Tag
The principle prohibiting states from returning individuals to countries where they face serious threats to life or freedom. A cornerstone of international refugee and human rights law, recognized as a norm of customary international law.
17 incidents
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
Two same-day 6-3 SCOTUS rulings on June 25, 2026 eliminated judicial review of TPS terminations (allowing TPS to end for ~350,000 Haitians and ~6,100 Syrians) and revived asylum metering at the border. Sotomayor's dissent warned the rulings will get people killed.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The US secretly deported 17 people from 9 African countries to Cameroon under a covert agreement, including people with US court protections against return to their home countries. Cameroon detained them without legal basis, and journalists attempting to document conditions were arrested. HRW says the transfers to a country with a record of torture in detention breach the prohibition on refoulement.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
A secret agreement with one of the world's most repressive regimes has sent 66 deportees to Equatorial Guinea, where they were detained and, in the case of all 29 on the first two flights, returned to their countries of origin, including people US judges had found would face persecution or torture there. 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.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The US paid Rwanda, Ghana, Eswatini, and South Sudan to accept deportees who are not their nationals, in deals a federal judge ruled unconstitutional. HRW called the expulsion agreements violations of international human rights law, and domestic lawsuits in Ghana challenge the deal's legality.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
Federal officials removed Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador despite a preexisting withholding order barring that destination, then spent weeks litigating what it meant to 'facilitate' his return after the Supreme Court intervened. Returned in June 2025 to face criminal charges, he was released from ICE custody in December 2025, and the criminal case was dismissed in May 2026 as vindictive prosecution; the Justice Department has appealed.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
252 Venezuelans were secretly deported to CECOT, where HRW documented torture, sexual violence, prolonged incommunicado detention, and denial of basic necessities. At least 48.8% had no criminal history in the United States, and at least 62 had asylum cases pending. All 252 were sent to Venezuela in a July 18, 2025 prisoner exchange.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
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 is accused of breaching non-refoulement by deporting people to a system that human rights groups document as practising enforced disappearance. Amnesty International has said El Salvador's state-of-exception abuses could amount to crimes against humanity.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
The US deported Haitians to a country whose capital's airport US airlines are barred from after commercial planes were hit by gang gunfire, where 90% of the capital is under gang control and 1.4 million are displaced. DHS terminated TPS for about 348,000 Haitians while the State Department maintained a Level 4 'Do Not Travel' advisory; the Supreme Court allowed the termination to proceed in June 2026.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
TPS was terminated or targeted for termination across 11 countries, de-documenting over 1 million people. Federal courts have blocked or paused several terminations. The State Department maintains 'Do Not Travel' advisories for many of the same countries DHS claims are safe for return.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
DHS Secretary Noem terminated Venezuela TPS, and the Supreme Court allowed it to take effect, de-documenting approximately 350,000 people and exposing them to removal to a country the State Department itself has characterized as unstable and dangerous.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
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.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The administration imposed an unprecedented total ban on asylum claims at the southern border, shutting down the CBP One app and eliminating all avenues for protection. A federal judge ruled the president 'cannot adopt an alternative immigration system which supplants the statutes that Congress has enacted.'
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The immediate shutdown of the CBP One asylum scheduling app on Inauguration Day cancelled 30,000 appointments and stranded 270,000 asylum seekers, eliminating the primary legal pathway to request protection at the US border.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The administration indefinitely suspended refugee resettlement and set the lowest admissions cap in US history at 7,500, prioritizing white Afrikaners, while stranding refugees mid-transit including families who had sold their belongings for the journey.
Grade 5 of 5: International Crime (Rome Statute)
Continued US arms transfers to Israel during ICJ genocide proceedings, including emergency bypasses of Congressional review and the rescission of the NSM-20 safeguard. This raises complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity for which the ICC has issued arrest warrants (Rome Statute Art. 25(3)(d) and customary aiding and abetting). Complicity in genocide is alleged on the basis of the UN Commission of Inquiry's findings but is unadjudicated.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
The administration used a COVID-19 public-health order to close the southern border to asylum seekers, expelling hundreds of thousands of people with no protection screening. Top CDC scientists said there was no public-health basis for it. Human Rights Watch found it violated the US obligation not to return people to persecution or torture.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The first Trump administration made tens of thousands of asylum seekers wait in Mexican border cities, among the most violent in the region, for US hearings they mostly faced without lawyers. HRW documented kidnappings and assaults and found the programme violated non-refoulement; a federal appeals court found it likely unlawful, but the Supreme Court let it continue.