FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DATE: October 17, 2025
CONTACT : [email protected]
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, 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. Since the hearing took place, the human rights situation has only deteriorated further. The report documents worsening abuses in the immigration context including:
- Disappearances of immigrants who are unfindable in 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.”
There is no right to free legal representation in immigration proceedings. Without Americans for Immigrant Justice, which never charges for its services, countless adults and children without the means to hire an attorney would be forced to navigate the complex immigration system alone, essentially denying them the opportunity for justice.
If you or someone you know is in immigration detention, please call our Detention Hotline at 786-454-8554. Calls are answered live on weekdays from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM.
For general legal assistance or to attend a free legal screening clinic, call 305-573-1106 ext. 8008 or email [email protected].
For legal assistance related to individual or mass enforcement actions prior to detention, call the RAISE Hotline at 1-888-600-5762 or visit https://raise.is.
Support Americans for Immigrant Justice by donating today at https://aijustice.org/donate. Your contribution helps us continue to provide life-changing legal services and advocate for the rights of immigrants.
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Americans for Immigrant Justice (AI Justice) is an award-winning non-profit law firm that fights for justice for immigrants through a combination of direct representation, impact litigation, advocacy and outreach. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram