Press Release
Published on January 16, 2026
Washington, D.C — Human Rights First (HRF) is galvanizing cross-cutting action in response to the wide range of human and civil rights abuses—at home and abroad—committed by the Trump administration during its first year.
As President and CEO Uzra Zeya said: “Over the past year, the authoritarian playbook the United States spent decades fighting overseas has come home to our shores, but it’s on steroids. From weaponizing government power to target perceived enemies and enrich cronies; to vilifying immigrants, LGBTQI+ people, women and girls, and communities of color; to purging nonpartisan public servants and smearing civil society; this administration is mirroring tactics long used by governments in Egypt, Russia, Turkey, Hungary, China, and India, among others.”
What sets the United States apart in this grim pantheon is not only the speed of democratic regression, but its scope. This underscores the urgency and importance of HRF’s integrated, multi-pronged response:
1) Protection Abandoned in Favor of Mass Detention and Deportation
Under the Trump administration, the U.S. asylum and refugee systems have been gravely undermined. People with pending asylum cases have been denied fair hearings, detained far from family and counsel, and in some cases disappeared to third countries. Since late November 2025, all asylum adjudications by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services have been unjustifiably suspended, leaving thousands trapped in indefinite limbo. After U.S. refugee admissions reached their highest level in 30 years in 2024, the Trump administration sharply cut and restricted resettlement solely to white Afrikaners from South Africa last year—injecting racial discrimination into a historically bipartisan humanitarian program. HRF is defending resettled refugees with lawful status, including Hmong and Somali families, now being rounded up and threatened with deportation.
The administration has massively expanded detention through H.R.1, pouring over $170 billion into DHS. ICE’s detention budget has grown 265 percent—larger than the entire federal prison system—with capacity to detain up to 116,000 people daily. ICE now holds about 73,000 people, the largest detained immigrant population in its history. HRF co-led opposition to the most extreme proposals in this bill and continues to fight further funding increases.
HRF is documenting the deadly consequences. In 2025, at least 32 people died in ICE custody, with five more deaths in the first two weeks of 2026. We have exposed disappearances from custody and abusive conditions, including severe harm to children at the reopened Dilley family detention facility.
Through HRF’s ICE Flight Monitor, we documented a record 2,138 deportation flights to 79 countries, many carried out without due process. Our joint project with Refugees International—Banished by Bargain: Third Country Deportation Watch—exposed secretive deals concluded by the Trump administration with third-countries that have sent people to at least 14 countries where they face detention, torture, or refoulement. This includes transfers to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison and to maximum-security facilities in Eswatini and South Sudan, sometimes in defiance of court orders. HRF is challenging these practices in federal court, winning protection for individual clients, and working with global allies to condemn and stop these rights-violating schemes. In individual cases, HRF has blocked unlawful removals, including securing asylum for a Jewish Iranian man fleeing persecution, after the U.S. government imprisoned him for nine months and tried to send him to multiple third countries.
We are also tracking widespread due process violations, including racial profiling, denial of hearings, and the wrongful detention of hundreds of U.S. citizens, among whom are Native Americans. Immigration judges have been mass terminated, further undermining the capacity and integrity of their role. At the same time, the administration has stripped over a million people of lawful status by ending TPS and humanitarian parole programs, which HRF is challenging in court, including securing an early restraining order blocking mass revocations and family separations.
2) Assaults on Democracy and the Constitution
HRF is advancing democracy protection in the United States through an integrated strategy that combines advocacy, litigation, and civic activism to counter ongoing authoritarian drift. At the core of this work is curbing militarization of U.S. cities and ICE overreach, while defending the right to dissent. We have done so by mobilizing national and local advocacy, elevating the voices of veterans to reinforce civilian control and military nonpartisanship, and pursuing strategic litigation to uphold constitutional protections, including free speech and the right to protest. At the same time, HRF is pushing for legislative reforms that protect freedom of peaceful assembly and free expression, and prevent abuse of military power. We are also developing tools to track and expose attacks on civic space, and building broad, bipartisan coalitions—across civil rights, faith, student, and veteran communities.
3) Repudiating International Law and Alliances
The Trump administration’s unfounded criticisms and attacks on democratic U.S. allies – including threats to illegally annex Greenland by force and interference in legitimate efforts in other countries to hold leaders to account – have encouraged extremists and produced turmoil in transatlantic relations and other alliances that underpin U.S. national security. Drastic funding cuts to civil society in Ukraine and elsewhere have undermined democracy and human rights in favor of kleptocrats worldwide. By flouting international law and turning against treaties and accountability institutions like the International Criminal Court, the administration is tearing down the pillars that uphold stability, peace, and prosperity.
HRF is confronting this authoritarian turn on multiple fronts—as co-counsel in litigation against third-country removals and political targeting, pressing for accountability before international bodies, and mobilizing a global defense of the Refugee Convention and human rights treaties and institutions, including an open letter signed by more than 300 organizations worldwide. We have successfully sued to keep international war crimes prosecutors on the job in spite of U.S. sanctions, and helped human rights defenders at the front lines of the war on Ukraine find alternative sources of funding following U.S. government cuts.
The Urgency of Now
The abuses documented here reflect an authoritarian project taking shape in real time. Immigrants and refugees are being used as test subjects for broader assaults on the Constitution, dissent is being criminalized, and international law is being dismantled piece by piece. HRF is standing at the front lines by defending people in court, mobilizing peaceful opposition that transcends partisan and regional divides, holding governments to account, and building broader coalitions needed to protect democracy at home and human rights around the world. The stakes could not be higher. HRF will continue to meet this moment with the urgency, independence, and resolve it demands.
