Wilfred Tebah doesn’t begrudge the U.S. for swiftly granting humanitarian protections to Ukrainians escaping Russia’s devastating invasion of their homeland. But the 27-year-old, who fled Cameroon during its ongoing conflict, can’t help but wonder what would happen if the millions fleeing that Eastern Europe nation were a different hue. As the U.S. prepares to welcome…
Grim stories from asylum seekers caught up in Americaâs cranked-up deportation machine
They fled here from some of the worldâs most dangerous places â only to be forced back.
By Sarah TowleUpdated December 31, 2020, 1:00 p.m.
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Detained immigrants at the Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, La., in 2019. Under the Trump administration, thousands of asylum seekers have been held in such facilities rather than being released to sponsors while they press their asylum cases.Gerald Herbert/Associated Press
A few dozen men and women shuffled up the stairs to the Boeing 767 lashed in five-point restraints: ankles bound in cuffs joined by thick chains, wrists manacled, and the whole rig secured to metal belts draped heavily about each waist. Frightened, depressed, and faint from lack of food and water, one of the men, a Cameroonian singer, tripped and fell. A cadre of armed guards immediately swarmed him.
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Claudia and Vera are two of 140 Cameroonian women who were held at the Don Hutto immigration detention facility in Texas earlier this year. They were temporarily released in the summer – but not before they helped lead mass protests against the conditions inside the facilities.
In the facility, more than 500 women are held in cramped, unsanitary cramped cells, sometimes without access to basic needs like soap or showers. Those held in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody have frequently reported ice-cold temperatures, giving these facilities the nickname ‘ice-box’. There’s even been outbreaks of flu, scabies and other diseases. Hutto has also been in the spotlight for allegations of sexual abuse, where one victim claimed she faced indefinite periods of solitary confinement as ICE officials tried to get her to retract her statement.
The United States Has Failed Cameroonian Asylum-Seekers
December 13, 2020 | Fleeing a civil war shaped by the West, Cameroonians have been met on American shores with hostility, high-risk conditions, and now unconscionable deportation.
When Franklin Agbor, a former Cameroonian gendarme, disobeyed an order to kill civilians, he was labeled a turncoat. Agbor was patrolling in Cameroon’s Southwest region, which Anglophone separatists regard as part of a breakaway state; his decision not to pull the trigger on behalf of the national government carried a death sentence. With his life in imminent danger under President Paul Biya’s authoritarian regime, the soldier had no choice but to flee Cameroon.