Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno has already been sued once for spreading conspiracy theories about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, stealing and eating pets.
Now, he’s singling out another group of immigrants in Ohio and leveling baseless attacks: Mauritanian asylum seekers in Lockland, a village north of Cincinnati.
“What can you tell us about this small town that is being overrun by illegal migrants?” Fox News host Maria Bartiromo asked Moreno on Wednesday—even though the Mauritanians are in Ohio legally.
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“They all fly to Mexico,” Moreno said. “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.”
Mauritanians have been seeking U.S. asylum since the 1990s, when the Arab government began sanctioning the killing and deportation of Black Afro-Mauritians. The West African nation was the last in the world outlaw slavery, in 2007, and the Global Slavery Index estimates that about 150,000 Mauritanians are still enslaved—most of them Black.
Lockland has had a small but well-established West African population for decades, but in the past year, the number has grown. The town went from having 3,500 residents in the summer of 2023 to about 6,000 today, about half of whom are immigrants, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.
Crime has never been an issue, but the new wave of asylum seekers has strained city services and created overcrowding at several apartment complexes. New arrivals can’t work for at least six months after requesting asylum, and the local fire department is worried about its ability to keep everyone safe.
That’s a far cry from Bartiromo and Moreno’s claims that the town is being overrun by illegal migrants smuggled in by drug cartels. It’s also not the first time Moreno has targeted a specific immigrant group in his state.
Earlier this month, Moreno and other MAGA politicians were sued after their conspiracy theory about Haitians eating pets led to widespread threats of violence against the community—including bomb threats in schools.
The suit also named former president Donald Trump and Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance. Things got so bad that Ohio’s Republican governor and Springfield’s Republican mayor denounced the claims—and begged Trump not to campaign there.
