IRTF News

Over 65 U.S.-based human rights, faith, immigrant rights, diaspora and international solidarity organizations released a joint statement expressing “profound concern” about the Bukele administration’s mass arrests in El Salvador and reports of human rights violations at the hands of state security forces. Since early April, over 12,000 people have been arrested without warrants, predominantly in marginalized communities, in response to a tragic spike in homicides; many arrests have been denounced by witnesses and family members as arbitrary in nature. As the 15-day administrative period for which people can be held without charges under a 30-day State of Exception comes to close for many, the groups are calling on the Salvadoran government to reinstate due process, lest a door be opened to “profound and lasting injustice.” 

Top United States officials are in Panama for a summit on migration in the Americas, where migrant rights groups say US policies exacerbate the dangers faced by migrants and asylum seekers heading north. The US secretaries of state and homeland security are joining their counterparts from 20 other countries in the western hemisphere for a ministerial conference on migration on Tuesday and Wednesday in Panama City. However, migrant rights advocates contend that security and deterrence policies pushed by the US and other destination countries aggravate the risks migrants and asylum seekers face in transit through the region.

Colombia’s opposition and anti-corruption advocates have sued President Ivan Duque for allegedly trying to influence the May 29 presidential election. Senator Ivan Cepeda said last week that he would sue the president and seven mayors for abusing their position for electoral purposes. The Anticorruption Institute, a non-government organization, said Monday that it sued before the Cundinamarca Administrative Tribunal for his allegedly illegal participation in electoral politics.

Reporting on the human rights situation in Guatemala, the US State Department illustrated worsening conditions and highlighted the role that corruption and impunity have played in the last year. The 2021 Human Rights Report–released on April 12–summarizes and provides examples of what the State Department deems “significant human rights issues” in Guatemala, including the following: unlawful and arbitrary killings; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; restrictions on freedom of expression, including threats and violence against journalists; interference with freedom of association and organization; and significant corruption. 

Border Patrol car chases have been the subject of increasing scrutiny in recent months, amid a spike in deadly crashes, an increase in vehicular use-of-force incidents, and newly released information about U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s controversial Critical Incident Teams. Immigrant advocates and federal lawmakers are raising alarms about how the agency defines what counts as a pursuit, how those pursuits are carried out and how they are investigated when things go badly. U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D- El Paso, recently joined other lawmakers in raising questions about Border Patrol pursuits. She signed a joint letter to CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus on April 4 calling for the agency to curtail the use of vehicle pursuits, update their vehicle pursuit policy and improve agency oversight.

On Sunday, March 27, just hours after congress approved a state of emergency, heavily armed police and soldiers entered the packed, gang-controlled neighborhood of San Jose El Pino. Freed from having to explain an arrest or grant access to a lawyer, they went door to door, dragging out young men. President Nayib Bukele has responded to the surge in gang killings with mass arrests in poor neighborhoods like San Jose El Pino, each day posting the growing arrest total and photos of tattooed men. The highly publicized roundups are not the result of police investigations into the murders in late March, but propel a tough-on-crime narrative that critics are calling “punitive populism.”

The Garífuna community of San Juan and Tornabé, in the city of Tela, Honduras, asked the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) to condemn the State for the dispossession, the lack of protection of their ancestral territories and the threat to their leaders. "The territory is important for the community, it is our home, everything that is inside: the lake, the sea, the land. They don't listen to us. Steps were taken but they have not been resolved by the State". During the public and virtual hearing of the IACHR Court, held at the beginning of April, the testimonies presented coincided in the demand that the State should be granted collective property titles and that all of their ancestral lands and territories should be recognized.