The Center Joins Rights Groups to Sound the Alarm to the United Nations on the United States’ Disappearances of Migrants and Systematic Human Rights Violations

Press Release

For Immediate Release: May 7, 2025

Contact: Brittany Novoa

Email: press@centerforhumanrights.org

The Center Joins Rights Groups to Sound the Alarm to the United Nations on the United States' Disappearances of Migrants and Systemic Human Rights Abuses

Santa Ana, California - Fifteen immigrants’ rights organizations have submitted urgent reports to the United Nations and Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, raising the alarm over systematic and grave human rights violations against migrants and asylum-seekers by the U.S. government during the first months of the Trump-Vance administration. 

The coalition, including Al Otro Lado, Americans for Immigrant Justice, Amnesty International, the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project (Florence Project), Haitian Bridge Alliance (HBA), Hope Border Institute, Human Rights First, Immigrant Defenders Law Center, Instituto para las Mujeres en la Migración (IMUMI), the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), Jewish Family Service of San Diego, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, RAICES, and Refugees International submitted joint reports to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (UNWGEID) in April 2025 and to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights  Rapporteurship on Human Mobility in May 2025.

Their submissions document how the U.S. government is holding migrants incommunicado in abusive immigration detention conditions, denying access to legal counsel, blocking people fleeing persecution and torture from accessing the asylum process, summarily deporting people to countries where they fear persecution, and disappearing migrants to third countries where they face enforced disappearance, imprisonment, torture, onward refoulement, due process violations, and other grave harms.  

“The Trump Administration’s systemic disappearing of immigrants - including rendition to countries like El Salvador, incommunicado detention that destroys families, and the routine denial of access to counsel and due process - is a crime against humanity under international law,” said Sergio Perez, Executive Director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law. “Disappearances are always unjustified, regardless of the self-serving excuses provided by those who inflict them. Disappearances destroy lives, deny families closure, and inflict lasting harm on entire communities. We, at the Center, together with other human rights advocates, will continue to expose and challenge the grave human rights abuses occurring daily in the United States.”

“We are a coalition of organizations standing against this administration’s unprecedented assault on due process and human rights which demand urgent international scrutiny. We commend the United Nations Special Procedures for its recent communication to the U.S. and Salvadoran governments on the enforced disappearances and unlawful expulsions of migrants to El Salvador and in calling for their return to the United States. We ask the Special Procedures and Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Rapporteurship to investigate and condemn the additional grave human rights violations reported,” said the coalition. 

In 2024, the UNWGEID issued general allegations against the United States concerning the enforced disappearances of asylum seekers and migrants held in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody, interdicted at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG), and returned to Mexico under various border policies, following joint submissions in August and December 2023 by some members of this coalition.

The UNWGEID, made up of five independent human rights experts, investigates enforced disappearances and assists affected families, including by receiving reports of enforced disappearances, requesting that Governments investigate allegations of enforced disappearances, and facilitating States in realizing the rights espoused in the Declaration on the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearances. 

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Rapporteurship on Human Mobility, currently held by Andrea Pochak (appointed January 2024-December 2027), focuses on promoting respect and protection of the rights of migrants and their families, asylum seekers, refugees, stateless persons, victims of human trafficking, internally displaced persons, and other vulnerable groups in the context of human mobility.

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The Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law (CHRCL) is a legal non-profit committed to protecting and advancing the rights of immigrants through legal action, advocacy, and education. Through impact litigation, we challenge unlawful immigration policies to drive systemic change and establish stronger legal protections for immigrants. At the local, state, and federal levels, we advocate for fair and humane policies that uphold the rights of all immigrants. https://www.centerforhumanrights.org/