Press Release
Published on May 8, 2025
Washington, D.C. – A new report from Human Rights First and Refugees International reveals systemic and grave human rights abuses by the Trump administration against asylum seekers in U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody. CBP agents routinely subjected asylum-seeking families and adults to cruel and inhumane conditions and unlawfully expelled, removed, and transferred them to third countries without so much as a fear screening.
“The conditions in CBP custody amount to a humanitarian and legal crisis,” said Christina Asencio, Director of Research and Analysis, Refugee Protection at Human Rights First. “Our report finds that asylum seekers—many of them children—are facing medical neglect, psychological abuse, and prolonged detention in unsafe, unsanitary conditions. CBP is separating children from parents, giving them inadequate food and heat, and denying access to sunlight, play, or adequate care—sometimes for weeks at a time. Many asylum seekers and migrants detained by CBP are held incommunicado and denied the ability to contact family members or lawyers, rendering their whereabouts unknown and amounting to enforced disappearances. These actions are not only clear violations of U.S. law, they are a betrayal of this country’s core values.”
“This is an Order from Trump”: Abuse, Expulsions, and Refoulement of People Seeking Asylum is based on research conducted in March – May 2025, including interviews with individuals who had been in CBP custody and were removed or expelled to their home countries or to Panama or Costa Rica, as well as with human rights monitors and civil society groups in Costa Rica and legal service providers in the United States.
“We interviewed Afghan, Russian, and Armenian families who fled life threatening attacks for their religious and political views. They were denied a chance to seek asylum at the U.S. border, subject to shocking abuse while detained there, and then removed to potential persecution, expelled to isolation and limbo in third countries, and indefinitely separated from family in the United States,” said Yael Schacher, Director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International. “When they asked for better treatment, U.S. officials punished them with worse. When they begged for protection, officials said there was no more asylum. When they expressed fear of deportation, officials said they were operating under orders from Trump,” Schacher said.
Even as the Trump administration’s abusive policies and illegal acts impose hardship on migrants and asylum seekers, its overarching message of malice toward those fleeing persecution is being heard loud and clear by CBP officials at the border, who repeatedly invoked the President’s name to justify acts of gratuitous cruelty. “People we interviewed told us that when they appealed to CBP officials for better treatment or to halt an illegal deportation, agents denied those requests while claiming to be acting in accordance with President Trump’s agenda,” said Asencio.
“The Trump administration is using appropriated funds to disappear asylum seekers in CBP custody and whisk them out of the country under undisclosed agreements with third countries in order to avoid complying with obligations under U.S. and international law and without the slightest concern for their security, rights, and welfare. This is part of a broader Trump administration attack on due process and the checks and balances that are central to the U.S. Constitution,” added Schacher. “This is a grave abuse of power. Lives are on the line.”
Like the Trump administration’s decision to disappear other asylum seekers and immigrants to a notorious Salvadoran prison, the dehumanizing tactics documented in the report are routinely employed by repressive and autocratic regimes. In February 2025 alone, nearly 500 migrants primarily from African and Asian countries, including pregnant women and young children, were removed or expelled to Costa Rica and Panama. Many of these transfers occurred without fear screenings and under opaque bilateral agreements. Once in these third countries, asylum seekers faced arbitrary detention and further mistreatment in violation of their human rights.
To speak with the report’s authors, contact Refugees International’s Media and Communications Manager Etant Dupain at edupain@refugeesinternational.org or Human Rights First at press@humanrightsfirst.org.
