Holding the United States Accountable for Immigration and Protest Crackdowns

Last updated July 2026

Since Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, the United States government has carried out one of the most aggressive immigration crackdowns in generations. Trump has enacted legislation blocking asylees from crossing U.S. borders, ending refugee protections for vulnerable groups, and enabling mass deportations. Meanwhile, his administration has deployed masked agents across U.S. cities, where they have carried out paramilitary-style raids, injuring and killing unarmed people in the streets and illegally detaining them in facilities rife with abuses. 

Trump’s violent and cruel policies have sparked protests across the United States. The government has responded with violence, injuring and killing protesters. State agents have mass-arrested protesters, arbitrarily detaining them based on spurious allegations. The Trump administration has tried to discourage protesters from going into the street by putting them on “domestic terrorist” lists and pursuing terrorism charges against them.

The University Network for Human Rights has partnered with civil society organizations and legal clinics to synthesize the overwhelming body of open-source evidence of unprecedented State abuses in the context of immigration. UNHR requested a thematic hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on the United States' violent crackdown on protesters of U.S. immigration policies. Along with representatives for Renée Good, who was shot by federal agents; Reverend Black, who was shot by a federal agent at point-blank with pepper balls; and the Boston University’s International Human Rights Clinic, we will present before the IACHR on August 4. There, the U.S. will be forced to respond to its widespread abuses against protesters of U.S. immigration policy.

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