A U.N. human rights commission has issued an “urgent action” alert to the Trump administration warning that it has deported too many people, and citing it for “racial profiling and racist hate speech” against refugees and illegal immigrants.
The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, part of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, pronounced itself “deeply concerned,” “gravely concerned” and “alarmed” this week about what it’s seen since President Trump took office.
The complaints spanned the entirety of the immigration enforcement surge, from how deportation targets are identified, to how they’re treated in detention, to where they’re sent once they are booted from the country. The committee delivered a special scolding over the clashes in Minnesota that saw two U.S. citizens slain, saying those shootings “could constitute extrajudicial killing of two peaceful protestors.”
“The committee was deeply disturbed by the growing use of derogatory and dehumanizing language, and the dissemination of negative and harmful stereotypes targeting migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers,” the panel announced on Wednesday.
The early warning/urgent procedures alert is supposed to be a prod to the U.S. to change course. America joined the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in 1994.
The panel used the word “racist” more than a half-dozen times in its four-page memo, with a list of complaints that tracked closely with Democrat lawmakers’ press releases.
Among them were sharing information between the IRS and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; conditions inside ICE detention; and Homeland Security’s attempt to wind down Temporary Protected Status, a deportation amnesty, for a number of nations including Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Haiti and Nepal.
U.N. officials also complained about the more permissive approach to enforcing immigration law by erasing no-go zones the Biden administration had established around clinics, schools, day cares, school bus stops, playgrounds, food pantries, drug counseling locations, houses of worship or any other “community-based organization.”
Officials specifically prodded the U.S. government to create a definition of racial profiling, then ban its use during immigration enforcement.
That’s likely a non-starter in a world where enforcement includes the border, and national origin is often a key indicator used by agents and officers to investigate someone they see having crossed the boundary.
The Supreme Court last year also gave tacit approval to brief immigration stops where perceived national origin or language spoken are among the factors justifying the action.
“To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion; under this court’s case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a ’relevant factor’ when considered along with other salient factors,” Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion in that case.
In another complaint, the U.N. panel said DHS had to cross legal lines to achieve its elevated deportation numbers.
The Washington Times has sought comment from the State Department for this story.
The American Civil Liberties Union called the U.N. alert “ground-breaking.”
“A leading United Nations anti-discrimination and human rights body has officially recognized what we’ve known to be true: the Trump administration’s tactics to target and harass immigrants is unacceptable and flies in the face of fundamental, universal, and inalienable rights – they must immediately stop nationwide,” said Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU’s human rights program.
In addition to the administration’s actions, the U.N. committee called for a “human rights-based review” of “legislative measures” adopted under Mr. Trump.
A different U.N. panel, the International Organization for Migration, blasted the U.S. in 2023 for having the “world’s deadliest land route for migrants.”
That came amid the Biden border surge, which saw a near-breakdown of U.S. border controls and, in peak months, hundreds of thousands of migrants entering the U.S. despite lacking a legal visa to do so.
