[Congressional Bills 119th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 378 Introduced in House (IH)]
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119th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. RES. 378
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the plight of
Cameroonian immigrants and the continued turmoil and instability in the
nation of Cameroon merits a designation of humanitarian parole and
calling on the Department of Homeland Security to create a humanitarian
parole program for Cameroonians fleeing this violence.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
May 5, 2025
Mr. Espaillat (for himself, Mr. Ivey, Mr. McGovern, Mr. Cleaver, Ms.
Adams, Ms. Pingree, and Ms. Castor of Florida) submitted the following
resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, and
in addition to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, for a period to be
subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration
of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee
concerned
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the plight of
Cameroonian immigrants and the continued turmoil and instability in the
nation of Cameroon merits a designation of humanitarian parole and
calling on the Department of Homeland Security to create a humanitarian
parole program for Cameroonians fleeing this violence.
Whereas Cameroon is experiencing five simultaneous ethno-armed conflicts that
have coalesced into a severe humanitarian crisis, as identified by the
United Nations and other international organizations, which includes the
Anglophone Crisis, the Boko Haram insurgency, socioeconomic clashes
between herders, fishers, and farmers, state-sanctioned violence, and
the conflict spillover from the Central African Republic;
Whereas each conflict has led to significant loss of life, displacement, and
human rights violations;
Whereas the Anglophone Crisis in the Northwest and Southwest Regions began in
2016 with protests by teachers and lawyers against the appointment of
local officials that challenged the Anglophone region's sense of
autonomy and escalated into an armed separatist movement seeking
independence for an unrecognized state called ``Ambazonia'', and over
4,000 civilians have been killed, more than 600,000 people have been
internally displaced, and over 70,000 have fled to Nigeria;
Whereas educational institutions remain targets of violence, affecting over
500,000 children, and the local economy has collapsed due to insecurity;
Whereas the Boko Haram insurgency in the Far North Region has persisted since
2014, with Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa launching deadly attacks on
villages and civilians;
Whereas these foreign terrorist organizations are responsible for more than
3,000 deaths in the Lake Chad Basin, their terror has displaced over
250,000 individuals, and the insurgents engage in mass abductions,
suicide bombings, and forced marriages, terrorizing communities and
exacerbating insecurity in the region;
Whereas the farmer-herder and fisher-herder clashes are driven by climate change
and land and water scarcity, are exacerbated by religious strife between
Muslim, Christian, and Traditional Spiritualist communities, and entire
villages and religious sites have been destroyed, worsening
intercommunal relations;
Whereas the political crisis affects the entire country, with President Paul
Biya maintaining power since 1982, and suppressing any political
opposition;
Whereas concerns over President Biya's age, declining health, and ability to
govern have intensified political instability, and security forces have
carried out arbitrary arrests, cracked down on opposition figures,
violated human rights, and shut down the internet to silence dissent;
Whereas the conflict spillover from the Central African Republic has
destabilized the East and Adamawa Regions due to incursions by armed
Seleka and Anti-Balaka militias;
Whereas the influx of refugees and the movement of armed groups across the
border have increased violence and criminal activity in these regions,
and economic, ethnic, and religious tensions between Cameroonian
communities and Central African refugees have escalated, leading to
further instability;
Whereas, due to ongoing armed conflict, continued human rights abuses, and other
extraordinary and temporary conditions in Cameroon that prevent
Cameroonian nationals from safely returning to their country, the
Department of Homeland Security designated Cameroon for temporary
protected status (TPS) in April 2022 and then redesignated and extended
TPS for Cameroon in October 2023, providing short-term relief for
Cameroonian immigrants who have been continuously residing in the United
States since October 5, 2023;
Whereas recent credible reporting suggests that the Trump administration intends
to allow the TPS protections applied to Cameroonian nationals to expire
in June of this year, which will further exasperate and expand the
severity and scope of the harm incurred by the Cameroonian people, and
will likely intensify the ongoing security and humanitarian crisis in
the West African country;
Whereas Cameroonian immigrants who have fled to Nigeria have previously faced
extradition back to Cameroon where they risk an unfair trial and the
possibility of torture;
Whereas the journey from Africa to seek refuge in the Western Hemisphere is
particularly perilous and occasionally deadly for Cameroonian migrants,
as demonstrated in March 2023 when a boat carrying nearly 3 dozen West
African immigrants, a majority of whom were Cameroonian migrants en
route to the United States Virgin Islands, capsized, killing 3
Cameroonians and leading to a search for 13 additional bodies that were
never found;
Whereas, in December 2023, the European Union (EU) signed a pact to facilitate
the deportation of asylum seekers and limit migration to the bloc,
leaving Cameroonian migrants fleeing violence or ethnoreligious
persecution particularly at risk;
Whereas amid stricter EU immigration policies, Cameroonian asylum seekers are
increasingly seeking protection in Latin America and the United States,
where they often face intense discrimination, detainment, poor
conditions of confinement, and deportation;
Whereas, in the United States, despite only making up around 7 percent of the
noncitizen population, Black immigrants represent over 20 percent of
those in deportation proceedings on criminal grounds, constituting
revealing evidence of the disparate treatment of Black immigrants;
Whereas, in August 2020, Cameroonian detainees at Louisiana's Pine Prairie
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center launched
their third hunger strike that year to bring attention to their
experiences of racism, unwarranted threats, and excessive abuse by ICE
officials;
Whereas, although only 6 percent of migrants detained by ICE are Black, 28
percent of abuse complaints over a recent 6-year period (2016-2021) were
reported by Black detained persons, and nearly half of the calls (43
percent) by Black nonbinary-detained persons included reports of abuse;
Whereas immigrants from majority Black countries, such as Cameroon, that are in
ICE detention facilities are sent to solitary confinement at a
disproportionately high rate, pay higher bonds, and face more rejections
for asylum than immigrants from nonmajority Black countries;
Whereas a recent report from Human Rights Watch reveals that Cameroonian
authorities, including police, paramilitary officers (gendarmes),
military personnel, and other Cameroonian state actors have subjected
returned deportees, and family members of those deportees, to serious
human rights violations to punish them for fleeing, including rape,
torture, physical abuse, extortion, arbitrary arrest and detention, and
inhuman and degrading treatment in detention;
Whereas this aforementioned report by Human Rights Watch further indicates that,
upon the arrival of deported migrants back in Cameroon, Cameroonian
authorities have confiscated the identity documents of these Cameroonian
citizens in an attempt to contain, monitor, and possibly arrest these
individuals at a later date on fabricated charges;
Whereas section 212(d)(5)(A) of the Immigration and Nationality Act grants the
Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security the authority to
establish parole programs for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant
public benefits (``Special Humanitarian Parole''); and
Whereas, since the creation of the Humanitarian Parole process in the 1950s, the
United States Government has successfully established over 120 different
programmatic or categorical parole programs to address the circumstances
of deserving, at-risk immigrant populations from nations in Europe,
Asia, and Central and South America, but has never created such a
program for any of the 54 African nations in the program's 70-year
history, raising concerns of anti-Blackness and anti-Africanness in the
United States historical immigration policy that deserve to be addressed
and corrected: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
(1) recognizes the dire and ongoing humanitarian crisis for
Cameroonian migrants that are fleeing violence and widespread
human rights violations in their home nation, in addition to
the discriminatory treatment often faced by Black and African
immigrants;
(2) calls on the Secretary of Homeland Security to use the
authority under section 212(d)(5)(A) of the Immigration and
Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1182(d)(5)(A)) to establish a special
humanitarian parole program for Cameroonian nationals who are
seeking refuge in the United States to grant these immigrants
much-deserved humanitarian relief; and
(3) urges the United States Government to allocate
appropriate resources to assist in the successful resettlement
of Cameroonian immigrants, including comprehensive support for
Cameroonians benefitting from Special Humanitarian Parole
status.
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