Thousands of Mauritanians find a route, thanks to social media

CINCINNATI (AP):

Aissata Sall was scrolling through WhatsApp in May when she first learned about the new route to the United States. For Ibrahima Sow, the discovery came on TikTok a few weeks later.

By the time their paths crossed at the tidy one-storey brick house in Cincinnati, they had encountered hundreds of other Mauritanians, nearly all of them following a new path surging in popularity among younger migrants from the West African nation, thanks largely to social media.

“Four months ago, it just went crazy,” said Oumar Ball, who arrived in Cincinnati from Mauritania in 1997 and recently opened his home to Sow, Sall and more than a dozen other new migrants. “My phone hasn’t stopped ringing.”

The spike in migration was made possible by the discovery this year of a new route through Nicaragua, where relaxed entry requirements allow Mauritanians and a handful of other foreign nationals to purchase a low-cost visa without proof of onward travel.

As word of the entry point spreads, travel agencies and paid influencers have taken to TikTok to promote the trip, selling packages of flights that leave from Mauritania, then connect through Turkey, Colombia and El Salvador, and wind up in Managua, Nicaragua. From there, the migrants, along with asylum-seekers from other nations, are whisked north by bus with the help of smugglers.

“The American dream is still available,” promises a video on TikTok, one of dozens of similar posts from French-speaking “guides” that help Mauritanians make the trip. “Don’t put off tomorrow what you can do today.”

“We wish you success. Nicaragua loves you very much,” a man working for a travel agency says in Spanish in another video.

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The influx of Mauritanians has surprised officials in the US. It came without a triggering event – such as a natural disaster, coup or sudden economic collapse –suggesting the growing power of social media to reshape migration patterns: From March to June, more than 8,500 Mauritanians arrived in the country by crossing the border illegally from Mexico, up from just 1,000 in the four months prior, according to US Customs and Border Protection data.

The new arrivals likely now outnumber the estimated 8,000 foreign-born Mauritanians previously living in the US, about half of whom are in Ohio. Many arrived in the 1990s as refugees after the Arab-led military government began expelling black citizens.

Some who left say they’re again fleeing state violence directed against black Mauritanians. Racial tensions have increased since the May death of a young black man, Oumar Diop, in police custody, with the government moving aggressively to crush protests and disconnect the country’s mobile Internet.

The nation was one of the last to criminalise slavery, and the practice is widely believed to persist in parts of the country. Several Mauritanians who spoke to The Associated Press said police targetted them because of anti-slavery activism.

“Life is very difficult, especially for the black Mauritanian population,” said Sow, 38, who described himself as an activist in the country. “The authorities became threatening and repressive.”

It became difficult to fight, he said, and his life was threatened. So he fled via the new route to Cincinnati, where he’d heard a thriving Mauritanian community was helping new arrivals get on their feet.

Previously, applying for asylum in the US meant flying to Brazil, then risking a dangerous trek through the dense jungle of the Darien Gap. The new route through Nicaragua bypasses that link.

The trip can cost $8,000 to $10,000, a hefty sum that some families manage by selling land or livestock. With economic growth over the past decade, Mauritania has moved into the lower ranks of middle-income countries, according to the UN refugee agency, but the poverty rate remains high, with 28.2 per cent living below the poverty line.