Small midwestern town ‘overwhelmed’ by 3,000 African migrants living tax-free

A small town in Ohio is grappling with a sudden influx of African refugees, whose arrival has nearly doubled its population in the past year.

Near Cincinnati, Lockland had 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 would have seen a huge influx of immigrants from Mauritania,” Lockland Village Administrator Doug Wehmeyer told me. Fox News digital.

“Somehow a good number of them ended up in Lockland.”

TikTok is partly responsible for the sudden deluge. Mauritanians make their way to the city via a route posted on the app that flows from the northwest African country to Turkey before passing through South America to the US.

The route passes through Managua, Nicaragua, where The relaxed entry requirements allow Mauritanians and a handful of other foreigners to buy a cheap visa without proof of onward travel.

From there, the migrants, together with asylum seekers from other countries, 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 from French-speaking “guides” helping Mauritanians make the journey. “Don’t put off tomorrow what you can do today.”

‘We wish you luck. Nicaragua loves you very much,” a man working for a travel agency says in Spanish in another video.

“Over the past year it has only increased,” Lockland Mayor Mark Mason told the ABC affiliate WCPO.

“TikTok stories telling people how to get to the village of Lockland, and I think that fueled the explosion.”

Mason said the Biden administration’s lax border policies urgently need to be changed or immigration will continue to spiral out of control. The majority of asylum seekers enter legally.

“With the federal government’s open borders policy, these bursts of immigrant populations have been left to small towns like Lockland,” he said.

“If they want to have an open borders policy, they need a policy to direct these immigrants to communities that can withstand that kind of population explosion. Village of 1.2 square kilometers – it’s unsustainable.’

Mason added that many of the 3,000 Mauritanian migrants cannot work – and therefore do not pay taxes.

“We’re currently facing a shortfall of probably close to $200,000 in 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 the fire brigade have increased by 12 percent this year, with almost all additional calls being made to complexes housing the Mauritanians.

This is partly because the migrants are crammed into more than a dozen people in about 200 units and cooking fires are frequent.

“On the more serious side, we responded to a building fire involving two apartments in the Mulberry Court complex, requiring the evacuation of literally hundreds of Mauritanians,” Wehmeyer told WCPO.

“In my 35 years in the fire service, I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many people standing outside the outside of a building as we did when we arrived on scene.”

The influx of Mauritanians has taken officials in the US by surprise.

It happened without any event – ​​such as a natural disaster, a coup or a sudden economic collapse – that signaled social media’s increasing power to reshape migration patterns.

From March to June, more than 8,500 Mauritanians entered the country by illegally crossing the border from Mexico, compared to just 1,000 in the previous four months, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.

The number of newcomers now likely exceeds the estimated 8,000 foreign-born Mauritanians previously living in the U.S., about half of whom are in Ohio.

Many arrived as refugees in the 1990s after the Arab-led military government began expelling black citizens.

Some who have left say they are again fleeing state violence against black Mauritanians.

Racial tensions have increased since the May death of a young black man, Oumar Diop, in police custody, with the government taking aggressive action to quash protests and disconnect the country’s mobile internet.

The country was one of the last to criminalize slavery, and it is widely believed that the practice still continues in parts of the country.

Several Mauritanians who spoke to The Associated Press said police targeted them because of anti-slavery activism.

“Life is very difficult, especially for the black Mauritanian people,” said Ibrahima Sow, 38, who described herself as an activist in the country.

‘The authorities became threatening and repressive.’