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IRTF News
News Article
July 30, 2019
IRTF friends at the CIS in San Salvador have committed to building 15 of the desperately needed homes in the community of Paso Puente. Most of the families are headed by mothers living on about $3 per day from washing other people’s clothes. CIS, which has worked in a neighboring community for many years, is building trust with residents, getting more children into school, and identifying skilled laborers. Folks there are building their own homes, but they need us to support them!
News Article
July 29, 2019
Under U.S. and international law, the United States is obligated to hear asylum requests unless an alternative "safe third country" is stipulated through a bilateral agreement. Such a "safe third country" must provide security and due process for asylum seekers. Trump officials tried initially to pressure Mexico to sign a safe third country agreement, but the Mexican government balked, even as it capitulated to Trump's tariff threats and stepped up efforts to interdict Central American migrants. So, the Trump administration turned to strong-arming Guatemala.
News Article
July 27, 2019
Thousands take to streets in cities across Colombia demanding government action over the killing of social leaders.
News Article
July 23, 2019
Declaring that “Guatemala has not been good,” President Trump threatened on Tuesday to retaliate against the country for not signing an immigration deal. He said his administration was considering imposing tariffs on Guatemalan exports or taxing money sent home by migrants.
The deal, called a “safe third country” agreement, would have required migrants who pass through Guatemala to seek asylum there, instead of continuing to the United States.
News Article
July 19, 2019
This is urgent. Unless Congress legalizes the status of these immigrants (currently under a temporary protected status), they could be placed into deportation proceedings, tearing families apart.
News Article
July 19, 2019
"In these times there are those who cheerfully play a war drum without thinking that they put at risk the existence of themselves, I am sure that the American people want peace and justice," said President Daniel Ortega. The head of government said that, regardless of their political position, citizens want peace and economic stability in the midst of a reality that affects the world with so many wars, destruction and exploitation. "This celebration has allowed all of us here to carry a message of peace, resistance and unity to the Nicaraguan people," he said.
News Article
July 17, 2019
This submission focuses on the topics of sexual violence, women’s and girls’ sexual and reproductive health and rights, and the protection of students, teachers, and schools during time of armed conflict.
Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls (article 14)
RRN Letter
July 16, 2019
destruction of crops that occurred on July 15 at the sites of La Vege del Culatón and El Achotal in the Río Blanco community in Intibucá Department. The Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) announced that during the night members of the Madrid family, associates of the Atala Zablah family, destroyed with machetes more than 15 manzanas of the Lenca indigenous community's corn harvest. At least 25 families have lost their principal food and main livelihood.
RRN Letter
July 15, 2019
murder of Mario Moreno Jiménez, a member of the National Front for Socialism (FNLS), in Venustiano Carranza, Chiapas, on June 18.
News Article
July 15, 2019
Routine dehumanization of the very people they’re tasked with helping....Prosecutors have revealed that the Border Patrol agent set to go on trial next month for running down a border crosser referred to immigrants as “mindless, murdering savages.” Border Patrol agents routinely call migrants or detainees “tonks,” a moniker that agents joke stems from the sound a detainee’s head makes when hit with a flashlight, and such racist terms even surface in the agency’s academy...Even today, recruiting ads continue to make the Border Patrol look like an action movie, with stirring music and fancy toys, from helicopters to canines to ATVs, and lots and lots of weapons. On CBP’s website, “counterterrorism” is listed first under the agency’s mission—ahead of “customs” and “immigration,” and the first item on the agency’s own job description for officers states a “typical assignment” is “detecting and preventing terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering the United States.” In its first sentence of the agency’s “About” listing, CBP says it “is charged with keeping terrorists and their weapons out of the U.S.” Nowhere in its recruiting material does it list anything having to do with “providing humanitarian assistance,” “rescuing migrants,” or “aiding families and children fleeing drug violence,” the tasks that have over the past 10 years have consumed more and more of the Border Patrol’s time.