A small Ohio town is dealing with a sudden influx of African refugees whose arrival has nearly doubled the population over the past year.
Near Cincinnati, Lockland was home to 3,500 people in 2023, but local officials say it has since taken in more than 3,000 legal Mauritanian asylum seekers.
“If you look at 2021, 2022, the United States had seen a huge influx of immigrants from Mauritania,” said Lockland Village Administrator Doug Wehmeyer. Fox News Digital.
“Somehow, quite a few of them have landed in Lockland.”
TikTok is partly to blame for the sudden deluge. Mauritanians are arriving in the city via a route published on the app that runs from the northwest African nation to Turkey, before crossing South America to the United States.
A new surge in migration from Mauritania to the United States was made possible by the discovery this year of a new route through Nicaragua, which has relaxed entry requirements. Pictured: Mauritanians gather for a traditional meal, Friday, July 21, 2023, in Cincinnati.
Near Cincinnati, Lockland was home to 3,500 people last year, but local officials say it has since taken in more than 3,000 legal Mauritanian asylum seekers.
A new surge in migration was made possible by the discovery earlier this year of a new route through Nicaragua, which surprised US officials.
The route passes through Managua, Nicaragua, where The relaxed entry requirements allow Mauritanians and a handful of other foreign nationals to purchase a low-cost visa without proof of further travel.
From there, the migrants, along with asylum seekers from other nations, are taken north by bus with the help of smugglers.
“The American dream is still available,” promises a video on TikTok, one of dozens of similar posts by French-speaking “guides” helping Mauritanians make the trip. “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.”
‘We wish you success. Nicaragua loves you very much,’ a man who works in a travel agency says in Spanish in another video.
“In the last year it has skyrocketed,” Lockland Mayor Mark Mason told the ABC affiliate. WCPO.
“TikTok stories telling people how to get to the town of Lockland and I think that has contributed to the explosion.”
Mason said the Biden administration’s lax border policies must be urgently modified, otherwise immigration will continue to spiral out of control. Most asylum seekers enter legally.
“With the federal government’s open border policy, these immigration population explosions have been left to small towns like Lockland,” he said.
‘If they’re going to have an open border policy, they’re going to need a policy to direct these immigrants to communities that can withstand that kind of population explosion. 1.2 square mile town – it’s unsustainable.”
A small Ohio town is dealing with a sudden influx of African refugees whose arrivals have nearly doubled the population over the past year. Mauritanians flock to Lockland
Mason added that many of the 3,000 Mauritanian immigrants cannot work, so they do not pay taxes.
“We’re looking at, right now, probably close to a $200,000 shortfall in our income tax revenue,” he said.
Doug Wehmeyer, Lockland Village administrator and fire chief, said the influx of people has also put a strain on emergency services.
He said calls to firefighters have increased 12 percent this year, with almost all of the additional calls being made to the complexes where Mauritanians are housed.
This is partly because migrants are crammed more than a dozen people into about 200 units and cooking fires are frequent.
“On the most serious end, we have responded to a structure fire that affected two apartment units within the Mulberry Court complex and involved the evacuation of literally hundreds of Mauritanians,” Wehmeyer told WCPO.
“In 35 years in the fire service, I don’t think I’ve ever seen more people standing outside a building than when we arrived on the scene.”
The influx of Mauritanians has surprised US officials.
It came without a triggering event (such as a natural disaster, a coup d’état, or a sudden economic collapse) to suggest the growing power of social media to reshape migration patterns.
From March to June, more than 8,500 Mauritanians arrived in the country by illegally crossing the border from Mexico, compared to just 1,000 in the previous four months, according to data from US Customs and Border Protection.
The new arrivals now likely outnumber the estimated 8,000 foreign-born Mauritanians previously living in the United States, about half of whom are in Ohio.
Doug Wehmeyer, Lockland Village administrator and fire chief, said the influx of people has also put a strain on emergency services.
Lockland officials said calls to the fire service have increased by 12 percent this year, with almost all of the additional calls being made to complexes where Mauritanians are housed, as shown in the heat map above.
Many arrived in the 1990s as refugees after the Arab-led military government began expelling black citizens.
Some of those who left say they are once again fleeing state violence directed against black Mauritanians.
Racial tensions have risen since the death in May of a young black man, Oumar Diop, in police custody, as the government moves aggressively to crush protests and disconnect the country’s mobile Internet.
The nation was one of the last to criminalize slavery and the practice is widely believed to persist in some parts of the country.
Several Mauritanians who spoke to The Associated Press said police targeted them because of their anti-slavery activism.
“Life is very difficult, especially for the black Mauritanian population,” said Ibrahima Sow, 38, who describes himself as an activist in the country.
“The authorities became threatening and repressive.”
People line up against a border wall as they wait to apply for asylum after crossing the border from Mexico on Tuesday, July 11, 2023, near Yuma, Arizona. Thousands of migrants from the North African country of Mauritania have arrived in the United States in recent months, following a new route that takes them to Nicaragua and across the southern border.