Every year during my childhood, hundreds of villagers would arrive in my shanty neighborhood of Fanta Citron in Mvog-Ada, Yaoundé, Cameroon, in search of a better life. They settled there because, most of the time, they didn’t know anyone in the big city. All they had to do was buy a few sheets of metal to build a makeshift shelter along the river, whose waters were as red and muddy as the streets.
There was no rent or tax to pay. This is probably why the newcomers crowded in. To find your way around my shantytown, here’s what you needed to know. Inhabitants who were the last to arrive settled near the river, while the earlier settlers were the furthest away. My mother’s family was among the first to arrive because their village was less than 50 kilometers from the big city.
The landowners lived at the top of the small hill that overlooked the neighborhood. Every year, there was fear that they would claim their land back. From what I understood, there was some kind of agreement with the government that prevented these families from evicting us, but it could be terminated at any moment.
This is what happened when I was 12. Most of the inhabitants received a notice informing us that we would be evicted from our homes unless we paid the owners of the land. But the notice did not say how much or when we had to pay. This created great panic in the neighborhood. Would there be raids? Where would we go? Returning to the village was tantamount to admitting that we had failed. For most of us, it was the dream of a better life that was shattered. The neighborhood bars began playing an iconic song, “Je vais à Yaoundé,” (I am going to Yaoundé).
This song, sang by the popular and blind singer André-Marie Tala for the first time in 1975, chronicles the migration of villagers or small towners to the cities, which accelerated after Cameroon gained independence in 1960. Tala’s song, cowritten by renowned musician Manu Dibango, is a staunch criticism of internal migration.
These are some of the lyrics which describe the journey of many villagers from their provinces to the big city.
Je vais à Yaoundé, Yaoundé la capitale.
Par la Mifi et le Ndé, de Bandjoun à Bafia,
Je vais chercher là-bas, une vie meilleure.
Translated:
I’m going to Yaoundé, Yaoundé the capital.
By the Mifi and the Ndé, from Bandjoun to Bafia,
I will look down there for a better life.
I had never seen so many sad faces in the neighborhood. The wildest speculations were rife. Some had started to pack their bags. Others had gone to see if they could settle in two shantytowns that were not far away. The uncertainty of tomorrow had made us very vulnerable.
I encountered the same kind of uncertainty and fear of what tomorrow might bring a few days ago, when I listened to some of my Black bros as they speculated about the first days of Donald Trump’s upcoming second presidency, which will begin on January 20.
Unlike the media, whose focus is on the President-elect’s cabinet picks, my bros can’t stop talking about immigration. They are wondering whether and how Donald Trump will keep his promise to mass deport millions of undocumented and illegal immigrants. There may be as many as 20 million people without valid papers in the U.S.
“They are talking too much about immigration," my barber told me on a recent warmer-than-normal November day, referring to the President-elect and his lieutenants. "They say they’re going to do this and this. They are not talking nice, they are talking s***, they are talking crazy too.”
It was the first time I saw him after two months that took me to key states with large Black populations to explore whether there really was a growing gap between minority men, the Democratic Party and Kamala Harris. The election result that saw Trump win the popular vote for the first time in three attempts and his victory in all seven swing states confirmed what many Black men had been telling me.
“If you can’t go back by yourself, they will take you, man," the second barber chimed in. "They said people have to pack everything up and get ready to go back. You can see that everywhere on social media. Man, I know some people. They are scared, man.”
“Man, they’re not going to find them," the third barber said, before bursting into a laugh. "By January 20 they’re going to be gone.”
“Bro, I know some people who are already trying to find somewhere to go,” my barber added.
“Some are easy,” the second barber interrupted him. “People who are now in jail it’s easy, man. When you come out from jail you just go. People in jail are going to be first to be deported because they need no judge anymore. The only thing is just to get them on a plane.”
“Maybe they just want to scare people," said the third barber. "They are not going to send everybody back. It’s not going to be easy.”
I noticed that my barber and his colleagues do not use the words “illegal” or “undocumented.” They say “people” while referring to illegal immigrants. They also use “immigrant.”
At the barbershop that evening, speculation was rampant, fueled by the rumor mill. My barber and his colleagues said they knew some undocumented bros who left their shelter after Trump’s victory, for fear of being arrested. The second barber told a story of friends of friends living illegally in Atlanta, Georgia, who left their apartment in a rush for fear of being on the radar of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE).
They said that fear over Trump’s mass deportation agenda has forced many undocumented Black immigrants who used to gather on 116th Street in Harlem to change their habits. Many, they said, are avoiding that place for fear of a police sweep. They listed other places that they believe will be targeted, such as parks, where a big number of nannies are usually immigrant minority women. Delivery guys should also be concerned they said.
“Too risky, bro” the third barber said.
“I make this pledge and vow to you, November 5, 2024, will be liberation day in America,” Trump said on October 11. He promised that from the first day of his presidency “the border will be sealed. The invasion will be stopped. The migrant flights will end.”
As soon as he was declared the winner, he named Tom Homan, the acting director of ICE between 2017 and 2018, to be his “Border Czar”.
Homan is a hard-liner on immigration. He is not against immigration in general, but abhors illegal immigration. This former cop worked for the very conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, which became famous for being behind the controversial Project 2025. Homan was a contributor to the section of the document proposing mass deportations of illegal and undocumented immigrants.
He said in July, during the Republican national convention, that he had “a message for the millions of illegal aliens who Joe Biden allowed to enter the country in violation of federal law — start packing, because you’re going home.”
These are the words that are currently being repeated in the circles of my barber and his colleagues.
“No one is going to pack, bro,” said a customer who arrived in the middle of the exchange. “People are going to run away. They are running away bro.”
“When I worked in a store in Soho, a colleague went MIA (miss in action), bro. People were like ‘he was a nice guy why is he not coming anymore? What happened to this guy?’ I was like, well, you know, it’s immigration. He is not coming anymore because immigration arrested him. They didn’t believe me,” my barber said.
For him, these are the kind of stories we will be hearing in the coming months. A colleague who disappears one day. Nobody knows where they went, but in fact they were the victim of the mass deportation program of the new administration.
Mass deportation of millions of undocumented and illegal people was one of the promises that convinced some of my bros to vote for Trump. They said they felt that the Democrats had been allowing into the country everyone arriving at the southern border, thus sending the wrong message around the world.
The second barber said that his clients are also on board.
“'There are too many African people here. Go back’ my favorite customer told me the other day,” he said.
“Does he know that you are from an African country?” I asked him.
“Yeah, but he didn’t give a s***," he respinded. "He says he is talking about the new guys.”
He paused and then added:
“A lot of people are coming through the border.”
He left no doubt that he agreed with his customer. It is a reality that many minorities are finding increasingly difficult to hide: they are in favor of a hard line against illegal immigration because they believe that, being those at the bottom of the social and economic ladder, they are the ones who suffer the most. Newly-arriving undocumented migrants, they say, benefit from preferential treatment as the result of the right-to-shelter.
They said it is difficult to speak freely on the subject for fear of being chastised. I listened to them try to compare their own struggles with the assistance offered to illegal immigrants.
Fifty-seven percent of voters, in a New York Times/Siena College poll conducted in October, said that they supported the deportation of immigrants living in the country illegally.
“People are going to come over here again,” said my barber with some regret in his voice. “New York police don’t work with immigration. In the south, the police are going to stop you, and if you are an immigrant, they will hand you over to the authorities. Not in New York, bro.”
The others nodded.
New York City, like Chicago and Los Angeles, is a sanctuary city, meaning that they limit their involvement with federal immigration enforcement. In early November, Manuel Castro, the Commissioner of the city’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, said that New York City “will not be following the instructions of the federal government in cases of mass deportations.”
Conversely, some states, such as Texas, have strengthened their legal arsenal against illegal immigration. Since February, for example, a community member faces up to 15 years in prison for taking a loved one without legal status to a medical appointment or for driving them to school in the Lone Star state.
While ICE is automatically notified when someone is arrested regardless of the reason, the level of deportations depends on local law enforcement. Between 70 and 75 percent of ICE arrests inside the country have been handoffs from another law enforcement agency, whether it is a local or state jail or federal prison, according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC).
Back in those early days in Cameroon, many of the families which lived in my neighborhood were forced to leave. My family was lucky enough to raise some money and pay for the right to stay for 20 years. They have now left the old neighborhood. I wonder, what will be the reality for this country’s illegal immigrants 20 years from now?
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Luc Olinga's work on Medium.