Ernestine sat quietly beside her husband. A tear formed, and she wiped it away. Her husband, Denis, did not notice. He was deep in thought.

“My kids are citizens, but I’m not a citizen. I’m scared of leaving my kids,” Ernestine said, stopping to gather herself. “If I tell them I might leave one day, or they might deport me to my country, the kids will be scared too, because they need to be with their mom. So I won’t tell them that.”

Ernestine, 28, and Denis, 42, a Cameroonian couple in Charles County, are no longer legally permitted to live in the United States. Their Temporary Protected Status ended Aug. 4.

They asked that The Banner not use the family’s last name out of fear of retribution.

Since fleeing the gunfire and chaos of Cameroon in 2021, Ernestine and Denis have created a sense of normal life in Maryland. They found a home to raise their three children and jobs as caregivers. They often rotate shifts to care for their children.

The couple became beneficiaries of TPS — an immigration status created by Congress in 1990. It grants temporary protection to nationals of countries affected by war or natural disasters. TPS allows recipients to obtain a work permit and a Social Security number and shields them from being returned to their country.

The end of the couple’s protection — and for all 5,200 Cameroonians on TPS — followed an announcement on June 4 by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem that they would have to leave by August. Noem said the conditions in Cameroon no longer justified continued protection, so their status would not be renewed.

Maryland has the largest population of Cameroonian nationals in the country, with more than 29,000 who have made an exodus from Cameroon to the state, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data. It’s unclear how many of them are TPS holders. The number of Cameroonians living in Maryland increased by 10,000 between 2017 and 2023.

Prince George’s County, Montgomery County and Baltimore County rank 1, 2, and 4, respectively, in Cameroonian population nationwide, according to the most recent Census American Community Survey. Prince George’s County alone is home to more Cameroonian-born residents than most states. (Harris County, Texas, has the third-highest Cameroonian population.)

“Under the Biden administration, programs like TPS were abused and exploited to encourage more illegal immigration,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in an email to The Banner. “Temporary Protected Status is, by definition, a temporary benefit that was never meant to be a pathway to permanent status or citizenship.”

Jackson said ending protection for Cameroonians furthered the Trump administration’s goal of ensuring mass deportations to curb the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. Such moves restore “sanity” to the immigration system, she said, which is why President Donald Trump was elected.

U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, said in a statement to The Banner that dangerous conditions in Cameroon persist.

“Donald Trump’s cancellation of their legal status will not only upend the lives of thousands of Cameroonians and force them to face imminent danger, it also will undercut our critical counterterrorism efforts in Central Africa,” he said.

Van Hollen and U.S. Rep. Glenn Ivey, a Maryland Democrat, sent a letter in April signed by more than 30 members of the Senate and Congress urging the Trump administration to extend TPS for Cameroonian nationals.

Van Hollen also told The Banner that Trump should focus his immigration policy on “‘the worst of the worst’ like he said he would.”

Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said Cameroonian nationals in the U.S. will be subject to deportation if they have no other lawful basis to remain. The agency told them to self-deport using the U.S. Customs and Border Protection mobile app “to help make the process of departing the United States easier.”

The Trump administration has announced that it revoked TPS for people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Honduras and Nepal. In July, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled to keep the protections in place for Hondurans, Nicaraguans and Nepalese while the case proceeds in court. The next hearing is Nov. 18.

Ernestine and Denis said they are unsure of what to do because Cameroon is not a place where they can raise their children. Other Cameroonians in Maryland also are making the calculation that staying in the shadows in the U.S. is safer than returning to Cameroon.

“What next?” Denis asked, his voice deflated. “What can I do at this point, other than maybe try to find some other option that I don’t even have yet?”

Danger in Cameroon

On the West Coast of Africa, Cameroon — with a population of about 28.3 million people — is embroiled in a violent conflict known as the Anglophone Crisis. The fighting, mainly between the government’s military and armed separatist groups, stems from long-standing tensions between the French-speaking majority and English-speaking minority.

Since 2016, the violence has largely affected innocent civilians in the English-speaking northwest and southwest regions. More than 500,000 people have been displaced within the country and about 60,000 have fled abroad, according to the nonprofit U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. Islamic extremist militant groups have also abducted and targeted civilians, the nonprofit said.

Ernestine and Denis lived in Cameroon’s English-speaking region. They said the multiple conflicts constantly threatened their lives.

The Biden administration granted TPS to Cameroonian nationals in 2022, and then renewed it in October 2023 after finding that conditions had not improved in Cameroon.

In Maryland and in Washington, D.C., immigrant groups and advocates have protested the end of TPS for Cameroonians, saying that violence in Cameroon hasn’t stopped.

The Maryland-based immigrant rights group CASA, filed a lawsuit in May against the DHS and Noem over the decision to revoke TPS for Cameroonians and Afghans. TPS for Afghans ended July 14.

The lawsuit stated that by ending TPS for both countries, the DHS acted unlawfully and violated constitutional rights.

Ama Frimpong, legal director at CASA, said the lawsuit could take months or even a year to resolve. She explained that the vast majority of Cameroonians have not been able to secure other legal pathways to remain in the country. While filing for asylum, marrying a U.S. citizen, or obtaining citizenship through U.S. citizen children are possible avenues, Frimpong said these are often difficult for TPS holders to pursue.

“We know that the number of people who will leave willingly is actually very small,” Frimpong said. “We’re talking about individuals and families saying, ‘If I go back to Cameron they will kill me.’

“They are going to remain here and hope they are not found by ICE,” she said.

Personal struggles

In the days leading up to Aug. 4, Mbeawoh thought “at the last point, things could change.”

The 42-year-old Carroll County resident asked that The Banner not use his last name out of fear of retribution.

But nothing changed. He said he lost his job of three years as a carpenter the day TPS ended.

Mbeawoh said he was proud of his craft. He sawed and joined wood for custom furniture and did some painting. He said his colleagues became like family. They would talk together, crack jokes and then get back to work.

Like the Cameroonian couple in Charles County, Mbeawoh came to the U.S. in 2021 after a long journey that included wading across muddy waters and jungles in Panama.

He left his wife back in Cameroon and they had no children of their own. Mbeawoh said the Cameroonian government’s military targeted him simply for being an English-speaking civilian. Mbeawoh talks on the phone with his wife frequently and said the military has arrested her a couple of times for the same reason.

“She cries on the phone,” he said. “My current situation makes her feel so bad. She has a feeling that if I return home, I will be sent to jail. So she doesn’t want me back home anymore.”

Mbeawoh lives with his older brother and his family. For years he had walked around with an air of freedom — “protection and a peaceful mind,” he said. Now, his days are spent in hiding.

Since his protection expired, he left Carroll County and is lodging with a friend in another county.

“I wanted to go somewhere to have a calm mind, a calm head,” he said. “I’m disturbed. Nothing is backing me up right now. They can detain me.”

Education in Maryland

The Cameroonian couple said the greatest gift they could have given their children by coming to Maryland is “knowledge.” They speak of it with reverence.

The education system in Cameroon is terrible, Ernestine said. Because of the crisis, children sit at home for years, restless, falling behind, their days swallowed by boredom. School itself can be dangerous, she said. There have been “a lot of cases where kids go to school and they don’t come back.”

In Maryland, “I feel happy when I drop my kids off at school and when I pick them up,” she said.

Denis added: “Especially the moment when we come to pick them.”

On days they don’t drive the kids to school, they walk them to school, which Denis called a “beautiful moment.”

Baron, a 48-year-old Cameroonian national who lives in Silver Spring who also asked that The Banner not use his last name for fear of retribution, said he has opened a college fund account for his 8-year-old daughter.

“My daughter has a very bright future. She is a U.S. citizen,” Baron said. “She’s an A student.”

He described with pride how she joined the school’s math club and became its president.

Baron, who has lived in the U.S. since 2015, was granted TPS in 2022. While here, he said, he has worked in behavioral health, helping people with autism.

Some Cameroonian nationals in Maryland hope they can wait out the Trump administration and stay in the country where they have made their homes.

“I look forward to be a happy family and not live in the fear of separation,” Denis said. “The love that grows in the family is the biggest thing.”

Banner reporter Greg Morton contributed to this article.