By Kendall Karson
Wilmot Collins, the Liberian refugee who surged into national headlines in 2017 after becoming Montana’s first and only black mayor is launching a bid for higher office, officially filing paperwork with the FEC to run for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by incumbent GOP Sen. Steve Daines.
Continue reading “Liberian refugee, Montana’s first black mayor launches bid for US Senate seat”
Relief and excitement spread through Liberian communities in the United States on Thursday (Mar. 28) after president Donald Trump issued an executive order extending the deadline of the Deferred Enforced Departure program for 4,000 Liberians living in the US to Mar. 30, 2020.
In March 2018, the Trump administration announced the termination of the program and gave over 4,000 Liberians a year— until Mar. 31, 2019—to leave the US or risk deportation.
According to the White House, yesterday’s decision was made “in the foreign policy interest of the United States.”
Continue reading “Trump extends Liberians’ migrant status to 2020”
Former American slaves were moved to Liberia in the 1800s to solve the “problem” of black and white people living alongside each other. Their descendants are facing the same journey.
Afomu Kelley was just 11 years old when she left Liberia with her mother in the early days of a civil war in 1990. She remembers standing in a crowd jostling to board an airplane to the United States for what she thought would be a six-week vacation.
Instead, the war in Liberia escalated and Kelley, now 40, never returned to the West African country. She grew up in Northern Virginia, where she finished high school early, and attended the University of Maryland. She has an American accent. Sometimes she doesn
But at the end of this month, she may be forced to return to a homeland she barely remembers.
On March 31, the program that has allowed Kelley and more than 800 other Liberian immigrants to live legally in the United States for decades will end, the result of President Trump’s decision to terminate a protection against deportation that has been in place for nearly 28 years.
Continue reading “US-Based Liberian Group Launches Scholarship for Students”