The Haitians had come to Sylacauga by bus.

Two buses—possibly even three. But certainly more than one; of this, one resident was sure. As he explained on Facebook, he’d been told by someone who’d spotted them unloading in the Walmart parking lot …

Conspiracy theories bloomed in the void. When officials began deconstructing the rumors—pointing out that there was no FEMA trailer park or migrant shelter; that the buses in the viral photo on social media contained a high-school football team en route to an away game; that the “influx” consisted of a few dozen migrants who’d come legally to work, mainly at nearby auto-manufacturing plants—many locals called it a cover-up. By then, they had already pledged their fidelity to a story: Sylacauga was the victim of a Haitian sortie orchestrated by city leaders in concert with the Biden administration, a conspiracy all the more alarming for its proximity to the presidential election.

I grew up just under two hours from Sylacauga—a town best known, or at least known to me, as a flagship of Blue Bell Creameries—and thought it curious that for all the declarations of invasion, there seemed to be very few dispatches from the front lines. And so at the end of September, I went to observe for myself this community on the trembling edge of civil unrest. What I found was one small house on South Main Avenue with air mattresses in the living room and no table in the kitchen, a single new student in the school system, and six Haitians in a church pew.