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Cameroonian migrants in the US who face deportation after President Donald Trump terminated their protected status told Semafor they feared for their lives due to ongoing conflict in the central African country.
On Friday the US Department of Homeland Security said it was ending the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program for an estimated 7,900 Cameroonians from June amid a sweeping immigration crackdown.
Tensions in Cameroon’s minority Anglophone regions have resulted in more than 638,000 people being internally displaced and left at least 1.7 million others in need of humanitarian aid, according to a 2024 Human Rights Watch report. One Cameroonian migrant, who said he fled to the US in December 2022 after his father was murdered, told Semafor he fears for his safety if he was forced back: “President Trump knows there’s war in the Anglophone regions but he wants to deport us.”
A DHS spokesperson was not immediately available for comment
“[President Trump is] forcibly returning people to violence, human rights violations, and a humanitarian crisis in Cameroon that continues to place its citizens at severe risk,” said Gustavo Torres, executive director of CASA, a Maryland-based migrant advocacy group. “Cameroon clearly meets the statutory basis for the redesignation of TPS.”
Another Cameroonian migrant, who spoke to Semafor on condition of anonymity, urged the US government to help resolve the crisis in Cameroon before sending Cameroonians back. He said that he decided not to return to the country when he traveled to the US with a visitor visa in 2022 because he faced repeated police harassment in his hometown of Bamenda, one of the southwestern cities affected by the war.
“Police always accused me of manufacturing local weapons for Anglophone fighters,” the former welding technician said. He said some welders in the town fabricated arms for the separatists.
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Thousands of Cameroonians have entered the US since the separatist conflict — widely known as the Anglophone crisis — broke out in the country’s English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions in 2016.
It is the result of decades-long claims by Anglophones, who make up 20% of the majority French-speaking country, that they are being marginalized by the Francophone-led government.
Protests by Anglophone lawyers and teachers, who called for greater autonomy for the regions, met a heavy response by government forces. Their demonstrations later morphed into calls for separation from Cameroon, sparking an even more deadly response from government forces.
At least 6,000 people have died due to the constant clashes between government forces and Anglophone separatists since 2016.
Step Back
The US TPS revocation is part of a wide-scale crackdown on US immigration, one of Trump’s flagship campaigns. His move to expel 500,000 Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans, who were granted humanitarian parole by former US President Joe Biden, has been blocked by a federal judge.
In March, Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, deporting more than 200 Venezuelan men to an infamous mega-prison in El Salvador. The men were labeled as members of the Tren de Aragua gang.
Room for Disagreement
Cameroonian authorities have criticized citizens trying to leave the country. President Paul Biya, in power since 1982, said it should not even be an option. But the number of Cameroonian migrants worldwide has risen sharply, hitting 440,000 in 2020, compared to 250,000 in 2013, according to the Scalabrini Institute for Human Mobility in Africa. Just this month the US ambassador to Cameroon warned in a local newspaper: “Don’t risk your future: the US is cracking down on illegal immigration.”