IRTF News

Eight years after police tore through her land, destroying her crops and home, Chela still cannot return to El Guayabo—the place she loves most and fears most. Her pain is shared by a community that has endured years of violence, evictions, and resistance in defense of their territory. But now, after more than a decade of struggle, El Guayabo’s wounds are finally being acknowledged: the community has been officially recognized as a subject of collective reparations under Colombia’s Victims’ Law.

This long-awaited recognition is more than a bureaucratic victory—it’s an act of memory and dignity. It affirms the suffering, resilience, and courage of those who stood their ground through fear and loss. As El Guayabo enters a new phase to define how reparations will be made, the hope is that this step will not only restore what was taken but help heal what violence tried to erase.

Late in Trump’s first term, the Justice Department convened the Joint Task Force Vulcan to catch senior members of the notorious MS-13 gang who, from their base in El Salvador,  were directing the organization’s activities in the US (including kidnappings, drug trafficking and murders). Eventually, nine MS-13 gang leaders were taken into US federal custody.

But now President Bukele of El Salvador wants them back.

Why?

The gang leaders have threatened to exposed Bukele’s alleged deals his government made with MS-13 to help achieve El Salvador’s historic drop in violence. It’s also a key step in hindering an ongoing U.S. investigation into his government’s relationship with MS-13.

Early this year, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio brokered a deal to make both Trump and Bukele look good. Trump needed a foreign partner to accept deportees regardless of nationality or legal considerations. Bukele, condemned by human rights advocates for curtailment of civil liberties, sweeping accumulation of executive power and oversight of a prison system beset by abuse, needed to ward off threats to his reputation as a crime-fighting visionary (and “the world’s coolest dictator,” as he describes himself).

The deal between Rubio and Bukele granted the Trump administration access to a sprawling foreign prison dubbed the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, that would become integral to Trump’s ongoing efforts to conduct the “largest deportation in American history.”

Read this compelling article based on accounts from dozens of officials from the United States and El Salvador, lawyers representing MS-13 gang members, prosecutors, diplomats, former Justice Department officials and political appointees. The Trump administration’s willingness to renege on secret arrangements made with informants who had aided U.S. investigations has not been previously reported.

So far, at least 29 people have been killed in strikes the Trump administration upholds are targeting drug traffickers off the coasts of Colombia and Venezuela, raising alarm among some legal experts and Democratic lawmakers, who question whether they adhere to the laws of war.

Currently, the US is building up a prominent military presence in the Caribbean and bordering coastlines, one that includes guided missile destroyers, F-35 jets, and the authorization of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to conduct covert operations in Venezuela.

Meanwhile, the US president is accusing Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, of being an “illegal drug dealer” and threatening to immediately cut US funding to the country. The remarks come after Petro said the US committed “murder” following a strike on an alleged drug boat in Colombian territorial waters in September. The US is also threatening to impose major tariffs on Colombia.

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.

Political imprisonment is once again haunting Latin America, with El Salvador emerging as a stark new example under President Nayib Bukele. Once praised for modernizing the country, Bukele has instead refined the authoritarian tactics of the past—using mass arrests, smear campaigns, and the state of exception to silence dissent. Lawyers, journalists, and community leaders who dare to criticize the government now face fabricated charges and indefinite detention. Among them is Ruth López, the renowned anti-corruption lawyer declared a prisoner of conscience after her disappearance and arrest in May 2025.

Behind each detention lies a message: in Bukele’s El Salvador, speaking out has a price. Reports reveal over 430 deaths in custody, families left without answers, and a justice system stripped of independence. As fear drives activists into exile and civic space collapses, international voices warn that the country’s democratic facade is crumbling. Calls are growing for global pressure—from the OAS to the United States—to demand accountability and the release of political prisoners before the last remnants of Salvadoran democracy vanish entirely.

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.

Karen Spring of the Honduras Solidarity Network exposes how Canadian and U.S.-backed tourism expansion has dispossessed Indigenous Garifuna communities along Honduras’ north coast. During 13 years of U.S. and Canadian support for corrupt, militarized “Narco Regimes,” tourism investors — many Canadian and American — illegally acquired Garifuna lands in Trujillo Bay. Now, as Garifuna communities reclaim their ancestral territories, Canadian investors and companies like NJOI are leading racist defamation campaigns against Garifuna leaders and OFRANEH, falsely portraying themselves as victims. The conflict highlights the ongoing colonial exploitation of Indigenous lands under the guise of “development” and tourism.