Mass crackdown on migrants follows deal signed with the EU to stem migration from source countries in Africa.

Nouadhibou, Mauritania – When Omar*, a 29-year-old bricklayer from rural Gambia, crossed the border into Mauritania in March, he came in search of the better pay he’d heard he could find.

He settled in Nouadhibou, Mauritania’s second-largest city, where he shared a one-room shack with four friends, and found work as a casual labourer on construction sites, earning two to three times more than he had back home.

The oldest of nine children and the son of a rice farmer, Omar was able to save enough to support his family in The Gambia and pay his younger siblings’ school fees.

Then, in August, the National Guard’s armed pick-up trucks arrived in the city, and the police began rounding up migrants to detain and deport.

Nouadhibou’s construction sites became early targets, so, to avoid capture, Omar – who did not have a residence permit – stopped working. He limited his movements to his housing compound in a dusty alleyway in Ghiran, a neighbourhood with a large migrant population, and the adjacent corner store.

But soon, the police began targeting homes. They came day and night – breaking down doors if those inside did not respond immediately.

One evening, police swept through Omar’s compound. He and his friends escaped by fleeing over the rooftops, but with nowhere else to go, they returned later that night.

Still unable to work, Omar and his housemates ran critically short of money, sharing just one small bowl of rice a day, and occasional fish caught by a friend who would sneak through the backstreets to a nearby estuary in the dead of night.

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“All the emotions I go through in one day are hard to explain,” Omar told Al Jazeera in early September.

‘Cruel and degrading conditions’

Al Jazeera spoke to migrants caught up in the government crackdown in Nouadhibou, the capital Nouakchott, and in both Rosso, Mauritania, and Rosso, Senegal – twin cities on opposite sides of the Senegal River, which marks the border between the two countries. Many of those we spoke to have since been pushed out of Mauritania, often to a third country.

The Mauritanian Association for Human Rights (AMDH) estimated that in March alone, 1,200 people were deported. Of those, about 700 had residence permits allowing them to legally work in Mauritania.

The Mauritanian authorities have not released deportation figures, but according to a statement by government spokesman Houssein Ould Medou, 130,000 migrants entered the country of 5