-Nazi hate group is claiming credit for,” the Harris campaign said in a statement.

President Joe Biden described the Haitian American community as “under attack in our country right now” in remarks at the White House on Sunday. 

“It’s simply wrong. There’s no place in America. This has to stop, what he’s doing. It has to stop,” Biden said.

One of Biden’s top domestic policy advisors, Neera Tanden, wrote “this is what Trump and Vance are doing” on her personal social media account on Sunday in response to the threat to Wittenberg University.

“Bomb threats are now preventing Springfield’s kids from going to school and residents from accessing City Hall. Violence is never acceptable and this must stop before someone gets hurt,” Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat seeking reelection, wrote in a statement on Friday. “Springfield faces real challenges, but the people playing politics are not helping -- we need to lower the temperature and work together for the people of Ohio.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.