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Restraints lie on the tarmac as personal belongings of immigrants who entered the United States illegally are loaded onto a plane for a November 2018 deportation flight to El Salvador.
Yesterday was immigration day for the Biden administration, but today is deportation day. Another flight is set to take off for Cameroon, sending undocumented individuals back to their home country, despite Biden’s promise of a deportation moratorium. You can thank a Trump-appointed federal judge for this circumstance.
Days after taking office, Biden began the 100-day moratorium. But it didn’t last long. A federal judge in Texas temporarily blocked the moratorium, honoring the request of state officials in Texas. The initial temporary restraining order lasted two weeks, and the judge subsequently added another 14 days. The Biden administration can’t appeal the decision until a ruling is officially granted on February 9.
The ruling did not require that the Biden administration immediately deport hundreds of migrants, just that it couldn’t have an explicit moratorium policy. But Wednesday’s scheduled flight to Cameroon and possibly other African countries comes after hundreds of deportations, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement appears to be carrying on as it did under Donald Trump. The Associated Press reported that 15 people were removed to Jamaica on January 28; 269 to Guatemala and Honduras on January 29. One of the women deported last Friday was a witness to the 2019 El Paso massacre at a Walmart, which targeted Latinos and left 23 dead.
The Biden administration deferred comment to the Department of Homeland Security, which did not respond to a request for comment.
Tom Cartwright, a volunteer with Witness at the Border who tracks deportation flights, confirmed the flight data with the Prospect for the Wednesday flight. He said the flight will leave Alexandria, Louisiana, on Wednesday at 3 p.m. and arrive in Cameroon on Thursday.
The Biden administration issued new guidance on deportations, instructing ICE to modify its priorities to focus on deporting those considered a national-security or public-safety threat, or those who had crossed the border recently. The guidance took effect Monday, but it’s unclear whether it will affect the flights scheduled for tomorrow.
Lynn Tramonte, director of Ohio Immigrant Alliance, said that, because Biden has said he intends to honor America’s obligations under international treaties, these deportations would be a violation of “non-refoulement,” the principle that a government cannot deport people to a country where they will be persecuted. The U.S. has adhered to this principle in treaties signed after the Holocaust.
Tramonte believes the Biden administration could stop the deportations—even temporarily—without running afoul of the Texas judge. “The stakes are too high to keep blindly deporting people,” she said.
Last fall, hundreds of Cameroonians were deported after being forced to sign their own deportation papers and experiencing other torture in DHS custody. Many are still missing and fear for their lives; some had their papers confiscated and faced arrest upon deportation. An ongoing investigation into abuse at the ICE detention centers where they were held has not yet released results.
A conflict between the Francophone government and an Anglophone separatist movement has made Cameroon dangerous, and forced many to seek asylum in the United States. Their deportation would seemingly violate the refoulement principle.
“The people we are talking about were denied asylum under the system set up by Trump, which was rigged to ensure almost no one could make a claim, and if they did, they could not win,” said Elissa Diaz, co-chair of the Interfaith Immigration Coalition.
Up until the very last moment, Trump’s ICE was busy deporting people. A flight on the last day of Trump’s presidency deported asylum seekers back to Senegal, Gambia, Ethiopia, and Mauritania, Tramonte told the Prospect.
“They should be concerned about sending people to death,” Tramonte added. “There are still people missing from the flights who were deported.”
On Tuesday, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) called for an immediate halt to the scheduled deportation of Cameroonian and other African asylum seekers. “ICE is accelerating pending flights for many of these asylum seekers—including those living in Maryland and close relatives of my constituents—who escaped torture and death in their home countries, only to be sent back into imminent danger without fair or complete consideration of their asylum requests,” he said in the statement. “This is unacceptable and goes against our values as a nation.” Maryland has the largest population of Cameroonians in the country.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement appears to be carrying on as it did under Donald Trump.
Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY) shared in a statement that his staff had helped stop the January 18 deportation of constituent Paul Pierrilus to Haiti, where he is not a citizen, at the last minute. But the reprieve was temporary. Pierrilus, a financial consultant from the French territory of St. Martin, remained detained in Louisiana until Monday, when he was deported. “ICE is a rogue agency,” Jones said in the statement. “With the help of right-wing operatives on the federal bench, ICE is choosing to ignore President Biden’s deportation moratorium. Our community is tired of watching our family members, our friends, and our neighbors ripped from their homes.”
In an interview with NBC, Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) called on Biden to take executive actions to protect migrants and asylum seekers. “Immediate action is needed to begin to address the harm that Trump did,” she said. Bass claimed that 60 Cameroonians would face deportation on Wednesday’s flight. The flight also includes those who were part of Louisiana’s Pine Prairie detention center hunger strikers.
Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, did not respond to a request for comment.
On Tuesday, Biden signed three executive orders to reverse Trump immigration policies. In one, he plans to direct the Department of Homeland Security to create a task force to reunite families separated under the Trump administration. There are still hundreds of families separated, and some may never be reunited. Two other executive orders call for a comprehensive review of all of Trump’s immigration policies that limited asylum or blocked access to the asylum system. The administration will also review policies that stopped funding to countries with significant net migration to the U.S., and policies that slowed legal immigration, such as making it more difficult to get green cards or complete the citizenship process.
According to a press release, the Biden administration plans to implement “a comprehensive three-part plan for safe, lawful, and orderly migration” by addressing the underlying causes of migration, working with regional partners to “provide protection and opportunities to asylum seekers and migrants closer to home,” and ensuring that migrants and asylum seekers can access the immigration system. Biden also plans to re-establish the Task Force on New Americans, and conduct a review of Trump policies that have blocked access to the legal immigration system.
The Senate voted to confirm Alejandro Mayorkas as Biden’s secretary of Homeland Security. He will be the first Latino and first immigrant DHS secretary. Advocates hope that the confirmation will mean that Biden’s immigration agenda will move faster.
Previously, the administration extended Temporary Protected Status to Syrians, allowing individuals to retain their TPS status through September 2022. On day one, the administration reinstated Deferred Enforced Departure for Liberians, which temporarily halts their deportation. The latter also allows employment authorization for covered Liberian nationals. Biden has also temporarily halted border wall construction and ended the Muslim ban, which blocked travel from several predominantly Muslim countries.
Although a deportation moratorium could temporarily stop flights, advocates like Sylvie Bello, executive director of the Cameroon American Council, say that the administration should designate Cameroon for Temporary Protected Status. Last December, Human Rights Watch also called for TPS status for Cameroon. “After five years of conflict in Cameroon, no one is pushing for Cameroon TPS, but when rain falls in one country, everybody does backflips for hurricane-affected countries,” Bello said. “The only reason is because this is happening in Africa and to Black people.”
“All the anti-Blackness in immigration is real,” she added. “It’s coming from the organizations which have access to the White House and Congress yet erase immigration relief for Cameroonians.”
