At the airport in Nicaragua, the migrants all knew in advance to ask for a man who is featured in a popular TikTok video thanking Mauritanians who come to the United States for trusting him.
Mohamed was well along a zigzag journey from his native Mauritania in West Africa, not knowing precisely where he would wind up and not caring — just as long as it was somewhere in the United States.
Before he fled his country in May, Mohamed knew little of his intended new home. He could place the US capital in Washington. He had heard of Miami, mostly as a tourist destination. And he knew that in New York City, there was a place called Times Square. A group of mostly Venezuelans and Haitians with US immigration appointments wait in Matamoros, Mexico.But many migrants now cross the border without friends or family to take them in, said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute and co-author of a recent study about the rising costs of providing shelter and other services to recent arrivals.
“We all want to be humanitarian,” Castro said. “But if migrants are being sent to one specific destination, it’s going to overwhelm.”interviewed four Mauritanians in Buffalo, including Mohamed, and two in Manhattan. The interviews in Buffalo were conducted through an Arabic translator; the ones in Manhattan were done in French. The migrants did not know one another before leaving the troubled West African nation, which, in 1981, became the last country in the world to abolish slavery.
All six of the Mauritanians eventually crossed the border by Lukeville, Arizona, then flew to New York after being briefly detained in Tucson.
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