‘I feel like I’ve been treated like a slave’

YAOUNDÉ, Cameroon (AFP) — Ayana was deported to Cameroon from the United States, where she had legally lived nearly all her life, and now faces uncertainty, far from her family, in an unfamiliar country. Born in a refugee camp in Sudan, she arrived in the US aged two and is among hundreds of people, including those with legal protection, deported to African countries over the last 18 months. “When I was given a map and they told me, ‘You’re in Cameroon,’ I said, ‘What the heck is Cameroon?’ I didn’t even know,” she told AFP.

Ayana — whose name AFP has changed for security reasons like all those interviewed for this story — has been caught up in US President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, which involves shipping people that the US cannot legally send home to “third countries”. Cameroon is part of a growing list of African countries willing to accept US deportees that includes Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea and Liberia. For the first time since arriving in late May, Ayana summoned the courage to go out, and sat in a bar in the capital, Yaounde, sipping white wine and chain-smoking.

“I was a bit afraid to go out,” she said. The 40-year-old has no memory of Africa, and home is San Diego, California, where she studied business and became a nursing assistant and mother, she said. Several of her family serve in the US military.

About 50 people — from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Angola, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Senegal, Zimbabwe, and Morocco — have arrived in Cameroon since January. They include LGBTQ people, even though homosexuality is considered a crime in Cameroon, where authorities have made no official comment about the deportees. Shackled US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents picked up Ayana as she went to renew her residence permit.

On the flight to Cameroon her hands and feet were shackled. “I feel like I’ve been treated like a slave,” she said. “I feel like my rights have been violated throughout the entire process.” Ayana had an Eritrean mother and an Ethiopian father who fled the war between their two countries and were admitted to the United States.

“Since I’m not Sudanese, I have no birth certificate, so...I can’t go there,” she explained. “I can’t go to Ethiopia since I wasn’t born there or Eritrea either.” Even if she had agreed to be sent to one of these countries, deadly conflicts are…