IRTF News

The BIA is the appellate body that reviews immigration judge decisions, and when it designates a decision as precedential, like Yajure Hurtado [ a migrant from Venezuela who entered the US in November 2022],  its reasoning is binding on all immigration judges unless a federal court says otherwise. This means that in immigration courts across the country, thousands of detained immigrants who were eligible for a bond hearing last week now have no recourse to be released during their immigration court proceedings unless they file—and win—a federal lawsuit.

Five members of the Indigenous Garifuna communities of Trujillo and Sante Fe are being prosecuted for defending their ancestral lands; their names are Cesia Guillén, Cindy Fernández, Gilma Bernárdez, Luis Calderón, and Cesar Geovanny Bernárdez. All of the defendants are members of the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH), an organization that has been helping the Garifuna in their fight to defend collective property. 

The defendants have been unjustly accused of forced displacement and aggravated usurpation by Dagoberto Castillo Castillo and Niobi Constantinidi Padilla. Castillo claims to be a bona fide purchaser of a property in the San Antonio area of Santa Fe Colón, despite the fact that the Garifuna people hold its property title dating back to 1882. Their fight is supported by a report from the National Agrarian Institute (INA), indicating that the land is located within Garifuna ancestral territory and that its sale is void.

This state-backed legal attack is part of a systematic act of dispossession against Garifuna communities. Central to its execution has been the repression of land defense movements through deliberate criminalization and persecution of those leading the defense of their ancestral homes. 

The courthouse in Trujillo, which is now effectively dedicated to the persecution of the Garífuna people, was built on Garifuna territory. The initial hearing for the five defendants was held there on August 11.

A corrupt government gutted the public electricity utility and doled out shady contracts. Now the state faces multibillion-dollar lawsuits for attempting to reclaim control.
This report uncovers how solar energy projects affect local comunities, the states econmy, it's sovereignity and how Investors use neo0cololonial means to foster their interests. 

As government human rights reporting becomes less comprehensive, historian Elliott Young's applied scholarship fills critical information gaps with rigorously documented country conditions research.

Earlier today I had the opportunity to speak with historian Elliott Young from Lewis and Clark University’s Migration & Asylum Lab and recent graduate Soraya Talbot-Kerry about their work producing country conditions reports, essential resources that serve everyone involved in the immigration system. These meticulously researched, non-partisan reports provide critical information for immigration judges, attorneys, ICE prosecutors, advocacy organizations, and the general public who need accurate, objective data about conditions in countries around the world.

You can listen to this one-hour interview between Austin Kocher and researchers at the Migration & Asylum Lab here.

He has swept away checks and balances. His government has made mass arrests. And his lawmakers just rewrote the Constitution to let him lead indefinitely, raising fears that the man who once jokingly called himself the world’s “coolest dictator” isn’t kidding anymore.

But for many Salvadorans, President Nayib Bukele has been a godsend.

In the last few months, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested immigrants at school, at work, in hospitals, and even at public protests. Since January, ICE has conducted more than 100,000 raids and between October 2024 and now, more than 158,000 immigrants have been deported. Families are faced with a terrible choice—leave their children behind in the U.S., or agree to their U.S. citizen child being deported as well.

Migrant detention has skyrocketed in the US, now approaching an unprecedented 60,000 in jail and prison cells. Benefiting: local county sheriffs (to fill empty cells in their jails) and for-profit prison companies. The  Administration is using no-bid contracts to expand detention. For example, the GEO group (which has been accused in numerous ongoing lawsuits of violating labor laws by paying detained immigrants extremely low wages to perform essential tasks for them, as well as unsanitary living conditions, restricting access to fresh air, and sexual abuse), just got a new contract with ICE to reopen an idle prison to hold 1,868 migrants—and earn $66 million in annual revenue.

Take Action.

Click here to tell the White House that detaining and deporting the people who keep our farms, restaurants, and infrastructure running is weakening the fabric of our society and is an affront to our moral and religious values. How are we a nation of “family values” if we are aggressively tearing families apart?