Swing State Official Warns Village Struggling With Financial Losses After Influx of Illegal Immigrants

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 Doug 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 {snip}

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.”

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He also noted the financial strain it has put on the small community. {snip}

“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.”

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