IRTF News

For every $1 that immigration deportation and prison contractors donated to GOP campaigns in 2024, these private companies stand to reap more than $11,000 in increased annual revenue.

As detention rates soar, there are more reports of inhumane and inadequate treatment inside migrant detention facilities. Sen. John Ossoff (D-GA) released a report on January 27, 2026 compiling “human rights abuses in U.S. immigration detention.” The report highlighted how immigration detention officials separated a breastfeeding mother from her infant child for months and that a newly postpartum detainee was unable to shower for weeks, among other findings.

Medical services are lacking. The majority are in the hands of local officials (e.g., county jails) and private contractors. Meanwhile, the Trump administration, as of October, has reportedly paused paying providers for migrant health care costs altogether.

The hardline approach to violence, a model used by President Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, is gaining increasing support in Central America, a region that has been historically plagued by insecurity, whether related to gangs or drug trafficking.

Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Honduras are three countries that have adopted measures similar to those implemented by the Salvadoran leader, despite the criticism he receives from human rights organizations.

This is the third investigative report released by the office of Senator Jon Ossoff (Georgia), identifying more than 1,000 credible reports of human rights abuses within US immigration detention since January 2025. There are undeniable patterns.

Through interviews, analysis of public reports, and site visits, the senator’s office, between January 20, 2025, and January 12, 2026, has received or identified 1037 credible reports of human rights abuses against individuals held in DHS-, HHS- and BOP-administrated facilities, county jails, and federal buildings across 28 U.S. states and Puerto Rico; at U.S. military bases, including Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, and Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas; and on chartered deportation flights.

Credible reports describe the following abuses:  Family Separation;  Medical Neglect;  Mistreatment of Pregnant Women;  Mistreatment of Children;  Physical and Sexual Abuse;  Denial of Adequate Food or Water;  Denial of Access to Attorneys;  Overcrowding and Unsanitary Living Conditions;  Exposure to Extreme Temperatures in Facilities; and  Imposed Sleep Deprivation.

Additionally, ICE has reported and confirmed 36 deaths in custody between January 20, 2025 and January 12, 2026, and two more deaths since January 12, 2026.  For the list, see https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/04/ice-2025-deaths-timeline

The article examines Honduras’s fragile political transition after a narrowly contested and widely questioned election, assessing the mixed legacy of the recent president (Castro), the deep crisis of the electoral system, and the enduring power of corruption and impunity. It analyzes the fragmented National Congress, the human rights risks tied to a private sector-driven economic agenda, and the renewed alignment with the United States under Trump, warning that without structural reforms and accountability, governance will rely on transactional politics rather than democratic legitimacy—_at high cost to civic space, Indigenous and Garifuna communities, and long-term stability.

The Lemkin Institute is gravely alarmed that the normalization of extremist rhetoric has reached the point where U.S. government agencies are now posting thinly veiled Nazi slogans. Nazi allusions have appeared with disturbing frequency within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees both Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). DHS has openly engaged in messaging designed to resonate with men aligned with supremacist ideology. It has referenced a neo-Nazi anthem in a recruitment advertisement, circulated imagery invoking exclusionary white nationalist slogans, and repeatedly employed language long embedded in extremist propaganda.

The institute warns: "When societies allow violent and dehumanizing discourse to masquerade as legitimate political expression, they create the conditions for persecution, exclusion, and ultimately mass atrocity. "

There were 40,000 people in immigration detention in January 2025. Now that number is 73,000. ICE is now using more than 500 detention centers. Changes in arrest practices have led to a 2,450% increase in the number of people with no criminal record being held in ICE detention on any given day. Once people have been arrested, changes in policy have kept them locked up in detention centers for longer or indefinitely, including the establishment of an official no-release policy and the expanded use of “mandatory detention” laws to deny the right to seek bond.

Read a related article, "Immigration Detention Expansion in Trump's Second Term," here: https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/report/immigration-detention/ 

Camp East Montana (at the Fort Bliss military base in El Paso, TX)--called the largest detention facility by the ACLU-- is now responsible for three deaths in the past two months. The latest: Geraldo Lunas Campos.  Although located on an army base, the facility is run by the private corporation Acquisition Logistics LLC. Three detainees have died there over a period of 44 days. 

From researcher Austin Kocher: Over the past week, I’ve been looking into DHS’s claim that it deported 622,000 people and trying to reverse-engineer that number given the lack of transparency surrounding DHS’s enforcement data. Counting “deportations” turns out to be far more complicated than it appears, and the definition matters enormously.

Not all these people are receiving “deportation orders” from an immigration judge. Most of the repatriations, in fact, are “enforcement returns.”  Some readers might have heard of “expedited removal.” Those are forced, or rather “enforced.” But also in those numbers are a large number of people who are simply withdrawing their request to enter the country or returning voluntarily.

Confusing? Yes.

U.S. meddling in Honduras strikes again: Trump pardons ex-president Hernández, backs a preferred candidate, and threatens aid—undermining democracy & enabling corrupt corporate networks. Honduran sovereignty must be respected.

When he was repatriated to Colombia, Salvatore Mancuso was named a “peace facilitator” by Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, a designation that enables him to act as a mediator in talks with armed groups.

Now the former paramilitary leader has been sentencedto 40 years in prison for crimes committed against Indigenous communities in the province of La Guajira, including homicides, forced disappearances and the displacement of people from 2002 to 2006.