Category
Removal of persons to countries or facilities where they face substantial risk of torture or cruel treatment, violating non-refoulement obligations
15 incidents
The US secretly deported 17 people from 9 African countries to Cameroon under a covert agreement. Deportees were immediately beaten by gendarmes, arbitrarily detained, and subjected to torture. Journalists attempting to document conditions were detained. HRW documented systematic abuses including enforced disappearances and rape.
A secret agreement with one of the world's most repressive regimes has stranded 29 deportees in Equatorial Guinea, where they face indefinite detention without counsel or forced deportation to the countries they fled. The $7.5 million deal is part of a broader $40 million third-country deportation program targeting migrants from countries that will not accept their return.
Florida immigration detention centers are sites of documented torture including a punitive cage device, prolonged solitary confinement, unsanitary conditions, and enforced disappearances facilitated by the absence of any tracking system. At least six people died in Florida ICE facilities since October 2024.
Over 260 Venezuelans were secretly deported to CECOT, where HRW documented torture, sexual violence, prolonged incommunicado detention, and denial of basic necessities. Many deportees had no criminal history and were asylum seekers.
Systematic forced disappearances of Salvadoran nationals deported from the US, held incommunicado in Salvadoran prisons including CECOT with no access to lawyers, families, or courts. The US bears responsibility for knowingly deporting individuals to a country practicing enforced disappearance — a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute.
A secret $6 million contract enabled the US to outsource detention to El Salvador's CECOT mega-prison, where HRW documented systematic torture. The unreleased agreement created an unprecedented mechanism to evade domestic legal protections by transferring detainees to a foreign torture facility.
Immigrants transferred to Guantanamo Bay face conditions amounting to torture: 23+ hour solitary confinement, punishment chairs, physical abuse, and incommunicado detention. ACLU and CCR lawsuits challenge the offshore detention as unconstitutional and beyond the authority of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
46 deaths in ICE custody since January 2025 mark a two-decade high. ICE's October 2025 halt of medical care payments left detainees without access to health services as the detention population reached record levels, creating conditions that contributed to preventable deaths.
The administration declared a national emergency at the border on January 20, 2025, and directed federal military and law enforcement resources toward immigration enforcement. ICE operations expanded significantly; worksite raids and community arrests became routine. The administration deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national with a U.S. court order protecting him from removal to El Salvador, to CECOT; a federal judge ordered his return; the administration refused. The ACLU and other organizations documented multiple U.S. citizens and green card holders wrongly detained. Trump characterized the deportation operations as removing 'the worst, most violent criminals' despite documented cases of individuals with no criminal history being targeted.
The CBP Border Patrol stations along the southern border were designed for 72-hour holding. Under the Trump administration's enforcement surge, they held children for days and weeks, sometimes in chainlink-fenced areas — the 'cages' — without adequate food, water, sleep, or sanitation. At least seven children died in custody in fiscal years 2018-2019, compared to zero in the previous decade. The DHS OIG described conditions presenting 'immediate risk' to detainee health and safety.
A federal judge in the ACLU's Ms. L. v. ICE case ordered the government to reunify all separated families within 30 days. The administration missed the deadline, admitted it lacked a tracking system, and was repeatedly held in contempt. Parents were deported without their children; children were 'lost' in the system; in some cases children remained in U.S. custody for years after their parents had been removed to their home countries. The ACLU's family tracking project located hundreds of deported parents who didn't know where their children were.
While the Zero Tolerance policy is documented elsewhere, the specific treatment of children under 5 — the 'tender age' population — constituted a distinct category of harm. Infants as young as a few months old were taken from parents and placed in facilities where they were cared for by strangers. Whistleblowers described children crying inconsolably. The American Academy of Pediatrics called the policy 'child abuse.' A federal court gave the government 30 days to reunify this group; the administration missed the deadline.
Attorney General Sessions announced a zero tolerance policy in April 2018 requiring criminal prosecution of all illegal border crossers. Because federal criminal custody excludes children, this automatically separated minors from their parents. Over 5,500 children were separated in six weeks. Courts ordered reunification; as of 2024, hundreds of families remain separated.
The zero tolerance policy was the direct cause of mass family separations: parents were referred for criminal prosecution, children were taken to Office of Refugee Resettlement shelters, and the two systems — criminal justice and child welfare — did not have adequate mechanisms to track and reunite families. Senior administration officials including Chief of Staff John Kelly had discussed using family separation as a deterrent as early as 2017. Trump publicly and repeatedly denied a family separation policy existed while it was operating. A federal court ordered family reunification; the government struggled to comply, partly because adequate records had not been kept linking children to parents.
Under Trump, ICE detention grew from approximately 41,000 to over 55,000 people at peak. At least 41 people died in ICE custody during the first term; a DHS OIG inspection found facilities with standing sewage, rotten food, and detainees unable to access medical care. Multiple investigations documented sexual abuse, inadequate mental health care, and coerced medical procedures.