Tag
10 incidents
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
Trump pardoned four Blackwater guards whom US courts had convicted of killing Iraqi civilians, including a 9-year-old boy, in Baghdad in 2007. The UN human rights office said the pardons 'contribute to impunity'; a survivor who testified at trial said he was 'really shocked.'
Grade 1 of 5: Significant Democratic Concern
According to John Bolton, Trump privately told Xi Jinping that building the Xinjiang detention camps was 'exactly the right thing to do', and repression of the Uyghurs was set aside as a reason for sanctions while trade talks continued. Trump denies the book's account. The Trump administration on July 9, 2020 sanctioned Xinjiang party secretary Chen Quanguo and other officials (Wikipedia) and, on its last full day, declared the persecution a genocide.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
Trump used a national-emergency sanctions order to freeze the assets of the ICC's chief prosecutor and a senior aide because the court was investigating possible crimes by US personnel in Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch called it a 'perverse use of sanctions, devised for alleged terrorists and drug kingpins.' The order was revoked in 2021.
Grade 1 of 5: Significant Democratic Concern
Trump told four congresswomen of colour, all American citizens, to 'go back' to the countries they 'originally came from'. The House formally condemned the tweets as racist. Two days later a rally crowd chanted 'Send her back!' about Rep. Ilhan Omar while the President let it run.
Grade 1 of 5: Significant Democratic Concern
Trump reversed decades of US policy by recognising Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights. That set aside a Security Council resolution the US itself had supported and departed from the customary rule against recognising territory acquired by force. No identifiable victims of concrete harm are documented.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The administration tried to strip asylum eligibility from everyone who crossed the southern border between official crossing points, despite a statute that expressly allows them to apply. The courts blocked it, and the Ninth Circuit found it 'effectively a categorical ban' contrary to US law and refugee-treaty commitments.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
Sessions used his power to rewrite immigration precedent to declare that people fleeing domestic or gang violence will generally not qualify for asylum. Its standards were applied at the border to screen people out before they could make their case; federal courts held key parts of that screening policy unlawful, and the decision was vacated in 2021.
Grade 2 of 5: Major Abuse of Power
The first Trump administration cut refugee admissions to the lowest ceilings since the 1980 Refugee Act, and by executive order let states and localities veto refugee resettlement. Two federal courts held the veto likely unlawful under the Refugee Act and blocked it. The ceilings themselves were a lawful use of presidential discretion.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
A federal judge found Arpaio guilty of deliberately defying a court order meant to stop his deputies from detaining Latino drivers on immigration suspicion alone. Trump pardoned him before he could be sentenced, removing the courts' criminal sanction for an official's defiance of an order protecting constitutional rights.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
Four months after the deadly Yakla raid, US special forces raided another Yemeni village. The Pentagon reported seven al-Qaeda fighters killed and no civilian casualties; villagers said five civilians were killed, including a teenager shot while running away and an elderly man who mistook the soldiers for visitors.