'Issa is in Mauritania.' Advocate says Forest Park man deported to African homeland

Mark Curnutte | Cincinnati Enquirer

Update: 8:20 a.m., Oct. 17, 2018: Issa Sao, a Forest Park man who'd built a life there with an American wife and two American children, has arrived in his native Mauritania.

He was deported Tuesday by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) after five months in federal custody. He and a few other Mauritanians, advocates said, were flown out of the country on an ICE charter flight.

"Issa is in Mauritania," advocate Lynn Tramonte told The Enquirer via text message Wednesday morning. She'd just gotten off a call with Sao's wife, who confirmed her husband had landed in his homeland. His family, lawyers and advocates fear that Sao, a member of an Afro-Mauritanian slave class, will be enslaved, tortured and possibly killed.

The northwest African country is regarded as the most notorious slave state in the world, according to documents produced by the U.S. Department of State and Central Intelligence Agency.

Previous reporting:

7:58 p.m., Oct. 15, 2018: Issa Sao's attorney, Maria Otero, posted on Twitter Monday night that the Forest Park husband and father of two children will be deported Tuesday.

"Issa will be deported tomorrow in a chartered plane to a country that doesn't recognize him as a citizen, where he will be likely be tortured, enslaved, or killed," Otero wrote.

https://twitter.com/mariaaleote/status/1051979765765279744

5:35 p.m., Oct. 15, 2018: The U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals on Monday afternoon denied the emergency stay of removal of a Forest Park father of two children, clearing the way for his deportation to his native Mauritania.

Issa Sao, 37, who is married to a U.S. citizen and has two citizen children, has been in custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since May. He was arrested on a regular check-in appointment with immigration officials in Columbus.

"I don't know the reason why yet," said his attorney, Maria Otero, of Advocates for Basic Legal Equality (ABLE) in Dayton, Ohio. "I spoke with his wife earlier this afternoon, a couple of hours ago, when he was calling her."

Otero said Sao's case was different than many other Mauritanians who are facing deportation. He already had received a denial for a stay from the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.

Advocates said late last week that they feared that Sao would be moved from federal custody in Louisiana to Arizona, where ICE would put him and possibly three other Mauritanian men on a charter flight back to the known slave state in northwest Africa. They would be hand-cuffed on the flight.

Otero said that Sao's travel document secured by ICE from the Mauritanian government – known as a laissez-passer, which allows a person into a country but not legal passage out – had expired.

Mauritania is not granting men like Sao and other Cincinnati area men legal passports because the country considers them non-citizens. They are known as Black Moors, or Afro-Mauritanians, a slave caste considered property by the lighter-skinned Arab Maghreb ruling class.

"We are confused at this point how he would get in," Otero said.

Lynn Tramonte, director of Ohio Immigrant Alliance, said Sao's travel document was good for 120 days from May 17.

"His wife is understandably distraught. He is distraught," Tramonte said. "ICE is trying to round up these guys who wouldn't get on a commercial flight."

Original story: Two Mauritanian men who have lived and worked with permission in Greater Cincinnati for 14 and 18 years respectively are in danger of deportation to a country that their lawyers and advocates say will torture, enslave or ultimately kill them.

Issa Sao, 37, of Forest Park, married to an American and the father of two U.S. citizen children, ages 11 and 3, was arrested in May at a check-in appointment with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Columbus.

Oumar Thiam, 53, of Kennedy Heights, also was arrested in Columbus during a June check-in with ICE.

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Human rights advocates and attorneys held a conference call Thursday afternoon to express their concerns for four Mauritanian men – including Sao and Thiam – that they will say will be placed on an ICE charter flight early next week, handcuffed and sent back to a country "that has the highest rate of slavery in the entire world."

"This is a national problem, in Michigan, in Ohio," said Patrice Lawrence, policy director of the UndocuBlack Network, a Washington, D.C.,-based advocacy group for current and former undocumented black people. "We see this as a back-door Muslim ban."

Mauritania is a Muslim country in which Afro-Mauritanians, like Sao and Thiam are non-citizens. Many are members of a slave caste who have been enslaved for generations by the lighter-skinned Arab Maghreb ruling class, according to the U.S. Department of State and Central Intelligence Agency.

Sao and Thiam face similar prospects as Amadou Sow of Lockland, whom The Enquirer profiled Tuesday. Mauritania was the last nation in the world to abolish slavery, acting in 1981, although U.S. officials say laws making slavery a crime are poorly enforced.

"Right now, I think they will kill us all," Sao told The Enquirer in a phone call from an ICE detention center in Louisiana on Thursday afternoon. "I will be killed. That's all I can say. I will be tortured and killed. That is what they do to us."

Attorneys for both men have filed for emergency stays of removal and motions to reopen their asylum cases with the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA). Late Thursday, the appeals board granted the emergency stay for Thiam, though he remains in custody. No decision has been made about reopening his case.

Sao, at the time of his arrest, had a legal work permit and was employed full-time by a pharmaceutical company. He paid taxes and moonlighted as an Uber driver to support his American family. Sao's asylum application was denied in 2004. The BIA denied his appeal in 2009. A final order of deportation was issued, though Sao continued to keep his check-in appointments in Columbus and was granted work permits.

"He was not a fugitive," said his attorney, Maria Otero, of Dayton, Ohio. "He did everything right."

Thiam has been in the United States for 18 years and is married "with family in the area," said his attorney, Patty Hernandez, of Toledo, Ohio. "He has worked in a factory and loves to fish. He has done everything he was asked to do.

"This is exactly the type of man we want in this country. Instead, we are sending him back to severe torture and his death."

Human rights advocates said Thursday that the Trump administration has reversed a policy of previous administrations, Democrat and Republican, that recognized deported Afro-Mauritanians would likely face a return to slavery.

The U.S. deported 79 Afro-Mauritanians in 2017 and is on pace to deport 50 more this year, advocate groups say.

Ohio has the largest numbers of Afro-Mauritanians and Mauritanian-Americans in the United States, the advocates say citing numbers provided by community leaders and mosques.

"The number around Cincinnati (is) between 3,000 and 4,000 and about 2,000 to 3,000 in (the) Columbus metro area," said Ibrahima Sow, of Columbus, the son of a Mauritanian immigrant and member of the Ohio New African Immigrants Commission, created by the General Assembly in 2009. Census estimates are not available on country of origins from many African nations.

"This administration has waged war on black immigrants and refugees," he said.

Amadou Sow, 49, the married father of five U.S.-citizen children, remained Thursday in federal custody in Morrow County, Ohio, north of Columbus. His attorney has filed an emergency stay of deportation and motion to reopen his asylum case with the BIA.