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Asylum Seekers Face Real Harm from US Border Policy

As People Are Expelled to Danger, States Sue to Keep Practice in Place

Following the Biden administration’s recent announcement that it would rescind an abusive Trump-era summary expulsion policy in May, the US states of Arizona, Louisiana, and Missouri this week sued to force the administration to continue turning…
202204americas_us_mexico_border_family
News

Restoring Access to Asylum at the US Border

Biden Administration Should Focus on Dignified, Humane, and Fair Treatment

Since March 2020, the United States has misused an antiquated section of public health law – Title 42 – to expel migrants quickly, without giving them a chance to ask for asylum. That looks to be coming to an end. The Centers for Disease Control…
People hold a protest sign that reads "Save asylum"
News

A Cry for Cameroon: How the United States Failed Refugees

As U.S. officials face continued criticism for the mistreatment and mass expulsions of Haitians who arrived at the U.S. southern border, with many given no chance to apply for asylum, the situation of another group of Black asylum seekers is now also in…
Report

“How Can You Throw Us Back?”

Summary After the United States rejected her asylum claim and deported her in October 2020, Esther,[1] a Cameroonian woman, found herself trapped in a nightmare in the country she had previously fled. “I was arrested and detained [by gendarmes]... I…
News

US: Deported Cameroonian Asylum Seekers Suffer Serious Harm

Flawed Asylum Denials; Abuses in Detention and After Deportation

(Washington, DC) – Cameroonian authorities subjected dozens of asylum seekers deported by the United States to serious human rights violations between 2019 and 2021, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The 149-page report, “‘How…
A hand reaches through bars
News

US: Slow Progress on Human Rights

High-Level Pronouncements Marred by Systemic Racism, Abuse of Asylum Seekers

(Washington, DC) – The administration of President Joe Biden has made slow progress protecting human rights in the United States, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2022. "The Biden administration has made some big-picture…
Hughes Van Ellis (left), a Tulsa Race Massacre survivor and World War II veteran, and Viola Fletcher (second right), oldest living survivor of the massacre, testify about the massacre’s ongoing impact before the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC, on May 19, 2021.
News

Joint Letter to DHS Secretary Mayorkas and USCIS Director Jaddou

Groups Urge Biden Administration to Rescind Trump Employment Authorization Documents (EADs) Rules

Hon. Alejandro N. Mayorkas           Secretary of Homeland Security          U.S. Department of Homeland Security           2707 Martin Luther King…
Lizbeth, una mujer salvadoreña que busca asilo en Estados Unidos, posa en la casa de un familiar en Tijuana, México, donde fue enviada a esperar por el resultado de su caso, el 5 de noviembre de 2019
Report

Dismantling Detention

Summary As the harmful effects of immigration detention become more widely known and the appropriateness of detaining migrants is increasingly questioned, governments are looking at alternatives to detention as more humane and rights-respecting…
Report

“They Treat You Like You Are Worthless”

  Summary In 2017, a US Border Patrol agent kneed a woman in the lower pelvis, leaving bruises and pain days later, according to her statement to a government official screening her asylum claim. In a separate incident that year, a Border…
News

Biden Border Expulsions Continue to Harm Asylum Seekers

Delayed Reforms Endanger LGBT, Black, Other Adults Traveling Alone

“The officials didn’t let me tell them anything. They just sent me back.” That’s what “Dolores,” an asylum seeker in Mexico, told me after United States Border Patrol agents expelled her under the illegal and discriminatory Title 42 border…
Honduran men cross into the United States to begin the asylum process Monday, July 5, 2021, in Tijuana, Mexico. The administration of President Joe Biden continues to turn away thousands of asylum seekers under the illegal and discriminatory Title 42 summary expulsion policy.
News

Exceptions to US Border Expulsion Policy Fail to Address Flaws

Thousands Have Been Expelled Under Abusive Policy

The New York Times reported last week that the United States would lift a public health bar on migrants crossing the border into the country for families, but that it would keep expelling single adults, at least until the end of the summer. The US has…
A migrant family crosses the border into El Paso, Texas, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Friday, Feb. 26, 2021.
News

Spate of Antisemitic Attacks in US During Recent Mideast Tensions

Biden Envoy Should Combat Actual Antisemitism, Not Israeli Criticism

On May 18, a group waving the Palestinian flag assaulted diners seated outside a Los Angeles restaurant after reportedly asking if they were Jewish. In New York City two days later, assailants pummeled a young man wearing a skullcap on the street, a…
Police stand guard in front of the Young Israel of Riverdale synagogue where glass windows were smashed in New York on April 25, 2021.
News

Afghanistan: Exiting Forces Should Protect Interpreters

NATO Members, Australia Should Expedite Relocation of Local Staff

(Washington, DC) – Countries with troops departing Afghanistan should accelerate programs to resettle former Afghan interpreters and other employees who are increasingly at risk from Taliban forces, Human Rights Watch said today. The planned…
Former Afghan interpreters hold placards during a protest against the U.S. government and NATO in Kabul, Afghanistan on April 30, 2021.
News

How to Make the US Asylum System Efficient and Fair

Processing asylum claims at the US border is a Gordian knot in need of a clean cut. My scissors are ready. The solution is not procedural, but rather, a simpler, fairer asylum standard that will allow US decision-makers to quickly identify and protect…
Migrants seeking asylum wait in line with their case paperwork to meet with an attorney on Oct. 5, 2019, during a weekly trip by volunteers, lawyers, paralegals and interpreters to the migrant campsite outside El Puente Nuevo in Matamoros, Mexico.
News

US FedEx Shooting Should Be Investigated as Possible Hate Crime

Anti-Sikh Violence a Continuing Concern

The April 15 shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis that left eight dead, four of whom were members of the Sikh community, should be investigated as a possible hate crime motivated by religious bias. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks on…
Members of the Sikh Coalition gather at the Sikh Satsang of Indianapolis 
News

Biden Needs a Middle East-Wide Human Rights Policy

On the campaign trail and during his first three months in office, President Biden promised a US return to a multilateral foreign policy that supports human rights. That is an important vision for the Middle East, a region often destabilized…
President Joe Biden speaks about foreign policy, at the State Department in Washington, February 4, 2021. 
News

Will US Repeat History by Failing Haitians Again?

End Sweeping Border Expulsions, Re-designate Haiti for Temporary Protected Status

In 1993, when I was a junior staff member at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, I saw first-hand the tragic repercussions of US President Bill Clinton’s failure to follow through on the promise he made as a candidate to…
A migrant from Haiti wearing a mask in the colors of the Mexican and US flags stands at a border crossing with others, waiting to asylum in the US, February 19, 2021. 
News

No, It’s Not the Same Old Thing at the Border

US Should Continue to Move Toward a More Humane Policy

Recent reports of children being held for prolonged periods in packed unhygienic conditions, sleeping on mats on the floor of border jails, conjured the faces of children I spoke with in the same dangerous and unacceptable situation in 2019, under the…
A woman walks carrying her child at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) South Texas Family Residential Center, in Dilley, Texas, August 23, 2019. 

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