Remarks from Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Hearing on U.S. Government’s Human Rights Violations Against Immigrants and Asylum Seekers

Human Rights First along with over a dozen non-profit organizations would like to thank you for your attention around the egregious human rights abuses we have seen committed to the migrant community, asylum seekers, and refugees at the hands of United States government.

Since our submission to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in April, there has been further escalation not just surrounding arbitrary detention, but also enforced disappearances. We welcome the analysis and oversight of this admirable body, and hope to collaborate with the United Nations working group on Enforced or Involuntary disappearances in future hearings given the breadth of the illegality of the government’s actions.

We are concerned that the deportations and related detentions are not consistent with international human rights law, including the prohibitions on unlawful or arbitrary expulsion, freedom from arbitrary detention, the right to due process in the expulsion of migrants and asylum seekers, and the obligation of non-refoulement. Today you will hear from experts detailing the recorded stories of vile abuses of asylum seekers and migrants from U.S. officials over the last 6 months, in violation of our laws that have been perpetrated.

But do note, without international intervention, this will only worsen. Just this month, the U.S. government signed an unprecedented bill which will establish more prisons where families, including infants, can be incarcerated with little to no oversight.

This will lead to preventable deaths, put children at risk, and undermine our democracy.

We pray today’s hearing is only the beginning of international oversight of the gross human rights violations of both U.S. and international law.

— Yannick Gill, Sr. Counsel, Refugee Advocacy

I’d like to discuss the U.S. government’s transfers of migrants in its custody to third countries – countries to which they have not been ordered removed through any legal process, and of which they are not nationals– where they are then detained, face potential refoulement to home countries, or suffer other human rights abuses. Over the past six months, we have witnessed such transfers at all stages of the immigration process, affecting people who are in the middle of their U.S. immigration proceedings (as my colleague from Immigration Defenders will describe in a moment), people who have just arrived to seek asylum and are expelled without even a screening on their protection claims, people who were already granted humanitarian protection in the United States, and people with existing removal orders.

These unlawful transfers have been carried out pursuant to often-undisclosed agreements with the third countries. They violate human rights obligations and in many cases have constituted enforced disappearances. The government has also carried out some of these transfers in blatant violation of U.S. court orders.

Human Rights First and Refugees International have conducted research on the government’s recent transfers of asylum seekers, including families with young children, to Costa Rica and Panama without a screening on their asylum claim. People reported to us that while in US custody they were often denied the ability to call their family or an attorney, suffered other abuses, and then were transferred by U.S. officials to Costa Rica or Panama where they were detained in remote locations. Some were transferred there without being told where they were going or without an opportunity to tell their families who were desperately searching for them. Some have now been left indefinitely separated from their spouses, children, and other relatives in the United States who have pending asylum cases.

The Trump administration carried out many of these transfers pursuant to a January 2025 Presidential Proclamation that suspends access to asylum for anyone arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, in blatant violation of U.S. and international refugee law. These cases are included in a joint report by Human Rights First and Refugees International, “This Is An Order From Trump”: Abuse, Expulsions, and Refoulement of People Seeking Asylum” which has been provided in the supporting documents.

The U.S. government has also removed, and is seeking to remove, migrants with final orders of removal to third countries without notice or an opportunity to raise any fears of persecution or torture in those unexpected destinations. Eight men transferred to South Sudan on the 4th of July in violation of a U.S. court order are still detained there incommunicado three weeks late.

— Human Rights First Researcher