Ohio Congressional Members Introduce Bill to Protect Mauritanians From Deportation

Credit: Davonte Butler/ UndocuBlack Network

A bipartisan group of Ohio congressional members last week made another push to establish long-sought safeguards for Mauritanian migrants who have fled to America from the grips of human rights abuses, violence and slavery in the West African country.

Legislation introduced by the sponsors would provide Temporary Protection Status to Mauritanians living in the country, protecting them from deportation for up to 18 months and providing them with work visas as they navigate permanent immigration. TPS status, as with other countries, can be extended if situations don’t improve, allowing migrants to re-apply.

“We must act to ensure Mauritanians who have been living and working in the U.S. are protected from the harsh and life-threatening conditions – including slavery – they face if they return to their country right now,” said Senator Sherrod Brown said in a statement.

Fewer than 10,000 Mauritanians live in the country and about half of them live in Ohio, mainly in the Columbus and Cincinnati areas.

The large majority of those are Black Mauritanians who have fled the nation that has for years been plagued by violent dictators.

Since a border dispute with Senegal in the 1980s and the rise of Arab leadership in the country, Black Mauritanians have been subjected to racism, violence and persecution. Some 70,000 to 150,000 Black Mauritanians were accused of being Senegalese and forced to leave, essentially becoming nation-less. Others faced worse prospects.

Slavery, while technically abolished there in 1981 and criminalized in 2007 and 2015, making Mauritania the last country in the world to do both, is still prevalently practiced, advocates for the group say.

In fact, ten years after its criminalization, The State Department’s 2018 report on human rights in Mauritania found that “slavery and slavery-like practices, which typically flowed from ancestral master-slave relationships and involved both adults and children, continued throughout the year … Enslaved persons suffered from traditional chattel slavery, including forced labor and sexual exploitation.”

Temporary Protected Status, created by Congress in 1980, is currently granted for migrants from 16 countries including El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua and Sudan, protecting those facing political oppression, violence or other extraordinary circumstances from being deported back to their country of origin.

The TPS for Mauritania Act of 2024, sponsored by Sen. Sherrod Brown and Reps. Joyce Beatty, Mike Carey and Greg Landsman would add Mauritania to the list.

“Black Mauritanians have endured horrific racial discrimination by their government, including forced statelessness and even trafficking into slavery. We cannot subject those who suffered under this oppression to deportation and a return to an apartheid-like state where they would likely face violence and potentially death,” Beatty said in a statement. “The United States must designate Temporary Protected Status for Mauritania and recognize the significant contributions that their diaspora has made to Central Ohio and communities across the country.”

The campaign to grant Mauritanians TPS protection has been ongoing for years — Brown and Carey in a letter last January implored Biden and the Department of Homeland Security to act — and followed Trump-era deportations that have led those forced back to the country to endure arrests, beatings, and an existence stripped of citizenship rights.

The UndocuBlack Network, which advocates for undocumented Black immigrants, says between 90,000 and 680,000 people in the country remain enslaved.

“This is the longest TPS campaign many of our organizations have worked on; a stark difference from the TPS designation for countries like Ukraine, which received TPS within a week of the conflict starting. The United States had a long-standing policy of not deporting Mauritanians because of the country’s well documented record of human rights abuses, which include the practice of enslaving Black people and maintaining an apartheid regime,” Haddy Gassama, policy and advocacy director of the UndocuBlack Network, said in a statement to VOA News last year.

With no substantive response from Biden and the DHS, whose director is empowered to add countires to the list, the group is seeking a Congressional solution.

As of December 2023, about 697,530 held TPS status in the U.S. A report from the Niskanen Center found that 94% of those with TPS status in 2017 were actively engaged in the labor force.

“America must send a clear message that we condemn slavery and will not return individuals to conditions where they may be enslaved or denied citizenship,” Rep. Carey said in a statement.

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