‘We cannot go back’ | Black Mauritanian immigrants share their journey to the U.S.
Wiping a bead of sweat from his brow on a blistering August afternoon, Moussa Diallo said he had to leave his four children behind in Mauritania when he embarked on his journey to find a safer life for them in the United States.
The 62-year-old Diallo said he left his home country on June 9, 2023, to escape the overwhelming violence and poverty. On June 22, he arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border with the opportunity of a lifetime.
Since gaining independence from France in 1960, Mauritania has been dominated by military dictatorships. In its 64 years as a sovereign state, the country has experienced seven attempted coups — five of which were successful — Voice of America found.
Despite being the last country in the world to officially abolish slavery — doing so in 1981 — Mauritania still enslaves about 90,000 people, according to a 2018 Human Rights Watch report. A 2012 CNN investigation detailed how slavery survives in Mauritania, even though the country made it a crime in 2007.
One reason for the persistence of slavery is Mauritania’s social hierarchy, which divides Mauritanians into three distinct categories based on race and ethnicity.
According to Britannica, the Moors make up more than two-thirds of Mauritania’s population and are categorically divided based on skin color. 30% of Mauritanians are classified as white Moors, or Beidane, while another 40% are considered Black Moors, or Haratin. The Haratin are the descendants of people enslaved by the white Moors, and many of them are still enslaved today.
The Beidane’s domination over the Haratin is why many consider Mauritania an apartheid state. Despite making up less than a third of Mauritania’s population, the Beidane control the instruments of state and foreign trade, along with about 80% of the country’s leadership positions, according to the Minority Rights Group.
At the bottom of the social hierarchy live Black or sub-Saharan Africans. Also known as, Black Mauritanians, these people mostly come from four ethnic groups: Tukulor, Fulani, Soninke and Wolof.
Black Mauritanians, comprising the remaining 30% of the country’s population, have rejected assimilating into their country’s Arabic culture and instead retained their own local and regional ones, putting them at odds with the Beidane in charge.
This emerging crisis came to a head in 1989, when, according to the Open Society Justice Initiative, Mauritania’s Arab-dominated government revoked an estimated 75,000 Black Mauritanians’ citizenship. A conflict between farmers over grazing rights around the Senegal River resulted in a genocide that left several hundred people killed and several thousand displaced in what came to be known as the Mauritania–Senegal Border War.
More than 30 years later, Black Mauritanians are still haunted by the mass expulsion. They still do not have the full privileges of citizenship in their country.
On February 9, 2023, human rights activist Souvi Ould Jibril Ould Cheine was taken into police custody over unpaid debt, according to Amnesty International. Hours later, he was in a hospital and pronounced dead.
Originally attributed to a heart attack, his death was later found to be caused by traumatic asphyxiation due to strangulation. As a result, four police officers were hit with a litany of charges including premeditated murder, torture leading to death and concealing traces of the crime, according to the People’s Dispatch.
Only a few months later, on May 28, 2023, police arrested Oumar Diop after alleging he was involved in a physical altercation, according to the U.S. State Department.
Just like in Souvi’s case, hours after he was detained, police told Diop’s relatives he died from health complications while in custody. Although an independent autopsy concluded Diop died from cardiac arrest caused by excessive cocaine and alcohol consumption, his family contested the results. They believe police killed him.
After protests demanding justice for Diop erupted in the capital city of Nouakchott, the Mauritanian government disconnected mobile phone internet services on May 31, according to the Geneva Internet Platform’s Digital Watch.
On top of this, about 58% of Mauritanians live in multidimensional poverty — poor in terms of health, education and standard of living — with another 12% considered to be vulnerable to multidimensional poverty, the United Nations' 2023 Multidimensional Poverty Index found.
As if it wasn’t hard enough to find work, Mauritanians also have to compete with the increasing number of people seeking refuge from political violence in Mali. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 55,000 people crossed from Mali into Mauritania in 2023 alone.
The combination of poverty, political violence and suppression are increasingly forcing Mauritanians to flee their country and seek asylum abroad.
Diallo is one of those Mauritanians. As a Fulani, he was forced to live at the bottom of Mauritania’s social hierarchy.
The world’s largest nomadic group, Fulanis number about 20 million people dispersed across West Africa, according to World Watch Monitor.
According to the Joshua Project, about 311,000 of Mauritania’s 4,960,000 citizens — approximately 6.3% — are Fulani.
Dissatisfied with the actions of his government, Diallo said he worked for a non-profit organization in Mauritania called the SAFIRE Project.
A four-year program founded by the Mauritanian Ministry of Employment in 2019, SAFIRE — a French acronym for Food Security, Training, Integration, Resilience and Employment — was a nongovernmental organization that used funds from the E.U.’s Emergency Trust Fund for Africa to provide resources to Black Mauritanians and improve their quality of life, according to the Red Cross.
Because of his involvement in the SAFIRE Project, Diallo worries about his family’s safety in Mauritania, but he said it’s a situation he’ll just have to live with until he can bring his family to the U.S.
After departing Mauritania, Diallo said he flew to Morocco, then Spain, then Colombia, then Nicaragua before being bussed to the border in Arizona.
Diallo said the presence of gangsters on the road between Nicaragua and Arizona added another layer of fear during his journey. But, as a Black Mauritanian, he said he’s used to being hassled.
After being detained and screened, Diallo said he received a paper documenting his asylum and flew to Ohio.
Once they get across the border, immigrants are detained in prison-like conditions by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and then moved to processing centers to be vetted, according to the Women’s Refugee Commission and Source New Mexico.
But conditions in detainment aren’t great. According to the American Immigration Council, “noncitizens held in CBP facilities often report experiencing frigid temperatures; unsanitary conditions; a lack of bedding; and inadequate food, water, medical care, and hygiene items.”
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, seeking asylum is an international right guaranteed in the UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and 1951 Refugee Convention. In the U.S., the 1980 Refugee Act provided “a permanent and systematic procedure for the admission of refugees of special humanitarian concern to the United States” and “comprehensive and uniform provisions for the effective resettlement and absorption of those refugees who are admitted.”
But, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), the current average wait time for cases in the asylum backlog to be heard is 1,424 days — almost four years. There are currently over 1.1 million pending asylum cases in the U.S., 8,407 of which involve Mauritanians, according to TRAC.
Because there is no limit on how long immigrants can be detained, some spend years in detainment awaiting a court date to be granted asylum. Others are placed on flights and deported back to Mauritania. If they make it through, immigrants are given a future court date to begin their asylum case and released into the U.S.
Like Diallo, Yero Sy is also a Fulani Mauritanian who fled persecution in his home country for freedom in the U.S.
As a member of the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement (IRA-Mauritania), Sy, 29, fought to end slavery in his country. But, like Diallo, his work made him a target for Mauritania’s government.
With nothing but a backpack, Sy flew from Mauritania to Turkey to El Salvador to Nicaragua. From Nicaragua, he said he was bussed — and even occasionally walked — through Mexico to the border at Arizona.
According to an Associated Press (AP) report from August 2023, thousands of Mauritanian immigrants came to the U.S. after a new route was shared on social media. The report found that the people migrating would fly from Mauritania to Turkey to Colombia to El Salvador to Nicaragua, where they were then bussed to the U.S.-Mexico border.
The report said the trip can cost up to $10,000. According to the AP, more than 8,500 Mauritanians arrived in the U.S. using this route between March and June 2023.
Before March 2023, there were only about 8,000 foreign-born Mauritanians in the whole U.S., with almost half of them living in Ohio, according to the AP and a January press release from Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown. Thanks to that three-month influx, the number of foreign-born Mauritanians in the U.S. is now more than double what it was a year and a half ago.
The presence of Mauritanians in Ohio is what led Diallo there. After his flight, he said he stayed in Ohio for a month before spending two months in a New York shelter.
Like Ohio, New York City is also a place where many Mauritanians seek shelter. According to City and State New York, more than 64,600 asylum-seekers are currently living in city-run emergency shelters.
Before he arrived at the border, Sy said he heard it would be difficult to get across if he didn’t have an address of someone he could stay with in the U.S. So, Sy contacted an old friend from Mauritania who now lives in Philadelphia.
After being released from detention, Sy said he went to a hotel but found it was full. From Arizona, he said he had to go west to Los Angeles before coming back east to Philadelphia about a year ago.
Sy said traveling through countries where he didn’t know anyone and didn’t speak the language was scary.
Like Diallo, Sy had to leave his family behind in Mauritania to escape to the U.S. He said he’ll sometimes lose sleep or feel unable to do anything because he is so worried about his parents and siblings back home.
But Sy knows he can’t go back to Mauritania, meaning he doesn’t know if he’ll ever see his family again.
These days, Sy hopes to continue his education in the U.S., but the challenge required to get his transcript from Mauritania means he might have to start over. He said he likes to play soccer to ease his mind.
Last October, Diallo arrived in Philadelphia, feeling lucky to make it through to the U.S. He said many of the people in the group he traveled with got stuck in Mexico, are still detained in CBP facilities, or were deported back to their home countries.
Once a second-class citizen in his home country, Diallo feels like a new man now that he has a social security card and a work permit, adding that he’s enjoying going out and about without anybody bothering him.
“I’m free,” he said. “It’s very nice.”
Diallo said he is eternally thankful for everything the U.S. has given him. He said he wishes Mauritanians had the same rights of free expression and access to employment that people in the U.S. do.
In Philadelphia, along with his job as the manager of One Stop Detailing in Lansdowne, Diallo has been working with the African Family Health Organization (AFAHO) to get settled in his new life. He said he is grateful for the resources and opportunities AFAHO has provided him.
Cira Toure is a case manager for AFAHO — a non-profit, community-based organization in West Philadelphia that provides culturally sensitive health, human and educational services to local African and Caribbean immigrants and refugees. Because Diallo and Sy speak French, she translated their quotes to English for this story.
Located at 5400 Grays Ave, AFAHO also has several multilingual staff who can interpret and translate a variety of different languages. According to its website, AFAHO offers social services that include mental health programming, domestic violence awareness and support, a domestic violence shelter called the Nandi House, elders programming, and civic engagement.
Toure said AFAHO also has two main education programs, ensuring it can teach people of all ages.
The African Youth Empowerment Program (AYEP) focuses on academic success, mental health, physical education, sex education, nutritional habits, civic engagement, and post-secondary education and training opportunities.
The Adult Education program, on the other hand, is divided into three parts: English as a Second Language (ESL) classes at beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels; adult literacy classes that focus on reading, writing and math skills; and digital literacy classes that teach students the necessary skills for the current era of technology.
An immigrant from Mauritania herself, Toure said she understands the relief on immigrants’ faces when they realize they finally made it through.
“We cannot go back,” Diallo said. “The only thing we can do is bring our family here.”
He said he just needs to be granted asylum and he can bring them to the U.S.
Anyone interested in supporting AFAHO can do so by visiting https://afaho.org/how-you-can-help/. Those interested in volunteering should fill out the Volunteer Sign-Up form.