IRTF News

Human Rights Watch reports widespread human rights violations in El Salvador’s mass trials of people arrested during President Nayib Bukele’s anti-gang crackdown. Hundreds of detainees are tried together, often without meeting their lawyers beforehand, and face convictions based on anonymous, unverified testimony and limited evidence. Defense lawyers report restricted access to case files, little time to prepare, and near-universal convictions, often resulting in sentences of 20 to 30 years. Since 2022, around 90,000 people have been arrested under a continuing state of emergency. While Bukele’s policies have reduced gang violence, human rights groups warn that innocent people, particularly from poorer communities, have been unjustly detained and convicted.

Nicaragua is planning on withdrawing from the Central American Parliament, which is just another incident in an ongoing trend.  Nicaragua is withdrawing from more and more international organizations because other members started criticizing the Ortega-Murillo administration. Although the United States has been condemning these developments in Nicaragua, the Trump administration is planning on deporting political activists back to Nicaragua where they would most likely face persecution.

A federal court has issued a nationwide ruling blocking ICE from arresting people at or near immigration courthouses, except in limited circumstances. Therefore, immigrants no longer have to decide whether they take the risk and attend required hearings and might be detained by ICE or if they stay home but thus face a removal order. The decision follows the government’s admission that a 2025 memo it had relied on to justify courthouse arrests never actually authorized those arrests. The ruling also permanently ends a related policy that allowed immigration cases to be dismissed without adequate procedural protections.

The article examines Colombia ten years after the 2016 Peace Agreement with the FARC-EP, arguing that lasting peace remains elusive. Although the agreement ended decades of conflict, nearly 500 former FARC combatants and more than 1,700 activists have been killed, while armed groups, poverty, illicit economies, and political violence continue.

The article focuses on “peace from below”—grassroots efforts by Indigenous, Afro-Colombian, campesino, women’s, LGBTQ+, victims’ and community organizations to build peace, protect their territories, and defend human rights. These communities often criticize the government’s slow and bureaucratic implementation of the Peace Agreement and its failure to address deeper structural causes of violence.

Despite ongoing violence and political setbacks, the article highlights community organizing, cooperation, resistance, and efforts to find the disappeared as examples of progress. It concludes that true peace must mean more than the absence of armed conflict—it must include social justice, dignity, protection of life, and the ability of communities to determine their own futures.

The article raises serious concerns about the human-rights consequences of U.S. deportations to El Salvador, where some deportees appear to be disappearing into a prison system with limited transparency, legal protections, or accountability. Families are left searching for answers about loved ones whose whereabouts and legal status remain unknown.

A sharp rise in fuel prices has triggered a major transport strike in central-eastern Honduras. Motorcycle taxi operators, truckers, and bus drivers blocked the RN-15 highway in El Estero, Talanga, cutting off traffic between Francisco Morazán and Olancho while also creating kilometer-long traffic jams. They are calling for a cap on rising gas prices so that they can avoid passing the increased costs on to consumers.

Honduras has adopted stricter prison measures modeled on El Salvador’s anti-gang strategy, including maximum-security detention for suspected gang members, limited outdoor time, and specialized courts. Requested by President Nasry Asfura’s government, the measures aim to combat gangs and drug trafficking following the designation of several criminal groups as terrorist organizations. The crackdown reflects Asfura’s commitment to reducing crime, drawing comparisons to President Nayib Bukele’s controversial security policies in El Salvador.

Former Guatemalan police chief Juan Francisco Cifuentes Cano was sentenced to 50 years in prison for the forced disappearance of Luz Leticia Hernández Agustín and Ana María López Rodríguez, abducted in Mixco (Guatemala) in 1982. The court acquitted him of crimes against humanity, prompting the victims’ families and Famdegua to consider further legal action. The ruling marks a significant step toward accountability, while families continue demanding answers about the disappeared during Guatemala’s 1960–1996 armed conflict.