YAOUNDE, Cameroon—Lawyers for some migrants deported by the United States to Cameroon said a second deportation flight arrived in Yaounde on Monday, days after reporting that the Trump administration sent nine people to the Central African nation secretly last month.
Alma David, a lawyer with the U.S.-based Novo Legal Group, told The Associated Press that a group of third-country nationals who were not Cameroonian citizens arrived on the Monday flight. David and Cameroon-based lawyer Joseph Awah Fru said they believed there were eight such third-country nationals on board, though they had not yet spoken directly to everyone on the plane.
David and Fru said they are providing legal advice to some of the nine migrants who were deported to Cameroon last month. They said the group consisted of five women and four men from other African countries and that they expected to offer counsel to the new arrivals as well.
Fru said his focus for now was “handling their shock.” A White House official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, acknowledged the second deportation flight to Cameroon but did not provide details.
The New York Times first reported last Saturday on the nine people the U.S. sent to Cameroon in the earlier deportation, a step that advocates and lawyers described as raising legal and safety concerns because the deportees were being transferred to a country they have no ties to.
David said most of the nine deported last month had protection orders from U.S. immigration judges that prevented deportation to their home countries out of fear of persecution or torture. She said some of the orders related to the migrants’ sexual orientation and others related to political activity.
David and Fru said they believed deporting migrants to a third country like Cameroon could act as a legal “loophole,” because it meant the U.S. was not sending people directly to the countries where they sought protection. “That is why the United States did not send them directly to their countries,” Fru said, adding that there was “cause for concern that they might be harmed, that their lives are threatened.”
David said the nine deportees last month included people from Zimbabwe, Morocco and Ghana, and she said none of them had criminal records aside from driving-related offenses. She said she had not yet received details about the eight people who arrived on Monday.
Cameroon, where President Paul Biya has ruled since 1982, was described by David as the latest African destination to receive third-country deportation transfers under deals with the Trump administration. The AP reported that at least seven African nations have struck such deals, including South Sudan, Rwanda, Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana and Equatorial Guinea, and that some have received millions of dollars for accepting deported migrants based on documents released by the U.S. State Department.
The AP said the U.S. has spent at least $40 million to deport roughly 300 migrants to third countries in Africa, Central America and elsewhere, citing a report compiled by Democratic staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee released last week. According to internal administration documents reviewed by the AP, there are 47 third-country agreements at various stages of negotiation, with 15 concluded and 10 at or near conclusion.
In a statement to the AP on the Cameroon deportations, the U.S. State Department said it had “no comment on the details of our diplomatic communications with other governments,” and that implementing the Trump administration’s immigration policies is “a top priority.” The department said it was “unwavering in our commitment to end illegal and mass immigration and bolster America’s border security.”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security confirmed there had been deportations to Cameroon in January but did not provide specific information about third-country migrants, and it did not comment on the second plane. In a statement to the AP, DHS said it was applying immigration law, saying, “We are applying the law as written. If a judge finds an illegal alien has no right to be in this country, we are going to remove them. Period,” and that third-country agreements “are essential to the safety of our homeland and the American people.”
Activists and lawyers told the AP the U.S. should account for the fact that sending migrants to third countries with poor human rights records can risk denials of due process and exposure to abuse, as the process moves from U.S. courts to foreign detention and transfer systems. Last year, the AP reported, the U.S. deported five nationals to Eswatini, where their detentions have been the subject of legal challenges. Eswatini has been accused of clamping down on pro-democracy protests, and the king has been accused of using public money to fund a lavish lifestyle.