by Warner Todd Huston
Residents of a small Ohio town inundated by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s migrants say conditions have gotten so bad they feel pressured to move away and start over somewhere else.
Lockland, Ohio, a town of just 3,400 residents, has been swamped with 3,000 illegal migrants — mostly from the African, majority Muslim, country of Mauritania — and the sudden influx in just a few short years has pushed the town’s services and budgets to the breaking point, not to mention sent the town into chaos.
Town Mayor Mark Mason Sr. has warned that his town government is finding it difficult to keep up with the flood of migrants, many of whom are indigent and cannot pay their way.
“Our fire and paramedic services have been stressed. Since they moved into these apartment complexes, a lot of the longtime residents have moved out because of multiple fires. It’s been caused by their not understanding how to cook on stoves, and they use high levels of grease in their cooking, which have caused multiple fire,” Mason told Fox News last month.
Mason went on to say that these migrants are actually displacing working families, and added, “And so a lot of people don’t want to subject their families to unsafe conditions in these apartment complexes. So, therefore, they’ve moved out – the working residents – and they have moved in. And most don’t have jobs, they don’t contribute to society. They don’t contribute to your earnings tax base. And it’s a real concern.”
Fox News spoke to several Lockland residents, one who said that the migrants are filling apartment complexes with more people per unit than are legal per state and county residency laws.
A resident named Kelly told Fox News that her apartment complex has earned the nickname “the African village,” due to the number of Mauritanians now living there. She also noted that they don’t have experience with the electric stoves in the units and their cooking has started numerous fires, causing a repeated presence of the city’s fire department and EMT crews.
“With the illegals hanging out in the apartment, at first they were hanging out 50 a day out in the parking lots and walking around. They don’t move out of your way when you’re driving. They don’t seem to care,” she told the media.
“The fires that have been going on, I mean, the fire departments here, if not every day. Every other day. And I think at least four to five fires in less than the last six months. And the smoke alarms are going off constantly. They don’t know how to use the electric stoves and with all the oil and that they use, the smell of the food through the halls all the time is pretty bad,” she added.