Lockland, Ohio sees Mauritanian migrants double population
A small Ohio town is the latest victim of the Biden-Harris administration’s open border policy after 3,000 migrants from the West African nation of Mauritania moved in in the past year — lured by TikTokers who are posting instruction videos with maps of the Cincinnati suburb.
The influx has nearly doubled Lockland’s population of 3,500 in a matter of months, local officials say.
“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,” Mayor Mark Mason told WCPO.
“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. [This is a] 1.2-square-mile village — it’s unsustainable.”
Nearly all of the migrants are from the Muslim-majority country on Africa’s Atlantic coast, which is among the poorest in the world.
The influx of migrants has put the town over the edge and in desperate need for resources as the new arrivals have overwhelmed local housing capacity and emergency services.
The Mauritanians have been directed to go to Lockland through TikTok posts and WhatsApp groups instructing them to flock to the small town, according to the mayor.
He said he’s not sure exactly why Lockland has become a prime destination for the 4,000-mile journey from Mauritania.
But the posts appears to direct migrants from the nation of 4.3 million to travel to Turkey, and then Latin America — then make their way across the border and up into Cincinnati just south of Lockland.
The migrants were permitted to enter the US by the federal government, but are still awaiting approval to work, which can take over a year.
Meanwhile, with thousands of migrants unable to work legally, the mayor is concerned that the migrants aren’t paying any taxes.
“We’re looking at, right now, at probably close to a $200,000 shortfall in our earnings income tax revenue,” said Mason.
Migrants have also chosen to settle in Springfield, Ohio, which has seen the arrival of an estimated 20,000 Haitians in recent years.
Springfield, which is home to 60,000 residents, became the subject of the national spotlight with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump vowing to deport the Haitian migrants from Springfield after he amplified unsubstantiated claims they were eating locals’ pets during his Sept. 10 debate against Vice President Kamala Harris.
“In the last year it’s just ballooned,” Mason said.
“TikTok stories telling people how to get to the Village of Lockland and I think that has aided the explosion.”
Fire chief and town administrator Doug Wehmeyer said the number of emergency calls have increased 12% as a result of the migrant influx, per WCPO. He said those calls have led to emergency responses to two apartment complexes — where almost all of the 200 units are occupied by Mauritanian migrants — who are cramming sometimes more than a dozen people into single units.
The largest number of calls are for cooking fires.
“If you look at a response map of our area, there are two bright red hot zones on the heat map and that heat map would show you the two apartment complexes that the majority of the Mauritanians are living at,” he said.
“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,” he said.
“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.”
Language barriers with the migrants, who speak Arabic and French, and some minor public safety issues have been the biggest challenges for local cops, Lockland Police Chief Michael Ott told The Post.
“The biggest things we deal with are minor, jaywalking. Maybe not obeying bike laws, just petty sort of things,” said Ott.
“Trying to educate them on that, there’s obviously language barriers. We have translators that we try to use, we’d have to have a translator with us probably 100% of the time during the day in order to communicate some of the information that we need to,”
The fire department also struggles to inform the migrants about fire safety and code restrictions.
So far, the village hasn’t received any assistance with the overwhelming situation.
“I think with the attention that this is getting, we are starting to get more phone calls back and so I think we’re headed in the right direction,” Mayor Mason said.
“And it’s not the fact that they’re Mauritanians. They could be Croatians or whoever. It’s the fact that this 1.2 square mile village cannot absorb this kind of increase on our population,” he said.
“We didn’t ask for them to come here. There’s people out there saying ‘Oh, Lockland’s making money off this.’ We’re not making a dime off this. If anything it’s costing us money.”
