How has Palestine become a testing ground for surveillance tech now used to erode freedoms worldwide? Join us on October 19 for a powerful Film Salon exploring the global reach of Israel’s occupation technologies—and the fight for justice and resistance through collective action.
Political imprisonment is surging in El Salvador under President Bukele, targeting lawyers, journalists, and activists who dare to speak out. Once a symbol of post-war democracy, the country now uses modern authoritarian tactics—forced disappearances, fake charges, and harsh prison conditions—to silence dissent. The case of Ruth López is just one of many. As fear spreads and critics flee, the world must decide how to respond.
On September 29, 2025, Huabing Xie became the 23rd person to die in ICE custody that fiscal year, making 2025 the deadliest year for ICE detainees since 2004. The Trump administration’s aggressive detention policies have led to a nearly 50% increase in the ICE detainee population, now around 60,000. Overcrowding, medical neglect, poor conditions, mental health crises, and even gun violence have contributed to the spike in deaths. Despite protests and some court interventions, ICE faces little accountability, worsened by reduced oversight and limited transparency.
Violent land conflicts have persisted in the Bajo Aguán Valley in the coastal department of Colón for the past 50 years. In the 1970s, many campesinos benefited from the government’s agrarian reform. But in their zeal to expand monoculture plantations for cash crops, large agro-industrial companies like Dinant have encroached on campesino farmland. When campesino organizations began “recuperating” (recovering) their rightful lands, the companies retaliated with violence, often with the assistance of state security forces and sometimes the backing of the courts (through the issuing of illegal eviction orders).
In 2022, President Castro signed an agreement to establish a commission to investigate and resolve land conflicts in the Bajo Aguán. That commitment has not been fully implemented. In the meantime, campesinos are shot and killed while driving to work or working their fields.
Since December 24, 2024, the armed criminal group known as Los Cachos has illegally occupied farmland legally titled to the Camarones Cooperative, creating a humanitarian emergency by forcibly displacing approximately 150 families. Despite a judge’s order for the eviction of Los Cachos, Honduran authorities have twice deferred its execution. Meanwhile, the armed group continues to terrorize nearby cooperatives, including El Chile and El Tranvío, threatening further displacement and violence.
We urge the government to enforce without further delay the judicial eviction order against the criminal group Los Cachos and ensure the safe return of the Camarones Cooperative families to their rightful land.
In November 2016, historic peace accords were signed between the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and the government. But several factions (called "dissidents") broke off from the FARC and refused to lay down their weapons. One of those dissident groups, the 33rd Front, is operating in the transborder Catatumbo region of northeast Colombia, whose inhabitants are mainly campesino organizations and the Bari Indigenous people. Social leaders face extreme danger as they attempt to work in this region characterized by poverty, militarized violence, and conflicting factions.
The 33rd Front is raising claims that the humanitarian organization Catatumbo Social Integration Committee (CISCA) is working with other armed factions in the conflict. This puts members of CISCA under increased threats of violence. CISCA states that not only are the claims baseless and unjust, but they put CISCA’s members in an extremely vulnerable position.
We urge that the government implement structural solutions based on a stronger presence of civilian State institutions, such as the Social Pact for the Territorial Transformation of Catatumbo, that should include authorities of the Bari Indigenous people and leaders of local civil society organizations.
In response to an alert from the Inter-Church Justice and Peace Commission, we wrote to officials in Colombia with deep concern for the safety of residents in Buenaventura, Valle del Cauca Department. Over the past month the intensification of armed conflicts has resulted in selective assassinations, forced disappearances, internal displacements and social control that imposes fear, extortion and invisible barriers. Young people are limited in their mobility to go to school because the city is fragmented by invisible barriers that prevent free movement. Illegal armed groups are occupying people’s homes and pressuring teenagers to carry weapons, carry out surveillance activities, and participate in illegal economies. Girls are being seduced and deceived for sexual exploitation. At least ten neighborhoods have recorded killings of their residents during September.
In El Salvador, defending human rights is becoming a criminal act. Members of the NGO UNIDEHC—lawyers, advocates, and community leaders—are facing raids, arrests, and even Interpol notices for standing up to forced evictions and state abuses. Human rights defender Fidel Zavala now faces three criminal cases and was returned to the very prison where he had denounced torture and death. This isn’t just repression—it’s retaliation, and it sends a chilling message to anyone who dares to speak out.
Family separations are back — and happening in the shadows.
The Trump administration is once again tearing children from their parents, not just at the border but across the U.S. Leaked records, firsthand accounts, and legal filings reveal a chilling strategy: coerce deportation by threatening — or carrying out — family separation.
The 2016 Peace Accords were historic. Thousands of armed combatants with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were demobilized and enrolled in reincorporation centers (Territorial Training and Reincorporation Spaces) across the country.
But the violence by illegal armed organizations against the ex-combatants has been astronomical. As of late September, at least 480 ex-combatant signatories of the peace agreement have been killed, as verified by the United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia. This deadly violence threatens the reintegration process for all former combatants.
In recent months, six Peace Accords signatories have been murdered in Antioquia Department alone. John Fader Santiago Galvis, 32 years-old, was an ex-combatant who had been carrying out his reincorporation process in Cocorná, Antioquia, since 2024. On September 2, he was found dead by local residents on the banks of the Cocorná River near San Antonio. On his body were multiple bullet wounds and serious burns on his skin, suggesting an attempt at cremation.
We urge that authorities in Colombia promptly enact strict governmental measures to remove armed groups from innocent and vulnerable communities in Antioquia and provide adequate protection to social leaders who are under threat, in strict accordance with their wishes.
Brazil’s digital payment system PIX has sparked a new flashpoint with the Trump administration, which accuses it of undercutting U.S. tech giants. Brazil calls the investigation a threat to its sovereignty and a broader attempt to weaken its independence, as PIX becomes a global model for reducing reliance on the U.S. financial system.
