Last week, the UndocuBlack Network along with the Texas A&M University School of Law’s Immigrant Rights Clinic and five co-signing organizations, filed a new civil rights and civil liberties complaint that implicates ICE in the use of an FDA-registered medical device and human restraint (The WRAP) to threaten, coerce, and punish asylum seekers.
UndocuBlack: ICE is Torturing Black Immigrants
While the footage is infuriating, it’s important that we sound the alarm on the vast abuse of Black immigrants and demand accountability.
Cameroon is in the midst of a humanitarian crisis and internal armed conflict characterized by massive internal displacement, state-sponsored violence, war crimes, and critical shortages of essentials including water, food, housing, and healthcare.
These conditions make a safe return to Cameroon impossible, and the U.S government must act immediately to extend protection from deportation to Cameroonians living in the U.S. The COVID-19 pandemic has only intensified the humanitarian crisis in Cameroon, where violence and heavy rains have catastrophically degraded infrastructure essential to the delivery of humanitarian aid and pandemic relief.
Currently, three concurrent humanitarian crises, one of which in the far north region is amidst ongoing armed conflict while the Anglophone Northwest and Southwest regions are characterized by widespread violence and human rights abuses by both government forces and armed groups, as well as massive internal displacement.
Hundreds of civilians have been killed in Cameroon in the past year in the Anglophone Northwest and Southwest regions, where violence has been acute since late 2016, as armed separatists seek independence for the country’s minority Anglophone regions. Violence has displaced tens of thousands of people in the past year, adding to the hundreds of thousands who have fled their homes since the start of the violence.
Designating Cameroon for TPS would help protect an estimated 40,000 Cameroonians living in the country already. Furthermore, TPS for Cameroon would protect Cameroonians living in the U.S. from being sent back into a dangerous country in which over 720,000 people have been displaced, where children are burned alive, and protesters are being tortured.
The U.S government needs to designate a temporary protected status, which is intended to protect nationals and habitual residents of countries experiencing extraordinary and temporary conditions from being returned to those countries if they are not able to return in safety. In September 2020, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations announced a resolution condemning violence and human rights abuses by Cameroonian security forces, including suppression of free speech, detention of government critics, sexual violence, torture, extrajudicial killings, and the burning of entire villages.
Despite the wide and continuing range of risks in Cameroon, the rate of granting asylum for Cameroonians in U.S. immigration courts dropped from 81% in fiscal year 2019 to 62% in fiscal year 2020. Cameroonians, along with asylum seekers from other African countries, have faced increased detention under the Trump administration and still face detention and deportation from the Biden administration.
The recent videos and pictures are undeniable evidence of Black and Brown immigrants being abused at the hands of ICE and CBP, and while traumatic, further cement UndocuBlack Network’s position that immigration is a Black issue.
At every turn, we see the urgent need for racial and migrant justice for our communities. These issues also reinforce the responsibility of Congress to pass a true, clean pathway to citizenship for undocumented people in this country through green cards via the reconciliation process right now.
Granting Cameroonians in the U.S a Temporary Protected Status is not only humane but grounded in the principle of non-refoulement under international law, the United States government needs to act immediately to extend protection from deportation to Cameroonians living in the U.S.
The organizations that submitted the complaint are:
UndocuBlack Network
African Communities Together
Black Alliance for Just Immigration
Cameroon Advocacy Network
Haitian Bridge Alliance
Texas A&M Immigrant Rights Clinic
Witness at the Border
