00:01This business in Loughland, Ohio looks like a bike shop, but it's a lot more than that.
00:07It's also a gathering centre for Mauritanians seeking asylum in the United States.
00:15For new arrivals daunted by their new surroundings, the shop offered something familiar.
00:21I used to ride a bike in Mauritania.
00:26I heard some of my friends telling me there are people who can help people to get a bike.
00:32The shop's owner, Vincent Wilson, got to know the community through the English classes he teaches.
00:40He thought bicycles could help his students get around town.
00:45So I went to a local bicycle non-profit I've worked with in the past.
00:48I was like, hey, can we get eight to ten bikes? We got eight to ten bikes.
00:50Put them in the back of the pickup truck. I called like eight guys I knew through English class.
00:56I was like, hey, do you guys want bicycles? They're like, yeah, sure.
00:59Pulled up at the apartment building and was immediately flooded with folks coming out of the apartment building,
01:04like excited that I had a pickup truck full of bikes.
01:08As more and more people came for the bikes, many of them stayed to offer help fixing them up
01:14and to ask for help with immigration paperwork.
01:20Immigrants from everywhere, you know, we start seeing people from France Park coming here for bikes.
01:25Some were telling them that we didn't know that they're here.
01:28Surprisingly, you just walk in the bike shop, you meet somebody who never expected to be here in America.
01:33The shop became known as Bikes and Stuff to reflect its changing role.
01:39And people keep coming, even as the political climate for immigrants changes around them.
01:46I know a lot of, a lot of Mauritanians who have been deported.
01:50I know some of them just went to ICE check-in and they got arrested and taken back home.
01:56And yes, I know a lot of cases with ICE.
02:03Everybody's kind of alert, but it doesn't prevent people from going to work and do their normal things daily.
02:13They're still going to work, still.
02:15But the odds seem stacked against Laughland's Mauritanian community.
02:20People at the bike shop say they've only heard of one person whose asylum application was approved.
02:26But while they wait for a decision, the bike shop is a refuge.
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