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Four Black men are facing deportation to Mauritania, where modern-day slavery thrives. The CIA has found the African nation has the world’s highest rate of slavery with almost 20 percent of the population in slavery according to Newsweek.

Abraham Sy told WCPO he doesn’t understand why his brother-in-law, Amandou Sow one of the men facing deportation.

“Everybody here, they work hard and pay taxes,” Sy said. “He takes care of his family, and they come here, grab him [for] no reason.”

Trump vowed to launch a task force to end human trafficking and modern-day slavery during a White House meeting last week USA Today reports. However, Trump administration has increased in deportations to Mauritania compared to the Obama administration, deporting 83 people to the country in 2018, compared to five in 2015.

Lynn Tramonte, director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance said: “It makes me angry, but this is their level of governance: photo ops and saying they’re doing things, saying that they care, and then doing the exact opposite.” Tramonte said a large sum of the Mauritanians lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. “It’s not surprising, but it’s frustrating.”

A few senators wrote to the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Sectary of State Mike Pompeo last week, asking they stop the deportation process, noting the dangers deportees could face when they are back in Mauritania.

In the letter written by several lawmakers including Senator Kamala Harris, “Most Mauritanians in the United States arrived here seeking refuge from government-led racial and ethnic persecution and extreme violence.”

“For the following two decades our government declined to deport Mauritanians because of the dangerous and potentially life-threatening conditions they would face if they were returned to their country of origin” according to Black Press USA.

Slavery in Mauritania is race-based, with members of the darker skinned Haratine minority suffering bondage at the hands of members of the lighter skinned Beydan community. Beydan people comprise 30 percent of the country’s population but have an overwhelming influence on politics.

Jakub Sobik, a spokesperson for Anti-Slavery International,

“The government turns a blind eye because traditionally they are the affluent ethnic group who owned slaves,” Sobik said. “They have run the country and still do.”

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