Columbus, OH and Florence, AZ – The apparent last act of the Trump Administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is deeply painful for asylum-seekers who traveled so far to seek freedom, their families, and the Black Mauritanian, Haitian, and Jamaican communities in the United States.
Sandwiched between the nation’s honoring of Martin Luther King, Jr. on January 18 and the inauguration of President Biden on January 20, one last deportation charter flight is scheduled to leave Florence, AZ for Mauritania, West Africa on Tuesday, along with flights to Haiti and Jamaica.
“Dictators are weapons of mass destruction,” said Houleye Thiam, President of the Mauritanian Network for Human Rights in US (MNHRUS). “Black Mauritanians aren’t leaving their homes, families, and lives to go on an adventure. They are fleeing to survive, running from a country where Black people are oppressed, enslaved, denied citizenship, attacked, and killed simply for being Black. For generations, Black Mauritanians have been assaulted by the state, denied basic rights, tortured, and murdered. Our land was stolen and our family members were murdered. Before Trump came into office, deportations to Mauritania were rare, in recognition of these horrific conditions. Under Trump, however, our community was suddenly put at the top of the deportation list.”
If they are deported, Black Mauritanians will face possible arrest, torture, and even death. Because of the change in policy and lack of concern for individuals safety, the Trump Administration more than doubled the number of deportations to Mauritania, compared with the Obama Administration.
Deportations are also scheduled for Haiti and Jamaica. Guerline Jozef, President of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, said: “This is the Trump Administration’s attempt to deport as many Black immigrants as possible before they lose a stranglehold on power. The day after our nation marks the memory of one of our greatest civil rights leaders, the Trump Administration is putting Black people in shackles. These flights should not happen during a global pandemic, and when most of the families deported have not been given a fair chance to apply for asylum. These deportations are the latest in a long history of intentional abuses against Black men, women, children and families by immigration authorities. We need an investigation into this system that allowed the Trump Administration to continue to inflict pain and trauma on Black immigrants seeking safety. We stand undeterred in the fight against racism and anti-blackness because Black lives matter no matter where WE are born.”
Thiam added: “The devastation in our Ohio community, around the country, and abroad is so raw. Many families have been torn apart, children and spouses left behind. Many beloved members of our community fled to Canada to avoid being sent back to the hell they left decades ago. Others were deported, arrested, and tortured. Many now live in a third country with no documents, in dismal conditions, just trying to stay safe. It breaks my heart to know that the last act of this evil administration could be to deport even more of my countrymen.”
As Franklin Foer revealed in The Atlantic, Black Mauritanians were among the first communities to experience a radical change in immigration policy under the Trump Administration. Suddenly, after decades of living in the U.S. with legal work permits, working and raising families, Black Mauritanians under Orders of Supervision were being arrested at regular ICE check-in meetings, thrown into subpar county jails, and deported–often in shackles, on lengthy and expensive charter flights.
Black Mauritanians are being deported to a country that does not recognize many of them as citizens; a country with an ingrained, racist caste system that treats them worse than animals. A country that killed their family members, stole their cattle and land, and rigged their elections to keep the ruling minority in power. A country that continues to kill them today.
In “ICE is sending Mauritanians back to modern-day slavery,” the Washington Post editorial board wrote: “many of them left under threat of violence from the authorities. Heedless of that, and the grim fate that awaits them if they return, ICE is arresting and deporting them anyway. That is unconscionable.”
For four years, the Trump Administration has shown that the priority of deportation trumps all, even a global pandemic and the U.S. government shutdown. Writing about a $148,000 charter flight to Mauritania while federal employees were forced to work without pay during the shutdown in 2019, Foer wrote:
It doesn’t take a bleeding-heart liberal to see the immorality of ice’s focus on the Mauritanians. In a very different context, members of the right-wing Freedom Caucus in the House have enumerated the despicable qualities of the Mauritanian government. They urged the IMF to stop funding the Mauritanian government, which the conservatives accused of having a “heinous human rights record.” Even the Trump administration acknowledged this. Last November, it rewrote its trade agreement with Mauritania to punish the country for its continued practice of slavery. To return the black Mauritanians to their native land is to place them in the arms of a government that has tortured and imprisoned its citizens for the color of their skin.
Despite this, and in full view of all of the dangers to humanity, the Trump Administration continued to deport Black Mauritanians and even fabricated “progress” on human rights in its 2019 State Department report. In a statement regarding this, MNHRUS explained:
In the year 2019 Mauritania made very little progress, if any, toward ensuring and preserving human rights for all Mauritanians. In 2019 Mauritanians witnessed one of the most contested, non-transparent elections in Mauritanian history. After the 2019 elections, opposition leaders and prominent journalists were kidnapped–taken from their homes and arrested by the state police–and their families did not know of their whereabouts for days on end. Further, to stop demonstrations after the election, the Mauritanian authorities detained, without charge, dozens of opposition activists. Later they released most but sentenced many to prison terms. Most arrested activists were beaten and tortured in the most horrible ways.
Said Lynn Tramonte. Director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance: “Over the past four years I have had the great honor of getting to know many Ohioans from Mauritania. Sadly, our relationships began in the darkest hours–their months in detention and fighting deportation. Many endured abusive treatment at the hands of racist correctional officers, attacks on their Islamic faith, separation from loved ones, loss of income, physically-excruciating deportations, and then arrest or exile yet again. Words cannot describe the cruelty involved in sending one last plane to this nation that denies Black people basic human rights, the day after MLK Day and one day before Joe Biden and Kamala Harris take office. This last deportation flight only expands the need for the next administration to reunite families and allow deported people to return to their homes in the U.S.”
Read about policy changes the Biden-Harris Administration can make here: https://bit.ly/MemoReuniteUS.
Watch Episode 6 of Netflix’s “Living Undocumented,” featuring an Ohio family from Mauritania, here.
Follow the Mauritanian Network for Human Rights in US on Facebook and Twitter @MauritanianFor
Follow the Haitian Bridge Alliance on Facebook and Twitter @HaitianBridge
Follow the Ohio Immigrant Alliance on Facebook and Twitter @tramontela
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