Tougher U.S. immigration policies under scrutiny by human rights bodies

The deepening of deportation policies, stigmatization in the name of the “fight against crime” and obstacles to asylum applications are raising growing concern over their harm to the population.

Human rights violations against migrant populations remain among the main focuses of concern at the international level. Although the phenomenon has many facets and contextual complexities around the world, the United States has become one of the most prominent centers of debate on migrant populations. The immigration policies promoted by the Donald Trump administration have raised particular alarm among organizations around the world in recent years. In a context of intense geopolitical clashes, migrants in that country have become a key point of contention.

In this case, the organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) spoke out in recent days on the new legislation promoted by President Trump on deportations. As recently reported, the U.S. administration decided to toughen immigration policies in the name of the fight against crime and organized crime, creating new persecutory guidelines for migrants with criminal records. 

HRW released a report arguing that these policies undermine public safety and, far from strengthening the fight against crime, place at extreme risk migrants who, because of their social vulnerability, are often used by more powerful criminal structures that abuse their legal status. The international organization focuses on how the new deportation measures weaken federal government programs designed to protect migrants and offer them legal asylum so they can obtain legal residency and cooperate with law enforcement. The organization maintains that this is a threatening and coercive policy for migrants who, faced with the danger of deportation, find themselves held captive by their abusers and forced not to report them.

This is a situation that international bodies have been observing for some time. In February of this year, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) expressed its concern about the human rights impact of the immigration policies promoted by Trump. At the time, the U.S. government had announced that it would grant asylum only to refugees who could assimilate “fully and appropriately” into the U.S. system. The IACHR regarded this as a criterion that enabled arbitrary and discriminatory application against migrants, in a context of migratory waves caused by humanitarian crises. 

Condemnation by international bodies

In mid-2025, Amnesty International (AI) had expressed its condemnation of a measure launched at that time that imposed new immigration restrictions. It consisted of a travel ban on people from countries such as Afghanistan, Chad, Libya, Ecuador and Sudan, among others. The organization denounced that this measure showed a clear discriminatory, racist and stigmatizing bias against Muslim or Black populations. The international organization also pointed out that the measure harmed those seeking asylum to take refuge from severe crises in their countries.  

In May, the United Nations also warned of serious human rights violations linked to deportations from the United States, many of them carried out in the name of laws targeting “alien enemies,” applied to alleged members of criminal groups. In this context, more than 140,000 people were deported from the U.S. in the first four months of this year. Of this total, the UN warned that the whereabouts of more than 200 Venezuelans and 30 Salvadorans were unknown, with no clear response. In most of these cases, according to the UN, basic rights such as legal representation for their defense were disregarded, and there was mistreatment in the conditions of detention.   

Mexico's National Human Rights Commission also released a report this year referring to the constant hate speech, the criminalization of migration and the human rights violations targeting Mexican populations in the United States. Among various actions, Mexico's CNDH denounces practices such as the separation of children from their migrant parents.

Being a migrant in the Trump era

Although debates around migratory waves, mainly of Latin American populations, have been a focus of political disputes in the United States for decades, the model of government established by Donald Trump has deepened tensions. On the 100th day of his current term, the aforementioned organization Human Rights Watch released a tally of the “100 human rights violations” perpetrated by the Trump administration. 

This report highlighted actions related to immigration policy. It points to measures such as the accelerated deportation of Cubans, Venezuelans and Haitians on parole, delays of months or years for people seeking asylum at the border, and the stigmatization of families from Islamic countries seeking asylum, among others.