Cameroonian Deportation Protections Terminated by Trump DHS

The Trump administration will terminate deportation protections for several thousand Cameroonian immigrants in the US, adding to a series of recent moves to curtail temporary humanitarian relief for immigrants.

The Department of Homeland Security determined that Cameroon no longer meets the requirements for a Temporary Protected Status designation, according to a Federal Register notice released Monday. TPS allows immigrants to stay in the US with work authorization for up to 18 months when conditions like armed conflict make it unsafe to return to their home countries.

DHS in recent months has also terminated TPS protections for Venezuelans and Afghans in the US. And it’s revoked an extension of protections for Haitians issued by the Biden administration. A TPS designation for South Sudan was automatically extended this month without a new determination by DHS.

The agency is defending those TPS cancellations against legal challenges in multiple federal courts, including one lawsuit filed last month already challenging the termination of protections for Cameroonians.

Monday’s notice acknowledged that Cameroon is still experiencing two major conflicts involving extremist insurgent groups in the Far North and English-speaking separatists in the Northwest and Southwest of Francophone country. But DHS found that those conflicts are contained to limited regions and Cameroonian immigrants as a result can return to a majority of the country without facing threats to personal safety.

The termination will go into effect 60 days after the notice’s publication in the Federal Register on June 4.

Casa Inc. and Georgetown Law School have already challenged TPS terminations for Cameroon and Afghanistan in a lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the District of Maryland.

DHS estimated that about 5,200 immigrants from Cameroon hold TPS under the current designation. A decision on whether to renew or terminate the TPS designation for Cameroon was required by April 8 but no official announcement came from DHS after that date passed.

The US Supreme Court last month allowed DHS to move forward with stripping TPS protections for 350,000 Venezuelans after it was initially blocked from doing so by a lower court order.