Journalists Arrested in Cameroon While Reporting on Trump’s Secretive Deportation Program
An Associated Press reporter was hit and held with three other journalists and a lawyer, two detainees said, while at a center for migrants secretively deported from the United States.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/world/africa/cameroon-journalists-arrested-deportees.html?unlocked_article_code=1.NFA.Ncmp.5XiCTCVYbxwW&smid=url-share
Gift link.
Four journalists investigating a secretive Trump administration effort to deport migrants to the African nation of Cameroon were detained on Tuesday, according to two of the people detained.
The journalists, along with a lawyer representing most of 15 detained migrants, were seized by the police at a state-run compound in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, where they were interviewing the deportees.
The New York Times reported on Saturday that the compound was a detention center for African migrants who were recently deported from the United States by the Department of Homeland Security.
None of the deportees are Cameroonian citizens. And almost all had received protection from American courts, which banned the government from sending them back to their home countries, where they would most likely face persecution, according to government documents obtained by The Times and interviews with their lawyers.
The five people detained on Tuesday were taken to the judicial police headquarters, where the journalists were separated and interrogated, according to Joseph Awah Fru, the lawyer supporting the deportees, and Randy Joe Sa’ah, a freelance journalist who regularly works for the BBC and was one of the detainees.
The three other journalists — a reporter, a photojournalist and a videographer — were based in Cameroon and working on assignment for The Associated Press. The A.P. said that, according to its understanding, the reporter was slapped but “did not sustain serious injury.”
Some of the journalists, Mr. Fru and Mr. Sa’ah said, were kept in a cell for hours. The two men said the A.P. reporter appeared to have been beaten up and had told them the police had attacked him.
All of the five were later freed. Before the journalists were released, the police confiscated their phones, cameras and laptops, saying the journalists had captured sensitive government information, according to Mr. Fru and Mr. Sa’ah. It was unclear if any had been charged.
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My bold.
“And almost all had received protection from American courts…”
Fat lot of good that did them.