Photo credit: Cincinnati Enquirer
Hundreds of Mauritanians who have fled the west African country have been settling in Cincinnati.
Fox News reports that 8,500 of the migrants who escaped from state violence arrived in the US from March to June.
Although slavery has been criminalized in Mauritania, the practice persists in parts of the country. Several Mauritanians claimed the state police had targeted them because of their anti-slavery activism. A lot of Mauritanians are finding their way to Cincinnati from a route posted on Tik Tok and WhatsApp that flows from Mauritania to Turkey, then Central or South America to the US.
The CEO of Interfaith Community Resource Center, John Keuffer said, “We just had 1,000 Africans show up in the community. We don’t know where they’re from. We don’t know how to communicate with them. It created quite an isuue for us.”
He revealed that the migrants have been coming to Valley Interfaith for about a year saying they’re starting to find their footing with the situation. they can’t speak English and a few speak French.
