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Fearful Liberians Face U.S. Deadline For Deportation
Worshipers attend a service at the Little White Chapel, a Liberian Pentecostal congregation whose services are held at Glenmont United Methodist Church in Silver Spring. Most members of the Washington region's Liberian community live in the Maryland suburbs.
(By Lois Raimondo -- The Washington Post)
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Stewart, 58, is especially worried about her hypertension. Stories abound about bad doctors doling out poisoned drugs in Liberia, she said.
"I've been here 20 years. I can't just go back now and see any kind of drug and take it," said Stewart, a vivacious woman who wears shaded glasses. "If America sends me to Liberia, maybe they send me to die."
Luwah Moe left Liberia at age 7 for a teeming refugee camp in Ivory Coast. Four years later, he joined his mother in the United States and attended school for the first time.
Now he is an 18-year-old rising senior at Springbrook High School in Silver Spring, where he studies mechanics and plays soccer. His reading skills are wobbly, so he practices with a battered book of love poems. He has come to love hamburgers and PlayStation 2.
Moe, stocky and quiet, said he wants to return to Liberia someday, to "build something." But he also wants to go to college.
"I got my education ahead of me," Moe said in a soft voice. "My life is not even halfway done yet."
Community leaders say panic is mounting. Some TPS holders have lost jobs because their employers noticed their imminent work permit expiration dates, Lloyd said. She said some will go underground in the United States rather than return to Liberia, joining the illegal immigrants with whom they so dislike being compared.
On a recent Sunday, a group of women gathered after a spirited service at the Little White Chapel in Silver Spring, a Liberian Pentecostal church. The sermon was about having faith. The women said they were losing it.
"We are not a liability to the U.S.!" shouted one woman, sounding like a preacher. "We are not!" echoed Stewart, a church regular.
"We contribute to the community!" the first said. "We contribute!"
"We are not going," vowed Gaithersburg resident Jandera Bamah. "We are going to hang onto any branch on the tree."
