IRTF News

ICE’s detention system is expanding at an unprecedented pace, with 237 facilities now detaining migrants.  Making sense of that expansion requires making the limited data ICE releases publicly accessible and understandable. That means tools that turn spreadsheets into insight, that make facility-level information accessible to reporters on deadline, researchers conducting analysis, and advocates tracking conditions on the ground.DetentionReports.com, a public tool tracking ICE detention facilities, has launched major upgrades including an interactive national map, new comparison graphs, and an archive of ICE detention contracts.

This article revisits the Iran-Contra scandal through a new, accessible account that shows how deeply it undermined democratic norms and the balance of powers in the United States. It argues that far from being a forgotten Cold War footnote, Iran-Contra remains a crucial warning about executive overreach, secrecy, and the erosion of accountability.

A new Salvadoran film about the 1981 El Mozote massacre premiered with government backing, sparking controversy for downplaying state responsibility while promoting the country’s security image. At the same time, survivors won a historic step toward justice as the long-stalled massacre case advanced toward trial after decades of impunity.

The presidential election in Honduras in November 2025 has evolved into a constitutional crisis, with fraud allegations, recount demands, and clashes between government institutions after the electoral council declared Nasry Asfura the winner. The controversy is also tied to U.S. political and corporate interests, including Trump-linked support and high-stakes “model city” investment projects.

This article examines the origins and culture of the U.S. Border Patrol, arguing that its history and structure have fostered aggressive, militarized practices and weak accountability. These longstanding patterns of abuse are now becoming more visible as the agency’s operations expand beyond the border. 

Groups like WOLA (Washington Office on Latin America) and the Southern Border Communities Coalition (SBCC) have been tracking these violent (and sometimes deadly) incidents for years. WOLA’s database identifies a whopping 455 cases of alleged abusive agent conduct just from 2020 to 2024. SBCC has tracked fatal encounters with the Border Patrol since 2010; it has found 364 lives lost. Alex Pretti is the most recent name on the list.

Thomas Mockaitis, a professor of history at DePaul University, studies violent extremism and military history across the world. He described the Border Patrol as a paramilitary force comparable to the Praetorian Guard of ancient Rome, the B Specials in Northern Ireland, or the Stasi in East Germany.

This op-ed recently published in Cleveland.com by Dr Gina Pérez, a cultural anthropologist and professor of Comparative American Studies at Oberlin College, examines a rethoric weaponized by structures of power to defame the ones they murder.  She highlights parallels between the Reagen administration's reaction to the assasination of four women missioners who were murdered in El Salvador in December 1980 and the current administration's response to the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. 

If the rhetoric of Jeane Kirkpatrick, a top foreign policy adviser to President Reagan, sounds familiar ("the nuns were not just nuns; the nuns were also political activists"), it's because we're hearing it again in the discrediting trash-talk from the White House aboutu Renee Good and Alex Pretti ("domestic terrorists").

This aricle published in The Guardian gives insight on what consequences the pardoning of convicted drug smuggler and former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernandez might have on enviromental defenders in Honduras.  Impunity for violent crimes committed against environmental defenders gives a green light to would-be assassins. In February 2025, an environmental defender in the central department of Comayagua, Juan Bautista, and his son were ambushed and killed, with their bodies dismembered and discarded in a canyon. These were just two of at least 155 murders of land and environmental defenders in Honduras documented by Global Witness between 2012 and 2024, the vast majority unresolved.

In response to Trump's pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández, one environmental defender noted: “There is a sense that the brakes are off again. People feel exposed.”

Between July 2025 and January 28, 2026, 35 people have died in immigration detention centers. But those are the ones we know about. So now there is a new independent tracker. Our (Portside.org) information comes from a variety of sources, primarily news reports, government data, and other sources such as immigration legal advocates. The agency involved is also included. About those agencies: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol are both active, though most people call all agents “ICE.” Border Patrol is an agency housed under Customs and Border Protection (CBP); all these agencies are within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Fields are left blank when those details are absent from reports. We will update this tracker as more information becomes available.

Adam Isacson from the Washington Office on Latin America examines the accountability gap in federal immigration enforcement. While DHS has written standards requiring deadly force only when "necessary" and when there's "imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury," these policies are rarely enforced. International standards require both necessity and proportionality—but U.S. agencies don't apply them.

This article by Geopolitical Economy portrays the discrepancy between propaganda agenda promoted by the US president, declaring himself a peace president and his actual actions, which have led to the bombing of 10 countries (more than any other president in US history has ever bombed), a staggering  $1.5 trillion in military expenditures and the fostering of countless trade conflicts that ultimately inflict themselves on the lower class US-American.