IRTF News

Through the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Anti-Slavery Campaign, launched in the early 1990s,  farmworkers worked, often at great personal risk, to uncover and investigate modern-day slavery rings operating in Florida and throughout the eastern United States. 

By 2010, the CIW’s anti-trafficking efforts had helped federal prosecutors put over a dozen farm employers and supervisors behind bars for exploiting their workers through the threat and use of violence, prompting federal prosecutors to dub the Florida agricultural industry “ground zero for modern-day slavery.” Also by 2010, the CIW had secured legally-binding “Fair Food Agreements” with nearly a dozen of the country’s largest buyers of produce, committing those companies to leverage their purchasing power to protect workers in their suppliers’ operations, though dogged resistance to reform on the part of Florida’s tomato growers, had, to that point, kept those agreements from being implemented on Florida farms. 

As of 2025, the Fair Food Program (FFP) is present in at least half the states in the continental U.S., and is also operating in two additional countries, Chile and South Africa. As a result, workers and growers in the flower industry in those countries are already benefiting from FFP implementation, with broader expansion into the fruit (South Africa) and salmon (Chile) industries on the runway.

The fiercest voices of dissent against President Nayib Bukele have long feared a widespread crackdown. They weathered police raids on their homes, watched their friends being thrown into jail and jumped between safe houses so they can stay in El Salvador.

Then they received a warning: Leave immediately. It’s exile or prison.

A combination of high-profile detentions, a new “foreign agents” law, violent repression of peaceful protesters and the risk of imminent government detention has driven more than 100 political exiles to flee in recent months.

The biggest exodus of journalists, lawyers, academics, environmentalists and human rights activists in years is a dark reminder of the nation’s brutal civil war decades ago, when tens of thousands of people are believed to have escaped. Exiles who spoke to The Associated Press say they are scattered across Central America and Mexico with little more than backpacks and a lingering question of where they will end up.

“We’re living through a moment where history is repeating itself,” said Ingrid Escobar, leader of the human rights legal group Socorro Juridico, who fled El Salvador with her two children.

During the first dozen years after the coup in Honduras, tThe arrangement between drug traffickers and the Honduran political elite was straightforward and mutually beneficial. On the one hand, political actors received kickbacks or other economic benefits from the projects they awarded. On the other, drug traffickers were afforded new ways to disguise their illicit proceeds, build up their social capital, and fortify their facade as seemingly legitimate business actors. But as the coup presidents opened a window for these corrupt networks to expand their wealth and consolidate power, the environment, and those working to protect it, suffered greatly.

In the nearly 15 years since Honduras was declared open for business, deforestation has increased at an alarming rate alongside the expansion of the extractives industry. During this same time, the country has also seen an unprecedented wave of violence directed at environmental defenders. The non-governmental organization Global Witness recently said that “nowhere on earth are you more likely to be killed for protesting the theft of land and destruction of the natural world than in Honduras.”

Caracas, July 23, 2025 (venezuelanalysis.com) – A group of Venezuelan men forcibly deported from the US and detained in El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison accused Salvadoran authorities of systematic torture, beatings, sexual abuse, and medical neglect.

At a press conference on Monday, Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab presented testimonies from several men detailing the abuse they endured in the infamous prison. 

A judge convicted seven former executives of Chiquita Brands in Colombia for sponsoring terrorism and sentenced them to 11 months in prison.

The former executives were responsible for Chiquita’s contributions totaling $1.7 million to paramilitary organization AUC between 1995 and 2004, said the Prosecutor General’s Office in a press statement.

Among those convicted are: John Paul Olivo (Comptroller of Chiquita Brands’ North America, who was the comptroller of Chiquita subsidiary Banadex between 1996 and 2001) and Charles Dennis Keiser (Chiquita’s operations chief in Colombia between 1987 and 2000).

The criminal proceedings in Colombia kicked off after Chiquita Brands pleaded guilty to terrorism-sponsoring in a U.S. federal court back in 2007 and was ordered to pay a $27 million fine.

When Julio González Jr., who had agreed to be deported to Venezuela (but was instead sent to El Salvador), refused to get off the plane in San Salvador, he, along with two other shackled men, were yanked by their feet, beaten and shoved off board as the plane’s crew began to cry. Dozens of migrants were forced onto a bus and driven to a massive gray complex. They were ordered to kneel there with their foreheads pressed against the ground as guards pointed guns directly at them.

Julio González and the two others were able to return to their family’s homes in Venezuela this week, among the 252 Venezuelans released from CECOT in exchange for the release of 10 American citizens and permanent U.S. residents imprisoned in Venezuela.

Many of the former detainees, after 125 days denied contact with the outside world, began to share details of their treatment.

“I practically felt like an animal,” González said by telephone from his parents’ home. “The officials treated us like we were the most dangerous criminals on Earth. … They shaved our heads, they would insult us, they would take us around like dogs.”

The three men denied any gang affiliations. Neither the U.S. nor El Salvador has provided evidence that they are gang members.

@austinkocher

Austin Kocher shares this two-part interview with Antero Garcia at La Cuenta. 

“When Antero first contacted me, I assumed we would focus on immigration data. But Antero, a Stanford professor and skilled interviewer, led the conversation through the thicket of my academic background and personal experiences to tell the story not only of what I do but why I do it. We discuss how my training as a geographer continues to shape my thinking, how my military service influenced my research on immigration enforcement, and why I believe—perhaps deeper than I believe anything—that working class Americans and immigrants need to see each other as allies, not adversaries, in the struggle for economic justice.

I am grateful to Antero and La Cuenta for generously publishing both parts of the thorough interview this week. I invite you to read both parts at the links below, then to explore La Cuenta’s many other moving stories. La Cuenta’s goal is to offer individual stories and perspectives about the costs of undocumented living in the U.S., primarily from the perspective of current and formerly undocumented individuals as well as members of mixed-status families.”

On June 24, IRTF convened more than 100 people from Islamic, Christian and Jewish faith traditions for an interfaith prayer in support and defense and migrants, hosted by Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.

After the morning prayer service, another organization, Network (a Catholic social justice advocacy organization based in Washington, DC, which has some Clevelanders on staff), organized a prayer vigil walk. Many of us from the IRTF prayer vigil joined the walk. At the Carl B Stokes Federal Courthouse (where the only immigration court in the state of Ohio is housed), we encountered a young woman crying. A few moments before ICE apprehended her husband as they exited a courtroom up on the 13th floor. The ICE agents told her “he’ll call you in about an hour.”  IRTF staff spent 20 minutes with her, consoling her, giving her resources and our mobile phone numbers.

Under President Bukele, basic freedoms have disappeared. Civil society is under siege, and the government is arresting those who speak out to silence them. The team at the human rights organization Cristosal has endured harassment, surveillance, and defamation. So Cristosal, which was founded by Anglican bishops 25 years ago and came to prominence for its investigations into corruption in the Bukele government, has made the difficult decision to relocate nearly 20 staff to Guatemala and a few others to Honduras. It has been forced to suspend operations inside the country.  

supportcristosal@cristosal.org

PO Box 4424 Burlington VT, 05406

Watch the one-hour Cristosal webinar (This Moment in El Salvador: Cristosal Suspends Operations in El Salvador, July 22 2025) with director Noah Bullock and other human rights leaders here . 

Colombia hosted the first ever “Emergency Conference” on Gaza, bringing together more than 30 countries that pledged to move beyond condemnation toward coordinated legal action to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Over the course of two days, diplomats, activists, Palestinian organizations, and human rights lawyers participated in rallies, public symposiums, and closed door meetings to debate next steps forward. While the agreements reached were limited in scope, they marked an unprecedented show of international resolve.

The conference ended with several countries, including Colombia, signing a 6-point join action plan that includes blocks of weapons transfers to Israel and other diplomatic, legal, and economic measures aimed at stopping Israel’s assault on the Palestinian people and defending international law.