Close to Cincinnati, Lockland was home to 3,500 people in 2023, but local officials say it has since taken in more than 3,000 legal Mauritanian asylum seekers.

'If you look at 2021, 2022, the United States had seen a huge influx of immigrants from Mauritania,' Lockland Village Administrator Doug Wehmeyer told Fox News Digital.

'Somehow, a good number of them have landed in Lockland.'

TikTok is partly to blame for the sudden deluge. Mauritanians are finding their way to the town via a route posted on the app which flows from the Northwest African nation to Turkey, before looping through South America to the US. 

The route passes through Managua, Nicaragua, where relaxed entry requirements allow Mauritanians and a handful of other foreign nationals to purchase a low-cost visa without proof of onward travel.

From there, the migrants, along with asylum seekers from other nations, are whisked north by bus with the help of smugglers.

'The American dream is still available,' promises a video on TikTok - one of dozens of similar posts from French-speaking 'guides' that help Mauritanians make the trip. 'Don't put off tomorrow what you can do today.'

'We wish you success. Nicaragua loves you very much,' a man working for a travel agency says in Spanish in another video. 

'In the last year it's just ballooned,' Lockland Mayor Mark Mason told ABC affiliate WCPO. 

'TikTok stories telling people how to get to the Village of Lockland and I think that has aided the explosion.'