Ohio Republican Bernie Moreno is taking aim at another group of migrants arriving in his home state weeks after perpetuating baseless claims about Haitian migrants in Springfield.
The Senate hopeful is now taking aim at residents migrating from Mauritania in West Africa who have come to Lockland, Ohio, a 3,500-person village north of Cincinnati. Lockland Mayor Mark Mason Sr has said that the population has nearly doubled as a result of the influx of migrants in the last year, putting a strain on village resources and economy.
Fox News host Maria Bartiromo asked Moreno on Wednesday: “What can you tell us about this small town that is being overrun by illegal migrants?”
“You gotta understand how they got there,” Moreno begins. “So they all fly to Mexico. They get smuggled across our border by the cartels. They’re explained exactly what they have to do, which is raise their hand and claim asylum. And then the United States government flies them wherever they want.”
The GOP candidate seemed to be referring to a story in the Cincinnati Enquirer about one Mauritanian migrant and applied it to the entire group.
The story described one man who had worked in a gold mine for more than a decade in the West African country to afford to “pay a network of smugglers to get him and his family out of Africa, then to Turkey, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, where they crossed the border into the United States,” the publication wrote. This route has become popular, thanks to social media, the Associated Press reported.
It’s not clear how many Mauritanian asylum seekers are being smuggled in by cartels and traveling to Ohio.
Since many of the migrants are unable to work and therefore pay taxes— as it takes roughly six months after applying for asylum to get a work permit — Mason noted the economic strain that the village has faced. “We’re looking right now at probably close to a $200,000 shortfall in our earnings income tax revenue,” he told WCPO.
Many of these migrants are seeking asylum in the US. Mauritania ranks third on the Global Slavery Index’s list of countries estimated to have the highest prevalence of modern slavery, estimating that nearly 150,000 are enslaved. Hundreds from the embattled West African nation have been granted asylum from 2014 through 2023, DHS data shows.
So far this year, from January through June, more than 6,000 Mauritanians have arrived in the US, data from the Customs and Border Protection shows. That figure seems to have slowed slightly compared to 2023, when more than 15,000 Mauritanians arrived in the US, a massive surge compared to 2022, when just 330 came.
Many are flocking to Ohio. More than 8,500 arrived in Ohio between March and June 2023, the Associated Press reported.
Moreno’s latest claims come a month after Donald Trump, JD Vance and other Republicans claimed, without evidence, that Haitian migrants in Springfield eat cats and dogs. The bizarre claim stemmed from a Facebook post, where a cat owner allegedly found her dead pet hanging from a tree ready to be skinned, butchered and eaten at a house said to be occupied by Haitian immigrants.
Local officials and law enforcement swiftly debunked the allegations — but that didn’t stop prominent Republicans from repeating it. At the September debate against Kamala Harris, Trump told millions of viewers: “They’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there… it’s a shame.”
Moreno is vying for Democratic incumbent Senator Sherrod Brown’s seat on November 5.
