On July 9, 2025, the Trump administration hosted the leaders of Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania, and Senegal at a White House summit. The summit aimed to facilitate US access to critical minerals and other natural resources in these nations, to enhance cooperation in combatting US-designated foreign terrorist organizations, and to position the United States to compete with China’s commercial footprint in Africa. President Donald Trump urged the leaders to accept foreign nationals whom the administration is seeking to deport. Trump pointed to Mauritania’s 2024 agreement with the European Union (EU) on deterring migration, which came in response to the surge of African migrants to Spain’s Canary Islands in 2024 and through which Mauritania has received $600 million in investment.
During his second term in office, President Trump has prioritized barring certain migrants from the United States. After Eswatini, Ghana, Rwanda, and South Sudan all accepted foreign nationals deported from the United States, the administration began pushing to expand the locations for future deportations. A few days after the July 2025 summit, Mauritanian officials held a consultative meeting with the US Embassy in Nouakchott on cooperation to reduce irregular migration to the United States. In December 2025, the Trump administration announced a partial US entry ban on Mauritanian migrants.
The Trump administration is taking a page out of the EU playbook: tying migration externalization—the outsourcing of migration control to third countries—to economic agreements. However, the EU’s treatment of migrants as security threats has only exacerbated racial tensions in Mauritania and has contributed to the surge in Mauritanian migration to the United States. While the Trump administration seeks minerals, not migrants, from Mauritania, its focus on securitizing migration while investing in the country’s mining industry may similarly accelerate migration. If US-Mauritania trade deals create economic growth, that growth will likely accrue to the narrow political elite that dominates the Mauritanian economy, rather than improve living standards for the broader population. Whether or not the United States wishes to foster meaningful economic growth in Africa, the Trump administration is failing to address notable root causes of migration from Mauritania: racial and political grievances.
The Advent of Securitization and the Mauritanian Migration Surge to the United States
As Mauritania is a departure point for migrants seeking to reach the Canary Islands, the EU has sought to work with Nouakchott to deter migration. In 2006, the Mauritanian government participated in the Rabat Process, which established that African and European countries share responsibility for deterring migration to Europe through the Canary Islands and the Strait of Gibraltar. Since then, the EU has spearheaded a series of agreements with the Mauritanian government to combat migration.
Because the EU has made migration to Europe increasingly difficult, some African migrants have crossed the Atlantic Ocean and joined overland routes to the US southern border. Mauritanians have established a migratory route through Nicaragua that travel agencies and paid influencers on TikTok have widely publicized. As a result, the number of Africans apprehended at the US southwest border surged from 13,406 in 2022 to 58,462 in 2023. Mauritanians constituted the largest group, at 15,263 such migrants. According to a 2024 Arab Barometer survey, more than half of Mauritanians prefer to migrate to the United States rather than to other countries.
The limited legal pathways to Europe have contributed to irregular migration.
The surge in attempted Mauritanian migration to the United States illustrates the longstanding pattern of restrictive migration policies leading migrants to undertake alternative routes. The limited legal pathways to Europe have contributed to irregular migration. According to a 2024 report, West African countries accounted for six of the top 10 countries with the highest Schengen visa rejection rates in 2022. The Arab Barometer recorded a significant shift from 2022 to 2024. Its 2022 survey found that only 22 percent of Mauritanians were considering migrating without the necessary papers, a proportion that doubled in the 2024 survey. This surge may not only reflect the paucity of regular migratory routes but also the difficulty of obtaining legal documentation to migrate, especially for Mauritanians of African descent.
Equitable or Not, Economic Growth May Not Necessarily Decrease Migration
The EU has enhanced border security to prevent irregular migration, but it has also invested in economic development in countries such as Mauritania to address what it considers to be the root causes of migration. The 2024 EU agreement brought investment in employment opportunities, training, and entrepreneurship to Mauritania. In February 2024, the US Embassy in Nouakchott similarly emphasized investment and employment opportunities as a means to decrease migration. Unlike the Biden administration, the Trump administration does not use the diplomatic rhetoric of creating jobs specifically for Mauritanians, of increasing legal pathways for migration, or of providing development aid. Rather, it has emphasized business and trade in Africa—especially involving mineral exports—to foster mutual “long-term, sustainable” growth.
Mauritanians would certainly benefit from improved socioeconomic conditions. The proportion of Mauritanians living below the international poverty line increased to 28.4 percent in 2024, from 26.3 percent in 2020. More than half of Mauritanians lack access to basic education, health services, decent jobs, and decent living conditions. While nine percent of Mauritanians experienced severe food insecurity in 2020, the percentage rose to 12.8 in 2024.
Yet in practice, connecting economic growth to tangible socioeconomic improvement is difficult. Mauritania’s economy is highly oligopolistic: fewer than a dozen large conglomerates dominate such key economic sectors as banking, fishery, public infrastructure, construction, the import-export of consumer goods and foods, telecommunications, and insurance. These conglomerates are mostly controlled by families of Arab or Amazigh origin, collectively referred to as the Bidan, who comprise some 30 percent of the population. Because the Bidan elite controls the revenues from mining, the continued growth of mineral exports is likely to widen existing socioeconomic inequalities.
The lighter-skinned Bidan are socially and politically powerful in Mauritania and dominate the security forces and the upper echelons of government. In 1982, Mauritania became the last country in the world to abolish slavery, which was only criminalized in 2007. After decades of enslavement and assimilation, darker-skinned Mauritanians of African descent, known as the Haratin, now share with the Bidan many cultural practices and a common language (an Arabic dialect called Hassaniyya). Despite constituting 40 percent of the population, the Haratin are marginalized both socially and economically. Non-Arabic speaking Afro-Mauritanian ethnic groups, including Fulbe, Soninké, and Wolof, also reside in Mauritania and make up roughly 30 percent of the population.
Haratin and Afro-Mauritanian communities are systematically denied education and economic opportunities in Mauritania. Socially divided from the Bidan, these communities often live in the same urban neighborhoods and work in the same lower-income economic sectors such as agriculture. While historically Afro-Mauritanian ethnic groups were never enslaved, many of them have been subjected to the same ongoing practices of slave labor as their Haratin counterparts. Since the Haratin and Afro-Mauritanians are disproportionately impoverished, inequitable economic growth is likely to fuel political and racial tensions in Mauritania.
Even if the Trump administration promotes policies to rectify inequitable economic distribution, the results may run counter to US migration securitization policies. Economic development will not necessarily deter migration from Mauritania. Rather, studies show that sustainable economic growth of low-income countries is associated with higher levels of mobility, at least in the short to medium term. If Mauritania’s economy grows, Mauritanians will secure additional income to migrate.
Political and Racial Grievances Contribute to Mauritanian Migration to the United States
Understanding migration primarily through economic conditions does not fully reveal its root causes. One survey found that only 23 percent of Mauritanians who had migrated to the United States cited economic reasons for doing so. Many emigrated because the Mauritanian government escalated its crackdown on the anti-slavery movement led by Haratin activists. Despite banning slavery, the Mauritanian government does not enforce its own anti-slavery laws. The UN Commission on Human Rights estimates that more than 90,000 Mauritanians, mostly Haratin, are still enslaved.
Mauritanian migration to the United States dates to the 1990s, when the Mauritanian government expelled Afro-Mauritanians en masse, an episode whose victims refer to as the Passif Humanitaire (“Humanitarian Liability”). While Senegal and Mauritania were at war between 1989 and 1991, the Mauritanian government executed, expelled, and expropriated land from both Senegalese nationals and Afro-Mauritanians. While the government also deported many Haratin, many Haratin army personnel deported Afro-Mauritanians. In 1989, the government revoked an estimated 75,000 Afro-Mauritanians’ citizenship, creating a large stateless population of undocumented Although the Mauritanian government allowed deported Afro-Mauritanians to return in 2008, many were unable to secure government-issued IDs and remain as stateless refugees. In 2011, the Mauritanian government began to formally register Mauritanian citizens, prompting complaints from Afro-Mauritanians and the Haratin, who, as the descendants of slaves, have been systemically denied legal citizenship in Mauritania for generations.
Haratin and Afro-Mauritanian communities are denied education and economic opportunities in Mauritania.
Human rights organizations have stressed that the Mauritanian government has clamped down on free speech to target activists who raise awareness about slavery, racism, and discrimination. The 2021 Protection of National Symbols Law empowered the government to severely restrict online speech and to criminalize activists and political opposition for undermining “national unity.” The government defended the law as drawing a line between constructive criticism and slander, but Mauritanian migrants have cited the ensuing repression as contributing to their decision to leave the country. In June 2025, the Mauritanian government notably used the law to sentence anti-trafficking and minority rights activist Abdoulaye Bâ to prison for a social media post denouncing arbitrary arrests and deportations of migrants.
The Mauritanian government has also repurposed the country’s EU-financed migration control and police forces to extend its targeting of Haratin and Afro-Mauritanians. After the 2024 EU agreement, the government carried out a massive crackdown on West and Central African migrants in the country, even though most of these people had no intention of traveling to Europe. Between January and April 2025 alone, Mauritanian authorities apprehended more than 30,000 irregular migrants in raids and interceptions. Since West and Central African migrants typically reside in Afro-Mauritanian and Haratin neighborhoods, Mauritanian authorities target those neighborhoods. Afro-Mauritanians and Haratin, many of whom lack identification documents, are typically caught up in sweeps of deportation.
In the past, the Mauritanian government did not cooperate with US efforts to deport Mauritanians and refused to issue travel and citizenship documents to Afro-Mauritanians. In 2018, during Trump’s first term, the Mauritanian government feared visa sanctions and issued temporary travel documents that do not grant citizenship and that expire 120 days after issuance. As a result, Haratin and Afro-Mauritanians returned to Mauritania undocumented and subject to arrest, prompting them to migrate again. Many who were deported now live in Senegal.
Alleviating Sociopolitical Tensions
Mauritanians who fled government crackdowns at home have found themselves mired in another crackdown in the United States. President Trump’s slew of executive orders targeting migrants have stoked fear and anxiety among Mauritanian communities in the United States. Although the Trump administration has imposed partial entry restrictions on Mauritanians, the number of Mauritanians willing to travel without proper documentation continues to grow. If the Mauritanian government seeks to deter migration to Western countries, it should take steps to improve political freedoms and to alleviate racial tensions at home.
The views expressed in this publication are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab Center Washington DC, its staff, or its Board of Directors.
