U.S. agrees to send $35M aid to Cameroon unit accused of war crimes

Rubio overrides Shaheen’s hold on Cameroon military aid

The Trump administration agreed to send about $35 million in military aid to an elite unit of Cameroon’s armed forces previously accused of war crimes as part of a wider arrangement to deport third-country migrants to the region, U.S. officials and congressional aides said. The people, all of whom were involved in or briefed on the negotiations, said State Department officials brokered the military aid and deportation deal simultaneously as part of the same package. The package includes armored personnel carriers for the Rapid Intervention Battalion, or BIR.

Cameroon agreed to begin accepting U.S. deportation flights of third-country nationals in December and has accepted at least 36 U.S. deportees since then, according to the rights group Refugees International. Some of the officials said the administration plans to scale up the number of deportation flights to African countries in the coming months. Cameroon is one of around a dozen African countries that have concluded so-called third-country nationals agreements with the administration, alongside the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and others.

The individuals the U.S. is deporting to African countries often cannot be returned to their home countries either because they say they would risk violence or persecution there or because those countries will not accept them.

The U.S. cut off some assistance to the BIR during the first Trump administration after human rights groups published findings that it committed abuses including torturing detainees to death. A 2017 report by Amnesty International found that the BIR engaged in war crimes as it battled the Boko Haram terrorist group in the country’s north, subjecting detainees to beatings and drownings and torturing some detainees to death. In 2019, the first Trump administration cut military assistance to the BIR and expelled Cameroon from a U.S.-Africa trade pact over failures “to address concerns regarding persistent human-rights violations being committed by Cameroonian security forces.” Cameroon at the time disavowed allegations that its forces were engaged in human-rights violations and said its military maintained high standards of professionalism.

The State Department notified Congress of the military aid package in January, about a month after the deportation deal was struck, according to some of the officials and aides. Around the same time, the U.S. agreed to channel $30 million to the United Nations refugee agency’s work in Cameroon despite broader cutbacks to foreign aid under the administration.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, placed a hold on the military aid package earlier this year, pausing the deal for several months, according to people familiar with the matter. In April, Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s team notified her that the administration was overriding the hold and moving forward with the deal, officials said.

Shaheen, who did not go public about the hold earlier this year, called the deal “grotesque” this week and said she was disappointed in Rubio for allowing it. “The United States should not be exchanging sensitive military equipment with countries that have questionable human-rights records—especially in exchange for human beings,” she said in a statement.

The State Department declined to comment on the specifics of any agreement but said the U.S. and Cameroon have “a strong partnership on a range of shared priorities, including regional security and counterterrorism” and cooperate on security threats to U.S. interests or the homeland. The statement added that the department adheres to the Leahy Law, which bans military assistance to forces implicated in human-rights abuses. Cameroon’s embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

President Trump has made immigration enforcement a core part of his administration’s policy platform and has touted progress in deporting thousands of migrants in the country without legal status who have criminal records, including some to African countries.

Cameroon, which 93-year-old President Paul Biya has ruled for over 40 years, earlier this year briefly detained journalists and lawyers who sought to meet with the U.S. deportees in the country. U.S. Africa Command, the Pentagon’s combatant command responsible for U.S. military operations and security partnerships in Africa, considers Cameroon an important partner in the fight against violent Islamic extremist groups that have gained ground in West and Central Africa in recent years. Officials said the military aid package served the dual purpose of adding a new incentive for Cameroon to cooperate on accepting U.S. deportees while also supporting U.S. counterterrorism efforts in the region.

Gen. Dagvin Anderson, the commander of U.S. forces in Africa, told Congress in May that AFRICOM’s area of responsibility “has become the center of gravity for global jihadism, with West Africa accounting for over 51 percent of global terror-related deaths” in recent years.

Two State Department officials played key roles in helping secure deportation deals with African countries: Christian Erhardt, a deputy assistant secretary at the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, and Andrew Veprek, the top official overseeing foreign assistance, humanitarian affairs and religious freedom. Trump in late September nominated Erhardt to be U.S. ambassador to Cameroon. Erhardt and Veprek declined to comment through a spokesperson.