One year ago, Trump administration ICE officials used pepper-spray, choke holds, the WRAP torture device, and other forms of violence to forcibly deport Cameroonian, Congolese, and other African refugees to countries they fled, propelling a nationwide legal and advocacy movement to stop these cruel practices. From this sprung the Cameroon Advocacy Network (CAN), led by people born in Cameroon who came to the U.S. in search of safety and were met, instead, with detention, abuse, and deportation.
The Biden administration continues to carry out Trump’s policy, sending people to death, torture, and indefinite detention—instead of using its executive authority to protect them in the United States.
Over 200 immigration, racial justice, labor, human rights, and faith-based organizations recently sent a letter to the Biden administration demanding an immediate designation of Temporary Protected Status or Deferred Enforced Departure for Cameroon and an end to deportations.
Several concurrent humanitarian crises in Cameroon force people to run or be killed. The situation in Cameroon is dire, characterized by extra-judicial killings, torture, arbitrary detention, and targeted violence. In addition to the Boko Haram armed conflict in the far North, Cameroon has one of the most globally-ignored humanitarian crises in its Anglophone North-West and South-West regions, characterized by widespread violence and human rights abuses by both government forces and armed groups.
People in Cameroon are also subjected to state-sponsored human rights violations, including restriction of freedom of expression and association. Yet, U.S. policy under all recent presidential administrations has denied Cameroonians a chance to obtain freedom, deporting asylum seekers as seen recently with the mass deportation at Del Rio.
After making the heart wrenching decision to leave home and a long and arduous journey, Cameroonian people seeking asylum are detained in the U.S., often in remote parish and county jails far from immigration lawyers and family. Detained in these horrible conditions without adequate access to attorneys, they try to make their cases for asylum before “immigration judges” more likely to wield a rubber “deportation” stamp than a gavel. These deportations are summarily and carelessly ordered, despite the certain dangers that await. This is simply a routine procedure of refusing Black bodies from seeking refuge.
CAN’s leaders are members of the Cameroon diaspora who have directly confronted the U.S. immigration system and/or flights to liberate their family members who fled danger and certain death. Working with Haitian Bridge Alliance, RFK Human Rights, UndocuBlack, CASA of Maryland, African Communities Together, Alliance in Defense of Black Immigrants, and others, Cameroonian men and women have bravely exposed abuses inside U.S. immigration jails, including practices that amount to assault, forced sterilization, and torture.
In November 2020, a civil rights complaint was filed about some of these practices, and in October 2021, organizations filed another complaint with the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. The new complaint details ICE’s use of The WRAP to immobilize people afraid of being deported and has been used on people deported to multiple countries in Africa. The WRAP is applied on top of five-point shackles, binding people’s legs together and cinching them up at a 45-degree angle, in some cases for hours, leaving them shrieking in pain.
Said Daniel Tse with CAN: “Deporting people to unsafe conditions and the hands of their persecutors is cruel and deadly. It cannot be justified by any administration, much less one that claims to value human dignity and wants to ‘build back better.’ Cameroonians feel that nowhere is safe for them to turn, and that fear is truly unlivable. People who once led full, comfortable lives are now like walking ghosts, the threat of deportation always over their heads. But we also know our rights and our value as members of the human family. Ending deportations to Cameroon and designating the country for Temporary Protected Status are two urgent, reasonable steps the Biden administration must take today to prioritize the restoration of dignity and protection of Black migrants.”
(Backgrounder from Cameroon Advocacy Network and the Interfaith Immigration Coalition)
Cameroon Advocacy Network is an international coalition of activists and organizations seeking Temporary Protected Status for Cameroon. CAN’s goal is to unify efforts to protect immigrants and displaced individuals affected by the crises in Cameroon while spreading awareness to expose the root cause of migration from Cameroon. The Cameroon Advocacy Network advocates for the dignity and rights of Cameroonians, as a critical part of the collective liberation of all Black immigrants from intersectional forms of oppression and marginalization.
Follow CAN on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @camadvocacy https://cameroonadvocacynetwork.org/
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