‘Waiting for us to crack’: In Cameroon, the victims of Trump’s deportations face uncertain fates

“Welcome to the temporary migrant shelter.” In a residential neighbourhood in the Cameroonian capital of Yaoundé, a government compound has been transformed into a place for people with nowhere else to go.

Behind its high clay-coloured walls, 20-odd people share dorm rooms sparsely furnished with bunk beds.

Several days after her arrival, Barbara* is still struggling to get her bearings.

“I feel really bad, I have no family here, I don’t know anyone, and most people only speak French,” she said in English. 

The young woman had fled persecution in her homeland Ethiopia to the US, hoping to build a new life for herself. But in April this year, she was deported without warning by US immigration authorities to the Central African country of Cameroon, a country utterly unknown to her.

‘They put me on a plane, and I landed here’

Born in the state of Tigray in the north of Ethiopia, Barbara left her country after war broke out between federal government forces and the region’s Tigray People’s Liberation Front. The conflict is believed to have killed more than 600,000 people between 2020 and 2024. 

Fleeing persecution, she travelled to Brazil at the end of 2024 before making her way to the US border by bus. The young woman was detained by border police on arrival and sent to an immigration detention centre in Louisiana. 

Several months later, a judge granted her “withholding of removal”, a legal protection distinct from asylum that nonetheless prevents recipients from being deported to their home country on the grounds that they would more likely than not face persecution.

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Despite this measure, Barbara would remain in the detention centre for several more months – until she was abruptly bundled on board a flight to Cameroon on April 28, 2026. 

“Police came to get me and told me I had to go back,” she said. “I was so shocked. They put me on a plane and I landed here.” 

Within the walls of the Yaoundé migrant centre, people from almost a dozen African countries – Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe – all have similar stories. 

Soraya* said she fled Ghana after her family found out about her sexual orientation. 

“In Accra, people I know are looking for me,” she said. “They want me dead.”

Soraya had also been granted a protection measure in the US – before being deported without warning. 

Legal loopholes

To be granted “withholding of removal” in the US, an applicant must show that they have more than a 50 percent risk of suffering persecution in their home country for reasons of race, religion, nationality, belonging to a particular social group or for their political beliefs.

But this protection does nothing to prevent recipients from being deported to countries deemed “safe” – that is to say, where deportees wouldn’t be exposed to the same risk of persecution that they would in their homeland. 

The administration of US President Donald Trump has wasted no time in launching itself at this loophole. Having promised to bring an end to what he describes as an “invasion” of migrants, Trump has struck a number of bilateral agreements with what have been dubbed "third countries". 

The aim is clear: to expel migrants who are legally protected from being deported to their home countries, and to send a warning to those hoping to follow in their footsteps.

“It’s precisely because these people have been granted this protection in the United States that they are sent here,” said Cameroonian lawyer Joseph Awah Fru, who provides legal assistance to migrants deported to Yaoundé. “The US needed a ‘blank-slate’ country.”

Secret deals

More than 35 “deals” have been signed so far, the majority of which have been struck with Latin American countries, like Mexico, Panama, El Salvador and Costa Rica, or African states including Cameroon, Ghana, Sierra Leone, DR Congo, Eswatini, the Central African Republic and Equatorial Guinea. These agreements have facilitated the deportation of more than 25,000 people. 

But while the Trump administration has been stepping up the rate of deportations, the actual content of many of these agreements remains shrouded in mystery. 

“Most of these are secret agreements that governments have not submitted to Parliament for approval,” said Beatrice Njeri, a Kenyan lawyer and a member of a coalition defending the rights of deportees. “There is neither openness nor transparency.” 

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As part of a consortium of 26 media outlets coordinated by Forbidden Stories, RFI and FRANCE 24 spent six months investigating the secret deals struck between the administration of US President Donald Trump and several African countries. These so-called “third countries” have agreed to host undocumented migrants detained by ICE and deported from the US.

From Ghana to Cameroon and Eswatini, our journalists spoke to the people deported to countries utterly unfamiliar to them. 

She said that deportees often found themselves isolated in these third countries.

“They are being held in quasi-military conditions, treated as prisoners,” she said. “They usually have very limited access to a lawyer, so that they can find out what options are available to them, because governments want to force them to return to their home countries – despite the danger.”

In the case of Cameroon, the only publicly available document confirming the deal is an exchange of diplomatic notes that took place in December 2025, published in June by the US State Department.

As outlined in the note, both Yaoundé and Washington undertook to “arrange the transfer from the United States to the Republic of Cameroon of certain third-country nationals present in the United States”.

For its part, Cameroon agreed to treat these deportees in a manner consistent with its obligations under international law, and assured that they would not be subjected to persecution or torture, either in Cameroon or in any country that Yaoundé would send them on to.

The actual terms of the deal are still opaque. According to an investigation by the New York Times, the agreement appears to have been reached after Washington directly imposed financial pressure on the Central African country.

The US reportedly threatened to suspend a payment of some $30 million intended for the country office of the UN Refugee Agency. The payment finally went through on January 9 – six days before a plane carrying the first deportees from Louisiana touched down in the country.  

A US government website said that the funding was intended “in support of third-country national arrangement negotiations”.

The UN refugee agency denied that the funds were earmarked for the resettlement of deportees, insisting that the money would be “allocated and used in accordance with its mandate”.

A source close to the Cameroonian government confirmed to FRANCE 24 that an agreement had been reached between Washington and Yaoundé, apparently negotiated by President Paul Biya himself, before the first deportations took place. The president's office did not respond to requests for comment.

The source said that the deal, which was struck in total secrecy, was meant to “improve” the relationship between both countries and strengthen cooperation on the economic and security fronts. 

At the end of August, the two countries held an inaugural “US-Cameroon Bilateral Economic and Commercial Dialogue” in Yaoundé. During the event, the US announced an investment of $7 billion in Cameroonian industries ranging from tech, critical minerals, infrastructure and energy.

Deported without documents

In Yaoundé, the deportees allege they were stripped of their passports by US authorities, who have held onto them since their departure.

“When we arrived, we weren’t allowed to leave the centre,” said Soraya, who was on the first flight that landed in Cameroon on January 15. “We were treated like criminals.” 

Unable to move around freely, some of the deportees took drastic measures – to little result.

“We decided to go on a hunger strike in protest, and that’s why they said they were going to give us identity documents that would allow us to move around freely,” she said. “But they only gave us a piece of paper valid for just two months that we could show if we were stopped by police.” 

“The migrants are housed and fed, but they have no money,” Awah Fru said. “They can leave the centre, but the authorities warned them that they would not be held responsible if something happened to them. Their freedom has been violated.”

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The source close to the Cameroonian government defended the measures.

“When you don’t have your papers in a country, you are required to restrict your movements,” they said.

For weeks now, Awah Fru has been making frequent visits to the centre to try to ensure the deportees’ rights are upheld. On August 5, the lawyer lodged an appeal on behalf of 36 migrants deported to Cameroon between January and May 2026 with the Yaoundé Administrative Court. He is seeking to suspend the agreement with the United States on the grounds that the deportations put them at risk of persecution and torture.    

“From the moment that Cameroon agreed to welcome these people onto its territory, it has the responsibility to protect them like refugees,” he said. It’s a campaign that the lawyer has waged by himself – and not an easy one. 

Constant pressure 

During his first visit to the centre on February 17, Awah Fru and the four journalists accompanying him were briefly detained by the judicial police – an act that only deepened the climate of fear among the deportees, who largely refuse all contact with the media. 

While in detention, the journalists were forced to delete the videos they had recorded and were warned by the police not to do any more work on the story. The source close to the government described their detention as “an unfortunate incident by a handful of overzealous police”.

“There’s no omerta around this case,” they insisted.

Despite these assurances, the Cameroonian government still hasn’t responded to FRANCE 24’s application for a media visa, submitted for this investigation.

Because of this, the testimonies of the deportees had to be recorded remotely. 

The source close to the government insisted that Cameroon was a “welcoming country” where the deportees “are treated well”. The migrants have reportedly been visited by multiple officials from the justice and foreign affairs ministries. 

They have also met with representatives from the UN Refugee Agency and the UN’s International Organization for Migration.

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The latter agency plays a crucial role in the lives of those held in the detention centre – particularly those who decide to return to their home countries.

“The IOM representatives don’t tell us that they’re going to force us to return to our home countries, but that they can help us if we wish to do so,” one of the deportees said. “The government representatives, on the other hand, tell us that we must return to our home countries.”

“Where someone asks us to help them return to their country of origin, or to another country where they have the legal right to stay, we do so only after individualised counselling and protection screening,” the agency said in a statement, adding that the decision needed to be “freely” made.

“Our commitment in no way constitutes an endorsement of the decisions that led to the deportation of these people,” a spokesperson added.

‘They’re just waiting for us to crack’

Despite the difficult situation they’ve been put in, both Barbara and Soraya hope that with their lawyer’s help they can be granted asylum in Cameroon.

“I’ve heard there are human rights issues here,” Barbara said. “But if I go back to my country, I know what will happen – I have no choice.”   

“Here, we wake up and each day is like the day before it,” Soraya said. “We have to beg for everything – they’re just waiting for us to crack and agree to go home. But most of us can’t go home. That’s true for me too, even though I know Cameroon isn’t any safer for me.”

In a grim irony, Soraya has been deported to a country where the laws against homosexuality are even more repressive than in her homeland. Homosexual acts are punishable by up to five years in prison in Cameroon, compared with three years in Ghana. 

Among the first deportees sent to Cameroon, two other women – both from Morocco – were like Soraya and granted protection measures in the US due to their sexual orientation. Both women decided to return to their home country despite the risks, choosing to live in hiding rather than remain locked up in a strange land.

Gisèle, another deportee in the centre who fled the fighting between the DR Congo and Rwanda, has abandoned her plans to seek asylum in Cameroon for health reasons. Suffering from a thyroid condition, she has never been able to obtain her medication at the centre in Yaoundé, despite her repeated requests.   

Worried that her health would only get worse, she finally agreed to be sent back to the DR Congo after five months behind the centre’s walls. 

*Names have been changed at the interviewees’ request. 

This article has been adapted from the original in French by Paul Millar.

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