“We have the right to live in peace”

SILVERTON, Ohio — Walking down the street in a white cowboy hat, Charleston Wang opens the front door to his law firm. Inside, he turns on a light and opens another door.

This padlock has a metal chain.

And back by the conference room, there’s another lock that looks like something you might see in a barn. Wang removes a metal bar wedged between the door handles.

These locks are not new, but Wang is concerned about them.

“It’s intense,” he says.

Wang is an immigration lawyer who said a sheriff’s car was parked near his office for most of the day Monday. That same day, multiple schools in Springfield were evacuated, all in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s debunking of claims that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in the city northeast of Dayton.

At least 33 threats of violence were reported in Springfield following the presidential debate.

On Wednesday, in his Silverton office, Wang was helping Mauritanian asylum seekers. These are people who fled their home country in West Africa and settled in Greater Cincinnati. Wang says his clients are scared.

“It’s very emotional. It really scares and upsets and angers people,” he said. “I know that firsthand.”

Keith BieryGolick

Wang is an immigrant himself, having been born in Taiwan and living in Malaysia before coming to America at 16. After graduating from law school, he picked an English name out of a hat.

“English is spoken here,” reads the sign outside his office.

But Wang speaks French before English-speaking immigrants arrive to help translate. The Mauritanians are there to pick up work permits and social security cards. Without those 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,” reads the sign in the window outside.

“We are afraid,” Wang said. “Anything can happen.”

In the office, Wang’s clients are waiting for Oumar Ball. He speaks English because he fled the country in the 1990s. Ball said he was one of the first people to come to Cincinnati from Mauritania.

“I worry about that,” Ball said of the growing tensions over immigrants. “Everybody — all immigrants worry about that.”

Standing at his desk in front of a stack of work permits, he raises a green, red and yellow flag.

“This is my flag,” he said, “in my terrible country.”

Ball’s two brothers were killed, he said, victims of an oppressive and authoritarian government. Now he screams.

“Slavery in Mauritania still exists,” he said, slamming the table in front of him. “They burn the entire village. They kill the children. They castrate the women.”

He leans down and apologizes.

“This is the absolute truth,” he said.

Keith BieryGolick

When he arrived in Cincinnati, Ball slept in a mosque. He had nowhere to go. But he eventually bought a house in Colerain Township — helping others who had come to America with nothing.

At one time, he said, he had 29 Mauritanians living with him. Now his son is a manager at GE Aerospace. Ball, who wears an orange Cincinnati Bengals jersey, has been a U.S. citizen for more than a decade.

But for some people, as he himself said, he will never be anything other than an immigrant.

“I always check my back because I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said.

Ball stops. There’s something else he wants to say.

“We have the right to live in peace, love and happiness,” Ball said. “That’s all.”