Below you’ll find breaking news as well as reports, updates on our campaigns, and victories.
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Press Release
Immigrant Children and Attorneys’ Plea: Stop Family Deportations
Dilley, TX and Leesport, PA - This weekend, the Trump Administration could move to deport 28 children with their parents, in one of its last immoral immigration acts that shock the conscience. The children, ranging from ages 2 to 18, are begging for their stories to be heard in hopes that someone in power will finally listen.Affected children and their advocates will deliver their messages on a Zoom call with reporters at 4pm ET/1pm PT on November 18. WHO: Bridget Cambria, Attorney, Aldea-The People’s Justice Center Nicole Phillips,Legal Director, Haitian Bridge Alliance Shay Fluharty,Attorney, Proyecto Dilley A 15-year-old girl at risk…
November 18, 2020
Press Release
“Don’t Forget These Children”: Families Belong Together Reminds Lawmakers Children Still Separated
On Monday, November 16, 2020, Families Belong Together — a national coalition fighting to permanently end family separation and incarceration under the U.S. immigration system — will hold an action on Capitol Hill to remind lawmakers of the hundreds of children still separated as a result of the Trump Administration’s inhumane family separation policy. According to a recent report, about one third of these 666 children were under five-years-old when they were separated years ago. See action details below: WHO: Families Belong Together WHAT: An installation of 600+ teddy bears in and around a cage placed near Capitol Hill to…
November 13, 2020
Press Release
Today’s report on family separation highlights need for accountability
Responding to the House Judiciary Committee releasing the findings of its 21-month investigation into the development and execution of the Trump Administration's family separation policy, which resulted in more than 2,500 migrant children becoming separated from their parents, Denise Bell, the researcher for refugee and migrant rights at Amnesty International USA said: "Today's report only confirms what this administration's immigration policies have shown: cruelty was always the point. This administration's deliberate policy to separate families inflicted severe mental suffering -- all in order to deter people from seeking safety or to coerce them into giving up. This is called torture,…
October 29, 2020
Press Release
ICE doubles down on detention to deter and punish families for seeking safety
Responding to the Department of Homeland Security statement regarding the pending Flores court decision, Denise Bell, the researcher for refugee and migrant rights at Amnesty International USA said: "The administration’s statement that the court is forcing its hand to separate families is pure disinformation. On the contrary, it is ICE’s actions that have contributed to this untenable situation. This administration has consistently acted to keep families detained, instead of releasing them together, which is well within its discretion to do. The government has sought a path fundamentally destructive of a child’s best interests and family unity by keeping families together through…
October 27, 2020
Press Release
ICE Reactionary Billboards Inflame Hate
Responding to billboards launched by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Pennsylvania following a campaign by Amnesty International USA to educate the public about family immigration detention in the state, including the prolonged and indefinite detention of children, Denise Bell, the researcher for refugee and migrant rights said: “Once again, ICE relies on fear-mongering to achieve a discriminatory policy agenda fueled by tactics of misinformation and disinformation. Tactics by ICE demonstrate how low the agency chooses to stoop again and again to invoke baseless fear of our very neighbors. This is propaganda – at its core and at its…
October 5, 2020
Press Release
The United States is Failing Refugees Under President Trump
The number of refugees that the United States welcomes each year is a measure of who we are and where we stand in the world in terms of our commitment to human rights.
October 1, 2020
Press Release
Amnesty International USA Issues Rare Call for a Halt on Chad Wolf Nomination
Chad Wolf has participated in, and in many cases presided over, DHS’s perpetration of serious human rights violations. From proposing the separation of families to recklessly detaining tens of thousands of people during a global pandemic to deploying DHS forces to “dominate” civil rights protesters, Wolf has an abysmal record on human rights. Until that record is fully and thoroughly investigated, Wolf’s nomination should not proceed.
September 23, 2020
Press Release
540 Bipartisan Elected Officials From All 50 States Urge President Trump to Welcome Refugees
Today, 540 local and state elected officials from all 50 states and the District of Columbia expressed their strong support for resettling refugees in their communities in a bipartisan letter sent to President Trump. The letter, supported by Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), the International Rescue Committee (IRC), and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS), urges the President to raise refugee admissions for Fiscal Year 2021.
September 17, 2020
Press Release
Reports of Forced Sterilization of Women in ICE Detention Deeply Alarming
Responding to reports that there have been hysterectomies performed on immigrant women detained in the Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC) in Georgia, Denise Bell, Researcher on Refugee and Migrant Rights, said:
September 16, 2020
Press Release
Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh must participate in decisions affecting their lives
Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh must be given the right to participate in decisions affecting their lives and speak for themselves, Amnesty International said today in a new briefing. The briefing, “Let us speak for our rights”, outlines how exclusion from decision-making is impacting the human rights of Rohingya refugees – from freedom of expression, assembly and movement to access to healthcare and education. The briefing also calls for a full and thorough investigation into allegations that Rohingya refugees have been subjected to extrajudicial executions. “For decades, the Rohingya were subjected to persecution and discrimination in Myanmar, with hundreds of thousands…
September 15, 2020
Press Release
New Billboards Call on ICE to Stop Detaining Families and Children
Residents of Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and the Washington D.C. area will see billboards across their states and districts for four weeks calling on the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency to stop detaining families who came to the United States seeking safety. As part of a campaign to free people from ICE detention, human rights organization Amnesty International USA chose today to target ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to call on the agencies to free families and children, following in-depth research into immigration detention facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Billboards that read,…
September 15, 2020
Report
Update to Amnesty International Report on COVID-19 IN US IMMIGRATION DETENTION (August 2020)
On 7 April 2020, Amnesty international issued the report ‘We are adrift, about to sink': The looming COVID-19 disaster in US Immigration Detention facilities. As of 28 August 2020 – over four months since this report – the number of people who have contracted confirmed cases of COVID-19 in US immigration detention facilities has skyrocketed more than 200-fold, to 5,300 cases (850 of whom remain in detention, and have not been deported). Among those cases are some of the approximately one hundred families held in detention centres, which a US federal judge has said were “on fire” with confirmed cases…
September 1, 2020