Boko Haram fighters killed three villagers and abducted five children in the far north of Cameroon, where jihadist groups are increasingly active, local officials said Saturday.

The attack took place overnight Thursday to Friday in the village of Oudal, six kilometres (four miles) from the country’s border with Nigeria, where the jihadist group is based, local mayor Boukar Medjeweh told AFP.

The victims were all men and the abducted children were between the ages of three and 15, Medjeweh said.

Mahamat Chetima Abba, traditional chief of the nearby Mozogo commune, confirmed the attack and also attributed it to Boko Haram.

Attacks in this border region by members of Boko Haram and a dissident branch, the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), have become increasingly frequent in recent months, as they have along Nigeria’s borders with Chad and Niger.

Civilians, particularly women and children, are frequently abducted.

The Boko Haram insurgency originated in 2009 in northeastern Nigeria before spreading to neighbouring countries.

Since then, more than 36,000 people have been killed, mostly in Nigeria, and 3 million have been forced to flee their homes, according to the UN.

Source: AFP

Despite a public outcry and and letters from members of Congress calling for it to be stopped, a deportation flight took off on Tuesday afternoon, carrying asylum seekers from Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo back to the countries from which they had fled.

Detainees, through their attorneys and other advocates, had raised concerns that they were going to be deported and that they believed they would be killed by their governments after they arrived. Members of Congress, including Rep. Bennie Thompson and Rep. Karen Bass, sent letters to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, asking the agency to stop the deportations. They cited a complaint made by eight men to the Department of Homeland Security Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties that said they had been forcibly coerced into signing paperwork related to their deportation.

“We urge you to halt the removal of Cameroonians until a fair, thorough, and transparent investigation into the allegations outlined in this very troubling complaint is complete,” Thompson and Bass wrote.

Protesters demonstrated outside the detention center in Texas where the asylum seekers were being held and filmed the buses that took the detainees to the airport.

But that didn’t stop the flight.

The plane left at close to 5 p.m. central time on Tuesday, according to Tom Cartwright, a volunteer with Witness at the Border, an organization that tracks Immigration and Customs Enforcement flights. It stopped in Senegal and then Cameroon before going on to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya, he said.

Not all of the more than 200 Cameroonians and Congolese that detainees said were transferred to a detention facility in Texas to be deported were on the flight. Some of the group remained at Prairieland Detention Center, according to Rebekah Entralgo of Freedom For Immigrants, and a few were pulled from the flight due to individual legal actions taken on their behalf.

It remains unclear exactly how many people were deported on the flight. News articles in Cameroon reported varying numbers of deportees — 57 and 81.

ICE told the Union-Tribune on Monday that the agency could not give information about operations, including deportations that are not yet completed. ICE did not respond to a second request for comment about the deportation flight after it landed.

According to advocates, among those taken off of the flight were two men who were part of the eight who filed the complaint. One of them said his fingers had been broken, and the other said he’d been pepper-sprayed in the eyes. Another man who was part of the eight is also still in ICE custody, advocates said, but the other five are believed to have been deported.

A woman was taken off of the flight because she was identified as a class member in an ongoing lawsuit challenging the practice of limiting how many asylum seekers are processed at ports of entry on a given day, known as metering, as well as its intersection with a Trump administration change to asylum rules known as the third country transit ban. Asylum seekers who were metered before a certain date are not supposed to have the ban applied in their cases, according to the current ruling in the case.

The woman had not passed her screening interview because of the ban, according to court documents, but because of the court ruling she should be given another opportunity to make her case.

Attorneys are concerned that more asylum seekers who were affected by these policies may have been deported on the flight.

Another man was taken off of the flight because a group of Canadian activists convinced officials there to interview him for potential asylum in their country, according to reports from Canadian news outlets.

The client of local attorney Ruth Hargrove was also removed from the flight. She had filed a motion to stay his deportation while the Board of Immigration Appeals decides whether to reopen his case.

After the flight left, Hargrove said, her client’s deportation officer told her that it had been a mistake to take her client off of the flight and that he would soon be deported. ICE didn’t respond to a request for comment on her client’s situation.

According to Hargrove, her client, like many on the flight whose stories are known by attorneys and advocates, was a victim of torture at the hands of his government. She’s still fighting to find a way to protect him, either in the United States or Canada.

“I can’t ever say to him, ‘I’m giving up.’ I say to him that my mantra is what he said to me,” Hargrove said, recounting her client’s daring escape from prison in Cameroon. “What he told me was, ‘I preferred to die getting shot in the back as I ran for my freedom than being forced to kneel and being shot in the back of the head. I prefer to die standing up.’ I said to him, ‘I will keep giving you a voice until I am dead.’”

Advocates are still working to determine what had happened to deportees after they touched down. In Cameroon, they were tested for COVID-19, and those who tested positive were taken to a building near the airport and quarantined for 14 days, according to multiple accounts.

Pat Leach, a volunteer with Freedom For Immigrants who, since January, has become the pen pal of 45 people in immigration custody, said that six people she’d been communicating with were on the flight.

Leach coordinated with Cartwright to communicate with family members to have people ready to try to secure the release of the deportees once they landed.

The Congolese asylum seekers she knew managed to get released, despite a protest rally happening that day near the airport, she said.

Through bribes, family members were able to get a Cameroonian man released from government custody more than 12 hours after the plane landed, Leach said.

“What would have happened to them is they would go from the airport to jail, and jail is where everybody disappears or dies,” Leach said.

She’s still worried the military will go after her friends.

Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune

Over 100 asylum seekers from Cameroon were deported en masse Tuesday afternoon, despite congressional intervention and efforts from activists, who held an action at the Fort Worth Alliance Airport in Texas to try to stop the deportation flights. Among those deported were several leaders of a hunger strike at Pine Prairie Detention Center in Louisiana and two Cameroonian women who fear they were unknowingly subjected to forced sterilizations at Irwin Detention Center in Georgia.

Immigration rights groups say ICE agents coerced the asylum seekers into signing their deportation orders after months of torture and abuse. The asylum seekers say they were held in solitary confinement after joining hunger strikes. Many of them fear they’ll be killed upon their arrival to Cameroon.

Source: Democracynow

Two Cameroonian men slated for deportation from the United States were pulled off an ICE flight moments before takeoff on Tuesday as part of an investigation into abuse they alleged they endured in U.S. custody, according to an ICE official with direct knowledge of the incident and immigration advocates.

The two men are part of a group of eight Cameroonian asylum seekers who alleged ICE coerced them into signing their deportation documents through force, including the use of pepper spray. Others who alleged abuse were never taken to the airport, their lawyers told NBC News. It is not clear, however, if any of the eight have been deported.

The allegations were detailed in a complaint brought on behalf of the men by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Freedom for Immigrants, the Cameroonian American Council and others and sent to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General and Civil Rights and Civil Liberties section.

“I can’t see well still from the pepper spray. As a result of the physical violence, they were able to forcibly obtain my fingerprint on the document,” one of the men, who remained anonymous, said in the complaint.

In response to the allegations in the complaint, ICE spokesman Bryan Cox said: “ICE does not comment on specific matters presented to the Office of the Inspector General, which provides independent oversight and accountability within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. That said, in general, sensationalist unsubstantiated allegations are irresponsible, and should be treated with the greatest of skepticism.”

He added: “ICE is firmly committed to the safety and welfare of all those in its custody. ICE provides safe, humane, and appropriate conditions of confinement for individuals detained in its custody.”

An ICE official said some of the men were kept back in order to be interviewed by the investigating agencies, but that does not mean they will not be deported at a later date.

Human rights groups say those deported are likely to face grave risks upon their return to Cameroon, including the threat of execution.

“Our government utterly failed to provide these individuals the safety and refuge they came looking for,” said Luz Lopez, senior supervising attorney with Southern Poverty Law Center‘s Immigrant Justice Project. “They fled persecution only to be met with ICE detention and a one way flight back to being in harm’s way.”

Source: NBC News

A group of asylum-seekers from Cameroon facing deportation back to their conflict-ridden country say they were pressured with force by U.S. immigration officers to sign their deportation paperwork, and that they and a slew of others facing an imminent return flight are at risk of persecution and death.

The eight men recounted their experiences in a complaint filed by a number of immigrant advocate groups including the Southern Poverty Law Center with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

“Officers grabbed me, forced me on the ground, and pepper sprayed my eyes. They handcuffed me,” said a man identified in the complaint as C.A., who went on to add that an officer broke his finger.

“I was crying, ‘I need to talk to my attorney,’ and I said, ‘They are going to kill me.'”

The man said his fingerprint was forced onto the paperwork needed for his deportation back to Cameroon. The other men’s stories followed similar lines.

The SPLC provided the man’s full name and identification number, as well as another man’s in the complaint to The Associated Press so that specific queries could be made to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Bryan Cox, a spokesman for ICE, said the agency “does not comment on specific matters presented to the Office of the Inspector General, which provides independent oversight and accountability within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. That said, in general, sensationalist unsubstantiated allegations are irresponsible, and should be treated with the greatest of skepticism.”

The men had been in detention in Mississippi, but they have all since been transferred to Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, said Luz Lopez, senior supervising attorney at the SPLC’s Immigration Justice Project.

There, they have joined at least 100 other asylum seekers and potentially up to 200 people for what Lopez said is believed to be a chartered flight, the first in months, that would head to the African nation.

The idea of returning has the asylum seekers, many of whom are saying they face torture or worse in their homeland, very frightened, Lopez said.

“Folks are terrified to go back, they know they’ll either disappear or be murdered,” she said.

It was unclear when the flight would depart, but advocates said the flight may have already left by Tuesday evening, the same day the process of moving people from the detention center to the plane appeared to have started. ICE has not confirmed whether the flight has taken off.

Katie Shepherd of the American Immigration Council said authorities told her that two men, including C.A., had been pulled from the flight on Tuesday afternoon.

ICE does not confirm removals until after they’ve taken place.

Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, and Rep. Karen Bass of California, both Democrats, sent a letter to ICE on Tuesday.

They urged ICE to investigate the allegations of abuse and other concerns before any action is taken regarding the detained asylum seekers.

Asylum-seeking Cameroonians, who are escaping bloodshed that has killed tens of thousands, are mostly English speakers fleeing torture inflicted by a French-speaking government as well as English-speaking separatists. Many share personal accounts of Cameroonian soldiers burning their villages, shooting indiscriminately and torturing any perceived opponents.

Cameroonians began arriving at the U.S. border with Mexico in large numbers last year. They typically flew to Ecuador and traveled by foot and on bus through eight countries. Many died, were assaulted or got robbed in the Panamanian jungle.

Cameroonians have fared extremely well in U.S. immigration courts, with 80% winning asylum claims in the U.S. government’s 2019 fiscal year, compared to a 29% success rate for all nationalities, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Their success rate fell to 53% for the 11-month period that ended Aug. 31, compared to 26% for all nationalities.

It is unclear why the Cameroonians described in the complaint are being flown home by the U.S. government but many from the African nation have been denied permission to stay in the United States under new policies that have put asylum virtually out of reach.

In June, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., knocked down a cornerstone policy of the Trump administration that denied asylum to people who travel through other countries to reach the U.S. border with Mexico without first seeking protection in those countries. The Justice Department is appealing.

The ruling’s impact was diminished by a pandemic-related measure introduced in March — also being challenged in court — to quickly expel people who cross the border illegally and block asylum-seekers at official crossings. The administration has relied on a little-known public health law designed to prevent the spread of disease.

Source: ABC News

AMBAZONIAN GREAT, GENERAL AYEKE KILLED IN BATTLE

Fellow Ambazonians,

The Interim Government of Ambazonia can now confirm that earlier today, Tuesday 13 October 2020, a great Ambazonian warrior was killed in battle.

General Ayeke was unfortunately killed in the County of Lebialem as he commanded a brave battalion of Ambazonian troops in a fierce battle against the invading, marauding and lawless forces of French Cameroun.

General Ayeke leaves Ambazonia a better place for having lived and fought for our independence and freedom. The Interim Government requests all Ambazonians flags to fly at half-mast today to honor the life of this brave Ambazonian warrior and commander.

On this somber day, the Interim Government of Ambazonia pledges that, for his life and sacrifice to our nation, his dream of a free Ambazonia shall come to pass.

General Ayeke’s death is a timely reminder to our young nation on the dangers faced by our heroic forces in this fight for liberation and independence. As a nation, let this day strengthen our collective resolve for freedom and independence.

God Bless General Ayeke’s soul for he died a fighter and a champion for freedom and independence for mankind.

God Bless the Federal Republic of Ambazonia

Thank You,

Dabney Yerima

Two Cameroonian asylum seekers, who fear they were unknowingly subjected to forced sterilizations at Irwin Detention Center in Georgia, are scheduled to be deported on Tuesday.

The women are now imprisoned at Montgomery Processing Center in Conroe, Texas. Advocates are demanding Immigration and Customs Enforcement release them on humanitarian grounds.

Source: Democracynow.org