© migration.control.info
Moctar Dan Yaye, member of Alarme Phone Sahara, and Hassan Ould Moctar have written a report for Migration-Control.info:
Detained, Deported, Abandoned: A note on the situation of migrants in Mauritania
Radio Télévision Suisse also broadcast a report on 14 August:
Arrestations massives de migrants en Mauritanie
Mauritania, neighbouring country of Mali, Senegal, Algeria and Morrocan controlled West Sahara, is home to migrant communities from various other West African countries. As a result of repressive migration policies implemented in the Maghreb countries on the Mediterranean coast, it has also become a main country of departure for African people trying to reach EU countries, especially Spain via the Atlantic passage to the Canary Islands. In response to this, the European Commission signed a migration partnership agreement with the Mauritanian government in March 2024, which promised Mauritania €210 million for preventing “irregular migration”, mirroring a now classic neocolonial pattern of the EU externalizing its borders to countries of the South.
Although racist discrimination against Black persons and deportations of people without Mauritanian nationality are not new phenomena, the EU-deal has lead to repeated waves of massive raids and deportations of citizens on Niger, Mali, Senegal, Guinea Conakry and other countries.
According to the Mauritanian Association of Human Rights (AMDH), 1200 people were deported in March 2025. According to Human Rights organisations and eye witnesses, the raids are spreading fear among members migrant communities, many of whom are working as cleaners, builders, plumbers, painters etc.
Eyewitnesses are telling about people running in fear when police pickups show up for raids, people thrown to the floor, beat up, handcuffed and thrown on the back of pickups.
Many of those who get deported end up in Rosso on the Senegalese side of the border and Gogui on the Malian side of the border, often blocked there under precarious conditions.
