Cameroonian asylum-seekers warned in late 2020 that if they were deported from the United States, as was imminently scheduled, they would be imprisoned and abused by their government back home.
Attorneys and other advocates called on the Trump administration to halt deportation flights to the country, where rampant human rights abuses had been documented. But, in October and November of that year, the planes took off as planned.
A Human Rights Watch report published Thursday has confirmed what many predicted — the United States deported people on those flights to serious harm at the hands of the Cameroonian government.
"The system is failing. It is not doing what it is supposed to be doing," said Lauren Seibert, the lead researcher on the report. "The U.S. asylum system has dramatically failed these people, these Cameroonians with very credible asylum claims who laid out exactly what would happen to them and pointed to past experiences and were told in a number of cases that they were not credible."
Her research found that a combination of prolonged detention, a biased legal system and abuses from U.S. immigration officials contributed to these failures. As a result of those failures, numerous deported asylum-seekers experienced imprisonment, torture and other abuse in Cameroon — in some cases because they had fled to the U.S.
The report says that many of the deportees tried asking U.S. immigration officers to let them remove their asylum documentation from their belongings in the moments before deportation, but the officials didn't let them. Cameroonian government officials found the documents once the plane landed, which led to arrests.
A woman identified as Mercy was held at a military facility in Cameroon after being deported from Texas. She said she was careful not to pack any asylum documents in her belongings but suspected that U.S. immigration officials had added it.
At the military facility, she was tortured, raped and interrogated about what she told the U.S. government. Military officers told her details they said they had from her file from the United States. She recognized the information as what she told a U.S. asylum officer toward the beginning of her case.
"I could not understand how it was possible for them to [know] what I told [asylum] officers in the U.S., since I was told that it was all confidential," she told Human Rights Watch.
The Biden administration initially paused deportation flights to Cameroon, but those restarted in October, according to the report.
None of the U.S. government entities involved responded to requests for comment from the San Diego Union-Tribune in time for publication.
'Enforced disappearances'
In the more than 150-page report, Human Rights Watch documented 13 cases in which Cameroonian government officials tortured or otherwise abused and assaulted deportees. They also found that at least 39 deportees were imprisoned, some in circumstances that the report said may amount to "enforced disappearances." The report notes that the total number is likely much higher.
"They said, ' ... You left and thought we wouldn't get you. ... You will die in this jail,'" said a man identified in the report by the pseudonym Richard, who was imprisoned for a month after his deportation. "They took off my [clothes], so I was naked, and they beat me ... for 14 days, every day. ... They were making me feel that's the end of my life."
Many said they were targeted by government officials because they had left to seek asylum in the United States.
In addition, researchers learned of several cases in which government officials "beat, abducted, detained, harassed, and in one case reportedly killed," relatives of deportees.
Seibert said one of the most difficult parts of researching the report was hearing how broken people felt because of the way they'd been treated in the United States.
"The human rights in America that I always looked up to, now I don't believe these human rights exist, because of the way that we've been treated and sent back to our country, where we are going through pain," a woman identified with the pseudonym Esther told human rights researchers.
Esther was deported in October 2020 after losing her asylum case. Once in Cameroon, she was arrested, beaten, tortured and raped by members of the country's military police force, she told researchers. While held in detention there for a month and a half, she was given only a bit of bread to eat each day. She also told researchers that her sister was killed by Cameroonian soldiers looking for her. The soldiers shot at the house where Esther was staying, and while Esther managed to flee, her sister did not.
Anglophones, or English speakers, have long faced discrimination in Cameroon. Francophones, or French speakers, hold power in the country.
In 2016, anglophones began protesting the way they were treated, and the Cameroonian government responded with violence. As the situation deteriorated over the following years, anglophone Cameroonians increasingly appeared at the U.S.-Mexico border to ask for help.
But the asylum system is notoriously capricious, as the Union-Tribune found in an analysis of 10 years of court records.
And policies implemented by the Trump administration, including one that automatically barred anyone who had passed through another country between their country and the United States from getting asylum doomed many of the cases to deportation orders.
The report notes that between 2019 and 2020 the asylum grant rate for Cameroonians dropped by about 24 percent, a much larger decrease than the 6 percent overall drop in asylum grants between the two years.
Most of the Cameroonians interviewed by Human Rights Watch all had their cases heard by judges with higher-than-average asylum denial rates, the report said. More than half of them were heard by judges who denied over 90 percent of cases.
The Executive Office for Immigration Review, the agency within the Department of Justice that is responsible for immigration court, told Human Rights Watch that it would investigate the organization's findings, including allegations of unprofessional behavior among some of the judges.
"Immigration judges exercise their independent judgment while deciding cases based on the record before them and the law applicable to each respondent's unique circumstances," the agency wrote in a letter to Human Rights Watch. "Given the complexity of the immigration laws, immigration judges will vary in their interpretation and application of those laws."
'Destroyed'
All of the people interviewed by Human Rights Watch are either in hiding or have fled Cameroon again.
"Every deported person Human Rights Watch spoke with expressed continued fear for their lives, health, safety, or freedom," the report says.
"Many of the people Human Rights Watch interviewed were still recovering from injuries caused by abuse, or from illnesses due to prolonged detention in horrific conditions, but most could not afford medical treatment," it added. "Nearly all were physically, psychologically, or emotionally broken down; some were — in their words — 'destroyed.'"
Most of the deported Cameroonians had spent one to three years in immigration detention in "jail-like" conditions, the report said. Some were held in the San Diego area after crossing at the San Ysidro Port of Entry to request protection. They never saw the United States outside of custody.
Researchers documented 24 cases of "violence, excessive force and other abuses" by U.S. immigration officials. Some of those allegations surfaced in the days before the deportation flights — several Cameroonians told the Union-Tribune in October 2020 that they had been beaten and forcibly coerced into signing paperwork related to their deportations. A complaint was filed on their behalf with the Department of Homeland Security Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
After the deportation flights, further allegations surfaced — that ICE had placed several Cameroonians in a restraining device in a manner that amounted to torture.
ICE responded at the time by saying that the agency takes allegations of abuse seriously and that people in its custody are treated in safe and humane ways.
The Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, did not respond to Human Rights Watch for its report. Contracted private prison companies responsible for the detention facilities where the Cameroonians were held — LaSalle Corrections, the GEO Group and CoreCivic — gave responses to Human Rights Watch denying allegations of mistreatment.
The report urges the United States to allow Cameroonians deported in 2020 and 2021 back into the United States to present their asylum claims again and to hold hearings on their treatment in U.S. custody. It also calls for Cameroonians already in the U.S. to receive temporary protected status, allowing them to live and work here while conditions in their country remain dire.
"It's not safe — it's not safe for anyone to be forcibly returned there," Seibert said. "This report clearly shows that."
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