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ICE Officials ‘Tortured African Immigrants’ in Mississippi to Sign Their Own Deportation Orders, Report Says

Several Cameroonian asylum-seekers in Mississippi say they were choked and beaten until they signed their own orders to leave the country ahead of Election Day.

U.S. immigration officers have been accused of choking and beating asylum-seekers from Cameroon to get them to sign their own deportation orders in an attempt to clear out a detention center in Mississippi ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election, The Guardian reports. Lawyers and activists working with the immigrants say many refused to sign out of fear they would face death at the hands of the notorious Cameroonian government, which has been credibly accused of widespread civilian killings. The Guardian reports that according to many accounts, the detainees were “threatened, choked, beaten, pepper-sprayed, and threatened with more violence to make them sign.” Many were forced into handcuffs and made to use their fingerprints in lieu of their signatures on deportation documents. “The abuse we are witnessing, especially right now against Black immigrants, isn’t new, but it is escalating,” Christina Fialho, executive director of an advocacy group, Freedom for Immigrants told The Guardian. “The reality is that ICE operates in the shadows. They thrive in secrecy. We know that the U.S. government is deporting key witnesses in an effort to silence survivors and absolve ICE of legal liability.”