The Washington Post is celebrating a man from the African country of Mauritania who is helping more poor Muslim migrants crowd into Cincinnati apartments and houses, straining the town’s resources and apparently breaking occupancy laws.
Even this man, who is working to facilitate the flood of illegals into the U.S., says that the federal government is just letting too many people come to the U.S. all at once.
Oumar Ball, a man native to the small majority Muslim West African country of Mauritania, arrived in Cincinnati in 2000. By 2010, he had become a U.S. citizen. Now, he is working to settle as many of his fellow Muslims in Cincinnati’s Mount Airy neighborhood as he can. However, he has often encountered a problem in the Queen City: housing.
The city does not have a shelter system, and there is no “right to shelter” like there is in Massachusetts and New York. So, Ball has struggled to find places for his migrant friends to stay. The housing issue has caused him to stockpile them illegally in tiny apartments and homes of volunteers, including his own.
Oumar Ball makes calls helping people get immigration documents in Cincinnati, Ohio, on March 8, 2024. (Maddie McGarvey/For The Washington Post via Getty Images)
“It’s not uncommon to find apartments with 10 or 14 people in a two-bedroom apartment,” said fellow Cincinnati Mauritania activist Ousmane Sow. “And it’s all because none of us want to see Mauritanians out in the streets.”
The problem is growing, too. Doug Wehmeyer, the administrator and fire chief in Lockland, says that the number of migrants from Mauritania has doubled to 3,000.
Ball himself has had upwards of 50 people illegally living in his own home.
Occupancy rates in Ohio for single-family homes generally only allow two people per bedroom to live in a home or apartment. However, some exceptions can be made if authorities are tasked with making a determination, and, sometimes, four people per bedroom is permitted if they are underage. But, certainly, 14 or 15 people in a two-bedroom apartment is not legal. Ohio also generally limits apartment living to a family of five, no more, and certainly not large groups of people who are unrelated to each other.
Ball has been helping these migrants get jobs in places like the meatpacking industry in the river-side city. Mauritanian migrants have been hungrily gobbling up jobs at Tyson Foods and other manufacturing sites, including General Electric and Johnson & Johnson.
Still, the wave of migrants from the war-torn African nation has taxed even Mr. Ball and his friends. He thinks it is long past time that the federal government start putting limits on immigration.
“If they could close our borders for just a little bit,” Ball told the paper. “That would be great because right now too many people are coming and it’s too much … Everyone is tired.”
Shoes lined up in Oumar Ball’s home in Cincinnati, Ohio, on March 8, 2024. (Maddie McGarvey/For The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Ball’s wife, Aminata Ba, is also coming to her wit’s end. Since Ball recently lost his job, the family and the hundreds of fellow Mauritanian migrants coming to her with their hands out for food, clothes, and help, are taxing her small income at the Amazon warehouse where she works.
“We have had over 300 people pass through this house because they know my husband has a heart,” Ba told the Post. “I buy everything for them — deodorant, toothpaste, soap. When they come across the border, they show up with one pair of pants and one shirt.”
“I can’t keep doing this over and over again,” she said, echoing how the rest of the citizens of the United States feel about President Joe Biden’s wide-open border policy.
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