The Texas A&M Law School Immigrant Rights Clinic is fighting to stop the deportation of Cameroonian immigrants who were severely abused in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. Some were subjected to excessive force that resulted in broken fingers when officers tried to force them to provide fingerprints, while others were pepper sprayed in retaliation for refusing to sign documents. At least one person also reported seeing officers soak detainees in a shower and then tase them. The Immigrant Rights Clinic filed several complaints on behalf of the Cameroonian immigrants to the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties of the Department of homeland Security, and has asked ICE to delay their imminent removal so that their claims can be thoroughly investigated.
Additionally, many of the Cameroonian immigrants were detained and tortured by the military in Cameroon but were not permitted to seek asylum past an initial threshold screening called the “credible fear interview” process. A forthcoming human rights report by the Immigrant Rights Clinic will document the failures of this asylum screening process, the abuses suffered in ICE custody and the fate of Cameroonian deportees, placing these human rights violations within the national conversation on Black immigrant lives and movements for racial justice.
Read more in an article by The Guardian.