A small village near Cincinnati, Ohio, is struggling with an influx of Mauritanian illegal immigrants, with officials warning that they are facing an economic shortfall as a result and that the quality of life is being affected.
“If you look at 2021, 2022, the United States had seen a huge influx of immigrants from Mauritania. Somehow, a good number of them have landed in Lockland,” Lockland Village Administrator Dough Wehmeyer told Fox News Digital.
A Washington Post analysis in June found that over 15,000 residents from Mauritania came to the U.S. last year, a 2,800% increase over 2022, when just 543 arrived. Lockland, a village in the southwest of Ohio of about 3,500 people, has seen what it says is a large number of arrivals. The Post reported that there were 2,700 who settled in Ohio in 2023, with about half going to nearby Cincinatti.
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Immigrants from Mauritania wait to be processed by U.S. border authorities after spending the night in the desert on December 5, 2023, in Lukeville, Arizona. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
Wehmeyer said that at least two of the nearby apartment complexes are over-occupied. Apartments should house four people apiece, and authorities are finding up to 12 people in each unit.
“You have an apartment building that’s . . . say, 80 units at four people per unit. That’s about 320 people. When you double or maybe even triple that population, the building systems aren’t designed to handle that.”
“So when you use the utilities, that’s backing up. We have instances where people are going in to take a shower and feces is running out of the drains, filling the bathtubs as it comes from a floor above. That’s compounded probably by the cooking methods that they use, which is a heavy grease-laden process.”
He also noted that a building designed to have 320 people in it, but that may have significantly more, also comes with the risk of not having enough exits, and he said there have been issues with people getting out of buildings during fires.
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Border Patrol picks up a group of asylum seekers from an aid camp at the U.S.-Mexico border near Sasabe, Arizona, on Wednesday, March 13, 2024. (Justin Hamel/Getty Images)
He also noted the financial strain it has put on the small community. Illegal immigrants claiming asylum may not work right away, and it can be months before they are qualified for work permits if they claim asylum.
“So, most of the immigrants living in Lockland are unable to work. And if they are unable to work, they’re unable to pay taxes,” he said. “And they have essentially displaced the taxpaying residents of these 200 apartment units and filled them with non-tax-paying residents. We’re losing about $125,000 to 150,000 in revenue because of that.”
He says the village has requested help from congressional offices, and has met with a few, as well as state representatives and the governor’s office. He says that Lockland is looking for financial assistance to recoup the financial losses the village is facing, but believes progress is being made.
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“I don’t know how they found our small village. We like it. We think it’s a great place to live, but the quality of life here is definitely being affected by this problem,” he said.
Lockland’s struggles echo those in other towns and cities across the country where there have been a significant influx of migrants. Towns like Springfield, Ohio, and Charleroi, Pennsylvania, have seen a significant increase in the number of migrants from Haiti. Meanwhile, cities like Chicago and New York have been vocal in the strain that influxes of hundreds of thousands of migrants from across the border have had on their cities.
Meanwhile, immigration has become a top issue for voters ahead of the 2024 election, with many polls showing former President Donald Trump with a strong lead over Vice President Kamala Harris on handling the issue.
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