Immigrants’ Rights Organizations Submit Report to Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Documenting Escalating Abuses by U.S. Government

Following a July 24, 2025 public hearing held by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) that examined widespread human rights and refugee law violations inflicted by the U.S. government, a coalition of immigrants’ rights organizations that participated in the hearing submitted a follow-up report to the Commission this week. The organizations include Al Otro Lado, Americans for Immigrant Justice, Amnesty International, the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, Haitian Bridge Alliance, Hope Border Institute, Human Rights First, Immigrant Defenders Law Center, Instituto para las Mujeres en la Migración, the International Refugee Assistance Project, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, RAICES, and Refugees International. 

The report addresses questions raised by the Commissioners during the public hearing and includes recommendations for IACHR to investigate and document the mass human rights abuses committed by the United States. Since the hearing took place, the human rights situation in the United States has only deteriorated further. The report documents worsening abuses in the immigration context including:

• Disappearances of immigrants who are unfindable in government custody for prolonged periods, causing severe anguish for families and making legal representation impossible. Recently, over 1,000 people reportedly disappeared from a single detention center. 

• Arbitrary detention in life-threatening conditions, including in dangerous ICE jails where at least 16 people have died from January to September 2025, with reports of delayed or denied medical care leading up to some of the deaths. 

• Skyrocketing illegal arrests, detention, deportation, and assaults against immigrants, including families with children, U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, refugees, asylum seekers, and people with Temporary Protected Status.

• Unbearable conditions, medical neglect, and abuses in immigration jails that inflict trauma on adults and children, with one fourteen-year-old child recounting: “[b]eing here has affected my little brother a lot. He doesn’t sleep well. He cries all night. Yesterday he had an attack where he would not stop crying from 7pm to 9pm and he was outside the room crying that he didn’t want to go back in and that he wanted to be free.”

• Widespread separation of immigrant parents from their babies, toddlers, and children, with reports of families seeking asylum in the United States forced to choose between being separated from their children or returning to persecution; children placed in foster care after their parents are detained; and children dragged from their beds, zip-tied, and separated from parents. 

• Expulsions and deportations of people to third countries where they face arbitrary imprisonment, torture, return to danger in home countries, and other rights violations. The U.S. government has carried out some of these forced removals in violation of court orders and with little to no transparency around the terms of the agreements with third countries.  

• Mass violations of due process protections and refugee law resulting from the government’s systematic efforts to strip people of the right to an immigration hearing regardless of how long they have lived in the United States, and to shut down asylum processing for people fleeing to the United States-Mexico border. 

• Attempts to conceal abuses and block legal access, including reprisals against lawyers, advocates, journalists, and government officials; the dismantling of oversight agencies; and the denial of statutorily-mandated access to detention centers for Members of Congress.

  
  

“The disappearances, mass arrests and detentions, abusive detention conditions, and other human rights violations occurring in the United States threaten all communities and undermine our Nation’s most fundamental values,” Sui Chung, Executive Director, Americans for Immigrant Justice. “We call on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the U.S. Government, and the public to shine light on these problems and take decisive action to end them. The time is now to confront these violations with transparency and urgency.” 

“The Trump administration is terrorizing immigrants in the United States through mass disappearance and detention tactics that have caused family separation, increasingly concerning deaths in detention, and third country deportations to danger,” said Margaret Cargioli, directing attorney, policy and advocacy, at Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef). “We urge the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to continue to monitor and report on the Trump administration’s immigration tactics, as well as to conduct site visits of detention facilities as people’s lives are at risk.”

“In less than a year, we have seen this administration strip noncitizens of due process rights, separate families, and deport people to countries they’ve never been to before,” said Maria Fernanda Palacios Herrera, Policy Counsel at the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP). “The international community must speak out against the widespread terror and violence inflicted upon asylum seekers, refugees, and immigrant communities by the Trump administration. We respectfully request the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights call on the United States government to cease these human rights violations immediately.”

“The cruelty inflicted on immigrants in the United States reverberates far beyond its borders,” said Taylor Koehler, Policy & Programs Staff Attorney at the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law (CHRCL). “Every act of dehumanization sends a dangerous message to the world that human rights are negotiable. As a global community, we cannot allow that precedent to take hold. We urge the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to act with urgency and use every tool within its power to protect immigrants and uphold fundamental human rights in the United States.”

“The Trump administration’s policies are sowing fear and forcing people to make terrible decisions, violently uprooting community members, separating families, disappearing people to abusive detention conditions and to countries where they are in danger or that they don’t know,” said Yael Schacher, Director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International.  “We ask that the IACHR help to stop these violations of human rights by documenting harm, demanding accountability, and promoting an alternative, humane approach to migrants and asylum seekers in countries throughout the Americas.” 

“Over the course of the past 10 months, the administration has continued to escalate its attacks on immigrants throughout the United States, both living in our communities and in immigration detention,” said Laura St. John, Legal Director at the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project. “Our clients are reporting extremely alarming conditions in detention centers, more people are at risk of being removed to third countries to which they have no ties, and immigration enforcement is terrorizing our communities. We urge the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to sound the alarm on danger and violence that immigrant communities in the United States are being subjected to and ask the Commission to demand that the U.S. government immediately halt all actions that violate the human rights of immigrants in the United States.” 

“My colleagues and I know the truth behind the charade. The goal is the money. The strategy is shock and awe. The tactic is terror. The tactic is violence. The tactic is torture. Sadly, this administration no longer needs to work with Central American dictators to house innocent men in mega-prisons because there’s a burgeoning one here at Ft. Bliss,” said Marisa Limón Garza, Executive Director of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center.

“This year, we have witnessed people kidnapped from their communities, separated from their children, and arbitrarily detained in deplorable conditions,” said Yannick Gill, Senior Counsel at Human Rights First. “The escalating violations of U.S. and international law deny migrants and asylum seekers their rights under the law. We are deeply grateful to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for its work monitoring and speaking out against the unlawful human rights violations perpetrated by the U.S. government. We urge the United States to end its systematic attacks on immigrants, the dismantling of oversight mechanisms, and retaliation against advocates who seek to shine a light on its rights abuses.”

“The U.S. government is terrorizing people, destroying their physical and mental health in horrendous detention conditions, refusing to listen to their asylum claims, retaining their personal property including original ID documents, and then sending them to Mexico,” said Gretchen Kuhner, Director of the Institute for Women in Migration  (IMUMI). “Once in Mexico they have no information, no documentation, and are either dumped in the streets near the Mexico-Guatemalan border or deported to their countries of origin.  In just nine months, Mexico has received over 11,000 third country nationals from the U.S., many of whom have been separated from their families. We urge the IACHR to denounce these egregious human rights violations that have stripped people of their basic dignity.”

“The United States government continues to wield its outsized and unaccountable geo-political power to enact brutal, prevention-through-deterrence migration policies—where brutality towards certain people seeking lawful protections is the point—and to strong-arm other States in the Americas to do the same,” said Erik Crew, Staff Attorney at Haitian Bridge Alliance (HBA). “These policies continue to target those who should be protected by the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the Inter-American Democratic Charter, and the American Convention on Human Rights. We urge the Commission to investigate these escalating violations and hold accountable all States in the region whose bilateral agreements empower these attacks on international human rights, refugee protections, and basic human dignity.”

“As we continue to support migrant families on the U.S. side of the border looking for their relatives in immigration detention, attending to their urgent needs for pastoral and mental health care, and arranging care for their kids in the midst of the true fear of being separated, we also accompany others stranded in Mexico due to the closure of our border to those most vulnerable. This is not just a law enforcement campaign, it’s terror,” said Jesús de la Torre, Assistant Director for Global Migration at the Hope Border Institute. “We thank the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for listening to the testimonies of all the mothers, neighbors and friends who have been brutally impacted by these policies, and we encourage the Commission to keep shedding light on these systemic abuses. The borderlands know well that, in the persistent fight for human dignity, fear never has the last word. We stand committed to uphold our welcoming identity and will continue to organize to support policies that keep families together and help our communities thrive.”

“From Inauguration Day onward, the Trump administration has weaponized racist pretext as a means to further the president’s anti-immigrant agenda,” said Javier Hidalgo, legal director at RAICES. “At RAICES, we are deeply troubled by the administration’s consistent opacity and lack of procedural safeguards, but we will not be swayed from our fight for due process and against the unlawful disappearance of people and families. Let us be clear, what we say to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, we also say to the world: fundamental humanitarian protections should never be up for debate.”

“The U.S. government has long treated immigrants with cruelty — abusive detention practices, family separation, and racial profiling are not new. What’s different now is the scale,” said Hollie Webb, Supervising Attorney for Al Otro Lado’s Border Rights Project. “The Trump administration has taken decades of abusive policies and turned them into a machinery of mass disappearance, deportation, and fear. These practices never should have been allowed to exist, and it’s because past abuses were ignored that this government can now act with total impunity. We urge the Inter-American Commission to investigate — the United States should not be held to a different standard than the rest of the international community.”