In our visit to the Federal Courthouse in downtown Minneapolis today, we encountered the rare illegal alien from outside of Latin America.
Asongafack Derick Mewoabi, age 34, hails from Cameroon, and he was caught on June 9 attempting to sneak across the Minnesota-Canada border.
Cameroon is located in west Africa on the Atlantic Ocean. Parts of the present-day country were formerly colonies of Germany, France and Britain. Cameroon is led by the world’s oldest president, age 92, who is running for re-election this fall after 43 years in power.
For the past decade or so, some of the former English bits of Cameroon have been fighting to break away from the majority former French bits of the nation. For his part, Mr. Mewoabi professes fluency in both languages.
He was originally charged with two felony counts of illegal entry and is participating in the Fast Track program. In today’s plea bargain, the second charge was dropped.
Prosecutors have documented a previous deportation of Mr. Mewoabi and another occasion where he was turned away at the border.
That first deportation came after he illegally crossed the Mexican border. At one point, he apparently enjoyed Temporary Protected Status (TPS), later revoked.
He was arrested in Columbus, OH, for domestic assault and on a variety of other charges. When arrested, he was in possession of a fake green card, a fake social security card, and other documents in the name of “Peter Acha.”
Then there was a separate trespassing case at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI. There appears to be at least one outstanding state-level warrant for his arrest.
His first deportation order was issued in absentia. He was later turned away at the Canadian border, attempting to re-enter America. On June 9, he was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol as he entered Minnesota from Canada, while bypassing the burdensome formalities of the local official crossing station,
His story is why you see these carefully-worded headlines like this one from the Chicago Tribune,
ICE arrests rise in Chicago under the Trump administration, many without convictions, data shows.
“Many.” Snopes.com debunks these claims pointing out,
However, in addition to the 28.3% who did have convictions, another 24.7% had pending criminal charges — which the Trump administration counts in its description of “illegal criminal aliens,” according to Associated Press’ reporting.
Those two categories of arrestees total 53 percent. When Mr. Mewoabi walked into court today, he fell in the “pending charges” category, on account of his tendency to flee prosecution, He walked out of court today a convicted felon.
Ice agents were stationed in the back of the courtroom, awaiting the appropriate moment to take him back into their custody.
NBC Bay Area (San Jose, 11) uses a different term,
ICE ramps up arrests in California of immigrants without criminal records.
In their reporting, they include a useful graph showing that arrests in all three categories–convictions, pending charges, and neither–are massively up from the past few years under Pres. Biden.
Upon Mr. Mewoabi’s return to ICE custody for deportation proceedings, he has indicated that he will press a new asylum claim. No information was presented on whether or not he sought asylum in Canada, Mexico, or any other nation that he has passed through on his long voyage.
Au revoir or goodbye, whatever the case may be.
[Note: an earlier version of this piece appeared at AmericanExperiment.Org.]
