Allegations against American Immigration, Customs and Enforcement officers as shocking Human Rights Abuses reported, reflect a TRUMP attack on black immigrants
At African Human Rights Coalition we are particularly aware of the hardship suffered by LGBTQI individuals who seek asylum from the violence they experience in their home countries, where they have no recourse to protection from Government, and where in many instances it is the state actors who cause the harm, through arbitrary arrests, extortion, unlawful detention without trial, torture, disappearances, and killings. One of the ways to seek protection for anyone escaping such, is to exile to a foreign country as a refugee or asylum seeker. As Americans we are compelled to nurture our asylum laws, not decimate them- to provide protection – and not to commit atrocities. As Americans we hold human rights protections dear, as a critical value, and a reflection of who we are as a people. The Trump era has changed all this. We are now in the playing Court of despots, dictators, and those who defile humanity!
This shocking report shows that the United States is partaking in the very cruelty that sent asylum seekers here for refuge! Trump is directly responsible, and must be held accountable, – at first at the voting booth and then at the tribunals that must test our resolve to re-establish our position in the World. As a protector and not an abuser! The racist-led ICE seems to be lashing out at Africans – and this cannot be tolerated.
Getting to America from Cameroon to claim asylum is no easy task – and now this….
Cameroonians say officers choked, beat and threatened to kill them, as lawyers tell of pre-election removal drive as reported by -Julian Borger in The Guardian.
US immigration officers allegedly tortured Cameroonian asylum seekers to force them to sign their own deportation orders, in what lawyers and activists describe as a brutal scramble to fly African migrants out of the country in the run-up to the elections.
Many of the Cameroonian migrants in a Mississippi detention centre refused to sign, fearing death at the hands of Cameroonian government forces responsible for widespread civilian killings, and because they had asylum hearings pending.
According to multiple accounts, detainees were threatened, choked, beaten, pepper-sprayed and threatened with more violence to make them sign. Several were put in handcuffs by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers, and their fingerprints were taken forcibly in place of a signature on documents called stipulated orders of removal, by which the asylum seekers waive their rights to further immigration hearings and accept deportation.
Lawyers and human rights advocates said there had been a significant acceleration of deportations in recent weeks, a trend they see as linked to the looming elections and the possibility that Ice could soon be under new management.
“The abuse we are witnessing, especially right now against black immigrants, isn’t new, but it is escalating,” said Christina Fialho, executive director of an advocacy group, Freedom for Immigrants (FFI). “In late September, early October of this year, we began to receive calls on our hotline from Cameroonian and Congolese immigrants detained in Ice prisons across the country. And they were being subjected to threats of deportation, often accompanied by physical abuse.”
“The reality is that Ice operates in the shadows. They thrive in secrecy,” Fialho added. “We know that the US government is deporting key witnesses in an effort to silence survivors and absolve Ice of legal liability.”
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