Northeast Ohio Mayors Seek Solutions to Help Black Mauritanians Settle In
“There are plumbers in the room,” said Maryam Sy, and the mayors’ ears perked up. “This young man managed a restaurant in Mauritania. They have skills and they want to use them.”
In January, in a downtown Cleveland conference room, a dozen men seeking asylum from Mauritania and Senegal met with mayors and former mayors from Woodmere, Orange Village, Solon, University Heights, and Newburgh Heights. The event was convened by Maple Heights Mayor Annette Blackwell. The first woman and first Black person to serve as mayor of this majority-Black suburb, Blackwell learned about the situation Black Mauritanians are facing in her role on the Board of Directors for Global Cleveland.
Apartheid in Mauritania is not often covered by the media, and that’s an international problem. The Mauritanian government, controlled by White Moors, is very good at silencing criticism and reframing Black Mauritanians’ struggle for human rights as “terrorism.” When Black leaders published declarations of their rights to exist in 1966 and 1986 (“The Manifesto of the 19” and “The Manifesto of the Oppressed Black Mauritanian,” respectively), they were imprisoned and tortured.
The Mauritanian government executed twenty-eight Black soldiers at the Inal torture camp on November 28, 1990, claiming they were “dissidents.” November 28 marks Mauritania’s independence from France. But for Black Mauritanians it is a day of mourning, not celebration.
Between then and now, the Mauritanian government adapted its tactics for torturing and erasing Black people to the age of the Internet. When corruption and killing happens, they don’t address the problem. They simply shut the Internet down. (See government response to police robbery and killing of Oumar Diop, a man who was about to seek asylum in the U.S. here)
Check out this digital press release with images, videos, and interviews about apartheid in Mauritania and the need for Temporary Protected Status. [content warning: jail, torture, abuse]
At a forum on the dystopian reality of detention, immigration court proceedings, and deportation of Black immigrants, one man seeking asylum from Mauritania said, “There are no human rights in Mauritania, especially for Black Mauritanians who are discriminated against. People are being treated as slaves.” The forum took place at the Ford Foundation’s celebration of 75 years of the Universal Declaration for Human Rights in 2023, and was co-hosted by the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, Mauritanian Network for Human Rights in US, and Cameroon Advocacy Network.
His father was killed at the Inal torture camp in 1990, and his family continues to demand accountability while also trying to live in the country as Fulani people, one of the Black ethnic groups experiencing racial violence. He explained, “What we are asking for is simple. We want justice for my family. But every time we go out to get it, we face violence from the police.”
Mayor Blackwell wants greater Cleveland to open its arms and embrace these freedom-fighters, as the region did for Afghani and Ukrainian people in recent years. She and Richmond Heights Mayor Kim A. Thomas successfully petitioned the Biden adminstration to extend the work permit expiration dates for many people seeking asylum, in an effort led by Cities for Action.
Maryam Sy helped lead the mayors’ meeting with Global Cleveland and the Ohio Immigrant Alliance. She is an immigrant, community leader, and interpreter for African immigrants, married to a Cleveland business owner from Mauritania. Sy interviewed 100 people deported to Mauritania for #ReuniteUS, an Ohio Immigrant Alliance project involving more than 255 people who were deported. Their experiences before, during, and after deportation — as well as their dreams of a future whey they are welcomed home — are chronicled in the book Broken Hope: Deportation and the Road Home. Download it for free here.
While most of the people Sy interviewed were deported during the Trump years, deportations to Mauritania continue under President Biden. Sy hears first hand about Black Mauritanians’ fears of being sent back to a country that persecutes them; the terror they feel in U.S. immigration jail and throughout the deportation process; and the arrests, extortion, statelessness, and persecution many experience after deportation.
Read this case study about unfair denials of asylum to Black immigrnats, including Mauritanians, from the Ohio Immigrant Alliance. [content warning: racism, sexual tropes, abuse, family separation]
Instead of sending people back to their persecutors, Ohio U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown and U.S. Representatives Mike Carey (R-OH), Joyce Beatty (D-OH), and Greg Landsman (D-OH) introduced legislation to extend Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to people from Mauritania. This bill would stop the deportation flights that are occurring. It would extend work permits to people from Mauritania who are seeking asylum, so they can work and afford the basics — housing, food, clothing—while their cases wind their way through the immigration courts.
And it would protect those who are unjustly denied asylum, because the courts are also a failed structure imbued with racism, power balances, and illogical and unfair requirements oriented toward denying protection to people who need it, not granting it.
The established community of Black Mauritanians in Ohio has wrapped its arms around the recent arrivals. They’ve been in their shoes. They know what it takes to leave, and what it’s like to arrive and start over while living with an uncertain immigration status.
Ohio government leaders should follow this example.
MORE READING
Read: “I have visited Mauritania and I will never go back,” by Twisted Hole; “Mauritanian ‘ghost boats,’ economic violence, and dying to live” and “In Ohio, Black Mauritanians rev up the cycle of mutual aid and community support” by Lynn Tramonte; “Mauritania’s Campaign of Terror” by Human Rights Watch; “L’infer d’Inal” by Mahamadou Sy (English translation forthcoming); and “Le manifeste du Negro-Mauritanien opprime,” by Forces de Liberation Africaines de Mauritanie (FLAM). Some excerpts from the manifesto have been translated into English in Human Rights Watch’s report.
