IRTF News

For more than four decades, IRTF has welcomed dozens of interns who have helped carry forward our mission of promoting peace, human rights and systemic transformation across the Americas. Each year, our interns enter the living legacy of IRTF: never-ending advocacy, organizing, and accompaniment. Their experiences, like those of Lucia and Maddie, remind us of the importance of this work and of forming the next generation of justice seekers.

Maddie: As a small organization and a tight-knit community, IRTF’s support is direct. This summer, we accompanied migrants to their immigration hearings, speaking with them in a mix of broken English and Spanish, learning their stories and offering them support and companionship. We connected with other community groups to learn how we could best inform local migrant and refugee families through Know Your Rights training. We challenged our own comfort and security by attempting to take on the fear and uncertainty faced by the migrant community.

Lucia: 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. This haven of social justice, activism, and human-centered civic engagement has become the foundation on which I hope to build a lifetime of advocacy and purposeful action.

Please read more from the reflections of student interns Maddie and Lucia.

Audio recordings published by Spain’s Canal RED suggest that US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are allegedly working to facilitate the return of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez to power. The media outlet published alleged audio recordings in which Hernandez, current President Nasry Asfura and a group of Honduran officials are heard discussing in detail a supposed operation driven by the US and financed by Israel to weave a network of corruption in Honduras, with the aim of turning the Central American country into a US investment hub.

A federal appeals court today ruled that President Trump’s Day 1 proclamation aimed at completely shutting down asylum at the border is unlawful. The panel of judges rejected the administration's claim that the president could use emergency authority to block asylum seekers from even applying for protection. 

When Donald Trump returned to office on 20 January last year, he began rolling out a draconian migration policy that has effectively ended access to asylum at the US-Mexico border and shaken up migration dynamics throughout Latin America.

One of the first moves the Trump administration made was to shut down a pathway to seek asylum in the US for people in Mexico using a cellphone application called CBP One. In a matter of minutes, about 300,000 people in the app’s pipeline, including Mario Torres, found themselves stranded.

Mario left South America in September 2024. He traversed the Darién Gap – the lawless and dangerous stretch of jungle connecting Colombia and Panama. In Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala, his money ran low and travelling wore him down. In Veracruz, Mexico, he was shot by men who wanted to rob or kidnap him. Mario eventually made it to the northern Mexican city of Monterrey in January 2025, but by then it was already too late.

The New Humanitarian has spent much of the past 15 months reporting throughout Latin America, trying to piece together an answer to one pressing question: what happened to the 300,000 people who saw their dreams of a better life suddenly rebuffed when Trump returned to office?

The picture that emerged is of a situation very much still in flux: some people have returned home, others have run out of resources and have ended up stranded in various countries, while many are still searching for a place where they can find stability.

Since September 2025, the U.S. armed forces have killed more than 175 people aboard small boats in operations that the Trump administration characterizes as attacks against “narco-terrorists.” The newly formed Shield of the Americas coalition brings together 17 states, including Argentina, Costa Rica, and Paraguay, in a U.S.-led effort to coordinate military pressure against the cartels — a move that critics fear will further institutionalize these extrajudicial killings.

A new international outcry—a  global coalition of 125 organizations issuing an urgent public appeal to all states to immediately cease all forms of support for US extrajudicial killings—underscores a shift from directly condemning U.S. actions to also holding third-party countries accountable for their role in these deadly attacks.

Recent elections in Honduras have returned right-wing leadership to power, with immediate implications for the autonomy of Indigenous communities.