IRTF News

Most of the Americas have suffered from interference from their powerful northern neighbour --and are usually the worse off for it. The US bombardment of Venezuela and the capture of its president, Nicolás Maduro, follow a long history of interventions in South and Central America and the Caribbean over the past two centuries. But they also mark an unprecedented moment as the first direct US military attack on a South American country.

In a related article, the authors explain how US sanctions have caused one of the most severe peacetime economic contractions in modern history, contributing directly to a public health crisis. This economic warfare is a primary driver of the displacement of more than 7 million Venezuelans, creating the Western hemisphere's largest migration crisis. 

The tensions between the U.S and Venezuela have only intensified as the U.S. uses political, economic, and escalating military strategies to target the Venezuelan government, who they accuse of corruption and drug trafficking into the U.S. This has caused immense hardships against the Venezuelan people; however they continue to stand strong and urge for just and lasting peace.

This list of 17 lawsuits filed over immigration issues in Ohio in 2025 provides insight on the obscurity of reasoning that leads to people being detained. 

In her 2024 book Sanctuary People: Faith-Based Organizing in Latina/o Communities, Dr. Gina Pérez, Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Oberlin College,  presents a practical political strategy to cultivate safety, trust and belonging in all communities. It includes both physical sanctuary, where sacred space becomes a place of refuge, and a broader commitment to accompaniment and public advocacy.

Here Dr. Pérez reflects on the Catholic Church’s Year of Jubilee of Hope. Pope Leo XIV frames migrants and refugees as “messengers of hope”—a powerful challenge to the stigmatizing narratives that characterize migrants and global migration in our world today.

Dr. Pérez also highlights essays by two young IRTF student interns who are living out their commitment to “welcoming, protecting, promoting and integrating the most fragile, unprotected and vulnerable…”  By participating in acts of accompaniment and collaboration across faith and secular communities, they credit IRTF with playing a significant role in their formation to become leaders in a new generation for social justice. Student intern Lucia reflects: “IRTF has been an indispensable part of discerning the world I want to live in, the role I will have in that, and the way I hope to go about it.”

Leaders like Daniel Ortega and Nayib Bukele turn people’s bodies—whether prisoners, supporters, or critics—into tools of control, using public shows of loyalty and punishment to prove their power. These choreographed images of marches, prisons, and masked forces update old colonial methods of repression, turning fear and spectacle into a new style of “strongman”. 

Protests rarely incite policy or cultural changes overnight. Often, their rates of impact are much more gradual. For that reason, looking at them through a historical lens – when movements can be digested in terms of years, or even decades – is a helpful way to appreciate the tangible effect of taking to the streets.

Ohio Immigrant Alliance published an article exposing ICE's "Operation Buckeye,"  a large-scale immigration enforcement operation carried out by ICE in Ohio, how violently it has been carried out and how the numbers expose a methodology of profiling and arbitrary enforcement. 

This article by npr delineates how the trump administration is systematically seizing immigrants legal options by taking away their temporary protected status  

This article by CovertAction Magazine provides an elaborate overview of Honduras' recent electoral history, its many struggles with this very crucial democratic procedure and the very recent electoral disaster. 

This article from NACLA provides insight on the Trump administration's contradictory polices. Occurrences such as the bombing of fisherboats in the Caribbean are contrasted with the pardon for fomer president Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was convicted in US federal court for trafficking tons of drugs into the US.