Reports

The 105-page report, “‘All My Dreams Have Been Erased’: Israel’s Forced Displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank,” details “Operation Iron Wall,” an Israeli military operation across Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams refugee camps that began on January 21, 2025, days after a temporary ceasefire was announced in Gaza. Israeli forces issued abrupt orders to civilians to leave their homes, including with loudspeakers mounted on drones. Witnesses said soldiers moved methodically through the camps, storming homes, ransacking properties, interrogating residents, and eventually forcing all families out.

The 81-page report, “‘You Have Arrived in Hell’: Torture and Other Abuses Against Venezuelans in El Salvador’s Mega Prison,” provides a comprehensive account of the treatment of these people in El Salvador. In March and April 2025, the US government sent 252 Venezuelans, including dozens of asylum seekers, to the Center for Terrorism Confinement (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, CECOT) mega prison in El Salvador, despite credible reports of serious human rights abuses in El Salvador’s prisons. The Venezuelans were subject to refoulement—being sent to where they would face torture or persecution—arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, torture, inhumane detention conditions and, in some cases, sexual violence.

The 142-page report, “‘They Accused Me of Trying to Go to Europe’: Migration Control Abuses and EU Externalization in Mauritania,” documents abuses by the Mauritanian police, coast guard, navy, gendarmerie, and army during border and migration control, including torture, rape, and other violence; sexual harassment; arbitrary arrests and detention; inhumane detention conditions; racist treatment; extortion and theft; and summary and collective expulsions. The crackdowns and rights violations were exacerbated by the European Union and Spain, bilaterally, continuing to outsource migration management to Mauritania, including through years of support to Mauritania’s border and migration control authorities.

The 92-page report, “‘You Feel Like Your Life is Over’: Abusive Practices at Three Florida Immigration Detention Centers Since January 2025,” documents that people detained at Krome North Service Processing Center (Krome), Broward Transitional Center (BTC), and the Federal Detention Center (FDC) in Miami have been held in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions and subjected to degrading treatment, and have not been given access to prompt and adequate medical care. The groups also reported the experiences of 17 immigrants in at the three detention facilities since January 20.

The 48-page report, “‘I’ll Never Feel Secure’: Undocumented and Exploited Myanmar Nationals in Thailand,” examines how the Thai police frequently stop and interrogate Myanmar nationals and extort them with the threat of arrest and detention if they fail to pay bribes. Human Rights Watch found this practice to be prevalent in the town of Mae Sot near the Myanmar border, where people refer to Myanmar nationals as “walking ATMs.” Myanmar nationals, living under the constant threat of deportation that could put them at grave risk, restrict their movements to stay out of sight of police and other authorities seeking to exploit them.

The 67-page report, “‘The Strategy Is to Break Us’: The US Expulsion of Third-Country Nationals to Costa Rica,” documents the US expulsions, which came after the US government held migrants and asylum seekers in abusive detention conditions – sometimes for weeks on end – while denying them due process and the right to seek asylum. The report also details Costa Rica’s months-long arbitrary detention of third-country nationals expelled from the US, as well as the mixed messages the Costa Rican government has given those third-country nationals.

The 40-page report “‘Nobody Cared, Nobody Listened:’ The US Expulsion of Third-Country Nationals to Panama” documents this mass expulsion. Human Rights Watch exposes harsh detention conditions and mistreatment migrants experienced in the United States, along with the denial of due process and the right to seek asylum. It also details migrants’ incommunicado detention in Panama, where authorities kept their phones, blocked visitors, and isolated them from the outside world.

The 63-page report, “Living in Fear and Humiliation: Rising Xenophobic Harassment and Violence towards Central Asian Migrants in Russia,” documents that Central Asian migrants, mostly from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan working in Russia face ethnic profiling, arbitrary arrests, and harassment by police and private actors, including far-right nationalist groups. Migrants are also subject to new, often abusive administrative restrictions. Following the attack, Russian officials doubled down, fanning the fire of racist and anti-migrant public sentiments. Russian authorities should condemn any expression of xenophobia, including by their own officials, and work to ensure full compliance with the rights of migrants.

The 135-page report, “‘We Need to Take Away Children’: Zero Accountability Six Years After ‘Zero Tolerance,’” finds that the government refused, in many cases for days or weeks, to disclose the circumstances and whereabouts of separated children to their parents, which meets the definition of an enforced disappearance. Forcible family separations may also have constituted torture, the intentional infliction of severe suffering for an improper purpose by a state agent. Even a single instance of enforced disappearance or torture is a crime under international law.

The 79-page report, “‘Die First, and I’ll Pay You Later’: Saudi Arabia’s ‘Giga-Projects’ Built on Widespread Labor Abuses,” documents widespread abuses against migrant workers, some of which may amount to situations of forced labor, including exorbitant recruitment fees, rampant wage theft, inadequate protections from extreme heat, restrictions on transferring jobs, and uninvestigated worker deaths. Saudi authorities have systematically failed to prevent or remedy these abuses, including at high-profile projects financed by its sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF).

The 40-page report, “‘It Felt Like Everything in Life Stopped’: Legal Capacity Rights Violations Against People with Disabilities in Canada’s Immigration Detention System,” documents how the country’s use of designated representatives undermines the rights of immigration detainees with disabilities to make their own decisions, often with life-altering or even life-endangering consequences. Designated representatives are appointed by the Immigration and Refugee Board when it deems that a detained person is “unable to appreciate the nature of the proceedings.”

The 154-page report, “‘Hopeless, Starving, and Besieged’: Israel’s Forced Displacement of Palestinians in Gaza,” examines how Israeli authorities’ conduct has led to the displacement of over 90 percent of the population of Gaza—1.9 million Palestinians—and the widespread destruction of much of Gaza over the last 13 months. Israeli forces have carried out deliberate, controlled demolitions of homes and civilian infrastructure, including in areas where they have apparent aims of creating “buffer zones” and security “corridors,” from which Palestinians are likely to be permanently displaced. Contrary to claims by Israeli officials, their actions do not comply with the laws of war.

The 70-page report, “‘It’s Like I live in a Cage’: Turkmen Authorities’ Denial of Passports to Turkmen Citizens in Türkiye,” describes Turkmenistan’s refusal to renew passports outside of the country as part of the government’s broader effort to severely restrict freedom of movement within its wider system of repression. The groups documented the hardships and interference with rights that Turkmen migrants in Türkiye experience in their daily lives when they become undocumented as a result of Turkmen authorities refusing to provide passport renewal services. Those who openly criticize or in the past have criticized the Turkmen government are at serious risk of deportation to Turkmenistan, where they face extreme repression, arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, and risk of torture.

The 90-page report, “‘I Can’t Go Home, Stay Here, or Leave’: Pushbacks and Pullbacks of Syrian Refugees from Cyprus and Lebanon,” documents why Syrian refugees in Lebanon are desperate to leave and try to reach Europe; and how the Lebanese army has intercepted, pulled them back, and summarily expelled them to Syria. In tandem, the Cypriot Coast Guard and other Cypriot security forces have sent Syrians whose boats reached Cyprus back to Lebanon, without regard to their refugee status or risk of being expelled to Syria. Many of those sent back to Lebanon by Cyprus were immediately expelled to Syria by the Lebanese army.