OHAMA – Describing himself as a man who hated Muslims, an Omaha, Nebraska, resident admitted that living next to refugee neighbors has changed his heart towards Muslims.

“They took the hatred out of me,” John Dutcher, a 61-year-old house cleaner in Omaha, admitted in interviews with both The Washington Post and KETV, Huffington Post reported on Thursday, February 9.

He added with tears welling up in his eyes, “I never knew how badly somebody could hate someone they don’t even know.”

Dutcher told the Post that he had been “one of those guys who would want to put a pig’s head on a mosque,” and he’d “sneer at” women wearing headscarfs of hijabs, even though he had never actually met a Muslim person before.

This all changed after six families of Muslim refugees, including from Syria and Afghanistan, moved into his apartment building.

“The Muslims here were all about family and they just loved everyone,” Dutcher told the Post.

“I remember the people who lived here before; they took for granted everything this country gave them. These people, they really changed my heart.”

“After three months of being here, they all have jobs, they all have cars, their kids are going to school,” he told KETV.

Now playing and smiling with refugees children, Dutcher said it’s a lot easier to hate a people you don’t know and it’s a lot easier to support a president who thinks “Islam hates us.”

Duthcer voted for Donald Trump, but is now rethinking things.

“I like him, but I don’t like the way he’s carried out this ban,” he told the Post about the president’s executive order barring certain refugees and immigrants from entering the US,” he said.

“I didn’t think he’d make a blunder so fast.”