SILVERTON, Ohio — Walking down the street in a white cowboy hat, Charleston Wang unlocks the front door to his law office. Inside, he turns on the lights and unlocks another door.
This lock has a metal chain on it.
And back by the conference room, there’s another lock that looks like something you might see on a shed. Wang removes a metal bar stuck between the door handles.
These locks are not new, but Wang’s worry is.
“It’s intense,” he says.
Wang is an immigration attorney. On Monday, he says a sheriff’s vehicle parked near his office for most of the day. This was the same day multiple schools in Springfield were evacuated, all stemming from debunked claims former President Donald Trump made about Haitian immigrants eating pets in the city northeast of Dayton.
After the presidential debate, there were at least 33 threats of violence in Springfield.
In his Silverton office on Wednesday, Wang helped Mauritanian asylum seekers. These are people who fled their country in West Africa and have settled in Greater Cincinnati. Wang says his clients are scared.
“It’s very emotional. It gets people really scared and upset and angry,” he said. “I know that firsthand.”
Wang is an immigrant himself. He was born in Taiwan and lived in Malaysia before he came to America at 16. After graduating law school, he picked an English name out of a hat.
“English is spoken here,” a sign in front of his office says.
But Wang speaks French before English-speaking immigrants arrive to help translate. The Mauritanians are here to pick up work permits and social security cards. Without these documents, they can’t work, drive or pay taxes.
Wang said days like this are among the happiest he sees in his office. But the happiness is tinged with something else.
“Security camera in use,” a sign in the window outside says.
“We are afraid,” Wang said. “Anything can happen."
Inside the office, Wang’s clients wait for Oumar Ball. He speaks English because he fled his country in the '90s. Ball said he was one of the first people to come to Cincinnati from Mauritania.
“I’m worried about it,” Ball said of growing tensions surrounding immigrants. “Everybody — all immigrants are worried about it.”
Standing at a desk in front of a stack of work permits, he picks up a green, red and yellow flag.
“That’s my flag,” he said, “in my terrible country.”
Two of Ball’s brothers were killed, he said, victims of an oppressive and authoritarian government. He’s yelling now.
“Slavery is still going on in Mauritania,” he said, slamming the table in front of him. “They burn the whole village. They kill babies. They cut women.”
He leans forward and apologizes.
“That’s the real truth,” he said.
When he came to Cincinnati, Ball slept in a mosque. He had nowhere else to go. But eventually, he bought a home in Colerain Township — helping others who came to America with nothing.
At one time, he says 29 Mauritanians lived with him. Now, his son is a manager at GE Aerospace. Ball, who wears an orange Cincinnati Bengals sweatshirt, has been a U.S. citizen for more than a decade.
But to some people, he said, he’ll never be anything but an immigrant.
“I’m always checking my back because I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said.
Ball pauses. There’s something else he wants to say.
“We have the right to live in peace and love and happiness,” said Ball. “That’s all.”
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