US: Cameroonian asylum-seeker who says he was abused in detention fights deportation ⁰

The asylum-seeker from Cameroon said he resisted when guards insisted he sign what he was told were deportation papers. They wanted his fingerprints.

His thumb and index finger were broken in the struggle in September at the Mississippi lockup.

Within days, he and other Cameroonians were transferred to Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, a rural town southwest of Dallas. There, he and another Cameroonian are waiting to hear about a complaint filed this month by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Freedom for Immigrants, and others that alleges their civil rights were violated by physical abuse that amounted to torture in Mississippi.

“I’m just trying to hold onto another day,” the man said in a phone interview with The Dallas Morning News. He’s known as C.A. in a civil rights complaint to the Department of Homeland Security. He asked that his name be withheld because he fears more persecution if he’s deported to his birth country.

His story raises questions about what happens to people in the sprawling and secretive civil justice system that governs immigrants.

C.A. and another immigrant detained at Prairieland are among the eight Cameroonians who are part of the complaint.

Source: The Dallas Morning