On Thursday, Amnesty International released a new report titled, “You Don’t Have Any Rights Here: Illegal Pushbacks, Arbitrary Detention & Ill-treatment of Asylum-Seekers in the United States.” In the report, the human rights organization says the following:
“The Trump administration is waging a deliberate campaign of human rights violations against asylum- seekers, in order to broadcast globally that the United States no longer welcomes refugees. Simultaneously, the Trump administration is seeking to dismantle the US asylum system, including by narrowing definitions of who qualifies for protection—in violation of international law.
Setting a dangerous precedent, the US government’s abrogation of its obligations under human rights and refugee law is undermining the international framework for refugee protection, grossly violating the right to seek asylum, and is inviting a race to the bottom by other countries.”
“The new report presents compelling evidence that U.S. authorities have separated more family units than previously disclosed,” a release about the study said.
Near the end of the report, Amnesty International called for Congress and the Department of Justice to “rigorously investigate officials who authorized the Trump administration’s de facto policy of family separations, and hold them to account.”
The report added:
“Congress should also exercise increased oversight on CBP’s illegal pushbacks of asylum-seekers along the US–Mexico border, which also constitute refoulement. Mexico is not a uniformly safe country for all asylum-seekers, and any treatment of it as such through the blanket rejection of asylum claims at US ports-of-entry would be in violation of international law. Senior Mexican immigration officials in two of the six Mexican states bordering the United States independently informed Amnesty International that the U.S. government encouraged them to detain and check the legal status of asylum-seekers whom the U.S. was forcing to wait in Mexico, with a potential view to their deportation. If true, this would constitute a gross violation of international refugee law.”
The full report is below:
