US boosts deportations to Mauritania
Illegal slavery still goes on in African nation
During a White House meeting last week to launch a task force to combat human trafficking and modern-day slavery, President Donald Trump vowed to do everything in the government’s power to stop the scourge.
“Our country will not rest until we have put these vile organizations out of business and rescued every last victim,” Trump said.
Yet this week, the Trump administration may deport four black men to Mauritania, a Muslim-majority nation in Africa that the CIA describes as a hotbed for human trafficking and slavery of its black minority. If the deportations are carried out, they would represent the latest in a growing number of black Mauritanians forced to return to a nation where their attorneys said the action could lead to imprisonment, torture, slavery or death.
From fiscal years 2014 to 2017, Immigration and Customs Enforcement averaged just seven deportations to Mauritania annually, based on those concerns. But in 2018, the agency deported 79 people to Mauritania, and ICE says 22 are in custody awaiting deportation.
Lynn Tramonte, director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, an advocacy group based in a state with one of the country’s largest Mauritanian communities, said she was sickened to learn of the White House event, where Trump, his daughter, Ivanka, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo all promised to protect people from human trafficking.
Tramonte said previous administrations limited deportations of undocumented immigrants from Mauritania because of the flagrant human rights atrocities committed there. Those living in the U.S. have been stripped of their Mauritanian citizenship, further limiting their rights if forced to return.
More than three dozen Democratic lawmakers wrote last week to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seeking an end to deportations.
Mauritania was the last nation in the world to abolish slavery, in 1981, but the CIA and the State Department said the practice lives on, ensnaring a “significant portion” of the black population.