Dozens of Cameroonian community members and allies cheered on attorneys from CASA, the national immigrant advocacy organization with 73,000 lifetime members, at a rally in Hyattsville, Maryland, on Monday.
The “Rise for TPS Rally for Cameroon and Afghanistan” shined a spotlight on the terminations of those in the U.S. that have a Temporary Protected Status.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced in April that both Cameroonians and Afghans would have their TPS terminated.
TPS designates certain countries that cannot prevent unsafe returns of its nationals. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services grants Temporary Protected Status to eligible nationals who are already in the United States.
After the rally at CASA’s Multicultural Center, Ama Frimpong, the legal director at CASA, spoke to WTOP about their case against President Donald Trump’s administration.
“We are here today because as part of the Trump administration’s broader attempt to attack and erase Black and brown immigrants in this country,” Frimpong said. “We filed a lawsuit a few months ago, when they initially attempted to terminate. We received a decision from the District Court judge at the end of last week.”
Frimpong believes the judge’s decision was wrong, which caused CASA to file a Fourth Circuit appeal on Monday with the hope that a stay will be issued to stop the terminations from going into effect.
“The timing is critical, because (Monday night), TPS for Afghanistan is set to expire at midnight,” Frimpong added.
There are 17,000 people that are affected by the change in TPS from Afghanistan and Cameroon, said Jossie Flor Sapunar, CASA’s national communications director.
“Maryland has the highest diaspora of Cameroonian immigrants. And so, for this state, the economic impact, the social impact, the educational impact,” Sapunar said.
After the event, a man from Cameroon named Amos was chatting with Sapunar.
He spoke of his home country in Central Africa, and how DHS said the situation in Cameroon is normal and Cameroonians could go back, which he says is “absolutely not true.”
“The conditions under which TPS was granted for Cameroon, given that there was political violence, there is an ongoing civil war for nine years now and counting, in which people are dying, displaced refugees all over the world — that situation hasn’t changed,” Amos said.
Amos has called the U.S. home for the last two years, after attending school here 20 years ago. He said he fears for his life if he is forced to return to Cameroon.
“There are kidnappings, there are situations where people are disappeared. There are situations where communities are burned down,” he said. “What we are talking about, it’s real and it’s ongoing, and nothing has changed.”
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