Cape Town — The Trump administration exposed dozens of Cameroonians, who fled their country between 2019 and 2020, to human rights abuses, including rape and torture, by unfairly denying them asylum and deporting them, says a new report.
Human Rights Watch (HRW), the New York-based lobby group, investigated the plight of nearly 100 Cameroonians expelled from the United States betweem 2019 and 2021. It focused in particular on 80 to 90 people who were deported on two flights in October and November 2020 amid strong protests in the U.S.
Human Rights Watch is now urging the Biden administration to allow those wrongly deported to return to the U.S. and reapply for asylum.
The group said in a 149-page report published on Thursday that Cameroonian authorities detained or imprisoned at least 39 of those deported from the U.S., many without due process or in inhumane conditions, for periods ranging from days to months.
"Human Rights Watch documented 14 cases of physical abuse or assault of 13 deported people, 13 by Cameroonian authorities – including nine in detention – and one by armed separatists," the report added.
"State agents raped three women in custody, subjected a man to forced labour, and severely beat returnees, often during interrogations. Several of these cases amount to torture."
A man named as "Paul", deported in October 2020, said military personnel broke down the door of his mother's home and subjected him to a beating, saying "You were deported from America?... You are the ones sponsoring … [separatist] fighters."
An interviewee named "Marie" was accused of destroying the name of the country.
Read here the harrowing allegations of Marie and two other women who were detained
" State agents harmed or targeted the family members of at least seven deported people," the report said. "While looking for returnees, government forces allegedly shot and killed a woman's sister, abducted a man's 11-year-old son, and severely beat a man's mother. Others were arbitrarily detained, extorted, and harassed."
The HRW report, entitled "How Can You Throw Us Back?": Asylum Seekers Abused in the US and Deported to Harm in Cameroon, said Cameroonians constituted the biggest group of U.S. asylum applicants from Africa in the years 2019 to 2021. It identified at least 190 deportations in 2019 and 2020, about half of which were carried out in October and November 2020.
Almost all of those interviewed for the HRW report fled Cameroon between 2017 and 2020 as a result of the conflict in the Anglophone region of the country, where the government is fighting armed separatist groups.
" Nearly everyone on the October and November flights had sought and was denied asylum," the report said. "Human Rights Watch research indicates that many had credible asylum claims, but due process concerns, fact-finding inaccuracies, and other issues contributed to unfair asylum decisions."
The report added: ""Many also reported experiencing excessive force, medical neglect, and other mistreatment in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in the US."
During the final year of the Trump presidency, the number of Cameroonian asylum applications granted by U.S. courts dropped from 79% to 59%. The Trump administration slashed refugee resettlement in the U.S. to historically low levels, according to the non-partisan American think tank, the Pew Research Center.
The proportion of asylum applications granted by the Biden administration has increased, although numbers are lower. The new administration cancelled a planned deportation flight to Cameroon soon after taking office but is reported to have deported at least three Cameroonians last October. It is under pressure to give added protection to Cameroonian citizens by granting them " temporary protected status" in the U.S.
Lauren Seibert, a researcher in the Refugee and Migrant Rights Division of Human Rights Watch who compiled the report, said the U.S. government had "utterly failed Cameroonians with credible asylum claims by sending them back to harm in the country they fled, as well as mistreating already traumatized people before and during deportation".
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The report said that by returning Cameroonians to face persecution, torture, and other harm, the U.S. had violated a fundamental principle of international refugee and human rights law.
HRW reports that the Cameroon Advocacy Network (CAN), a coalition of immigrant rights groups and immigrants in the U.S., has urged the Biden administration to allow Cameroonians deported between 2020 and 2021 to return to the US for "urgent humanitarian reasons."
"The suffering that Cameroonians deported by the U.S. have been through is heartbreaking and makes it crystal clear that Cameroon is not safe for return," HRW reported Daniel Tse, CAN coordinator, as saying. "If the Biden administration hopes to make the U.S. immigration system more humane, it should rectify the wrongs done to Cameroonian asylum seekers and halt deportations to Cameroon."
The full HRW report is available on the Human Rights Watch website
