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

A tiny Ohio town is wrangling with a sudden influx of African refugees whose arrival has almost doubled the population over the past year. 

Close to 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,’ Lockland Village Administrator Doug Wehmeyer told Fox News Digital.

‘Somehow, a good number of them have landed in Lockland.’

TikTok is partly to blame for the sudden deluge. Mauritanians are finding their way to the town via a route posted on the app which flows from the Northwest African nation to Turkey, before looping through South America to the US. 

Close to 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 spike in migration was made possible by the discovery earlier this year of a new route through Nicaragua, surprising officials in the US

The route passes through Managua, Nicaragua, where relaxed entry requirements allow Mauritanians and a handful of other foreign nationals to purchase a low-cost visa without proof of onward travel.

From there, the migrants, along with asylum seekers from other nations, are whisked 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’ that help Mauritanians make the trip. ‘Don’t put off tomorrow what you can do today.’

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

‘In the last year it’s just ballooned,’ Lockland Mayor Mark Mason told ABC affiliate WCPO. 

‘TikTok stories telling people how to get to the Village of Lockland and I think that has aided the explosion.’

Mason said the Biden administration’s lax border policies urgently need amending otherwise immigration will continue to spiral out of control. The majority of the asylum seekers are entering legally.   

‘With the federal government’s open border policy, these immigration population outbursts have been left for small villages like Lockland to have to deal with,’ 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 outburst. 1.2 square mile village — it’s unsustainable.’ 

A tiny Ohio town is wrangling with a sudden influx of African refugees whose arrivals have almost doubled the population over the past year. Mauritanians are flocking to Lockland

Mason added that many of the 3,000 Mauritanian migrants are not able to work – so they don’t pay taxes. 

‘We’re looking at, right now, at probably close to a $200,000 shortfall in our earnings income tax revenue,’ he said.

Doug Wehmeyer, who is both Lockland Village administrator and fire chief, said the influx of people has also placed a strain on the emergency services. 

He said call outs to the fire service have increased by 12 percent this year, with almost all the extra calls being made to complexes where the Mauritanians are being housed. 

This is partly because the migrants are being crammed into upwards of a dozen people inside around 200 units and cooking fires are frequent. 

‘On the more severe end we’ve responded to a structure fire that involved two apartment units within the Mulberry Court complex which 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 the outside of a building as I did when we arrived on scene.’

The influx of Mauritanians has surprised officials in the US. 

It came without a triggering event — such as a natural disaster, coup or sudden economic collapse — suggesting the growing power of social media to reshape migration patterns. 

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

The new arrivals likely now outnumber the estimated 8,000 foreign-born Mauritanians previously living in the US, about half of whom are in Ohio. 

Doug Wehmeyer, who is both Lockland Village administrator and fire chief, said the influx of people has also placed a strain on the emergency services

Lockland officials said call outs to the fire service have increased by 12 percent this year, with almost all the extra calls being made to complexes where the Mauritanians are being housed, as shown by the heat map above 

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

Some who left say they’re again fleeing state violence directed against black Mauritanians. 

Racial tensions have increased since the May death of a young black man, Oumar Diop, in police custody, with the government moving 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 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 population,’ said Ibrahima Sow, 38, who described 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 Tuesday, July 11, 2023, near Yuma, Arizona. Thousands of migrants from the north African country of Mauritania have arrived in the U.S. in recent months, following a new route taking them to Nicaragua and up through the southern border