IRTF News

For more than four decades, IRTF has welcomed dozens of interns who have helped carry forward our mission of promoting peace, human rights and systemic transformation across the Americas. Each year, our interns enter the living legacy of IRTF: never-ending advocacy, organizing, and accompaniment. Their experiences, like those of Lucia and Maddie, remind us of the importance of this work and of forming the next generation of justice seekers.

Maddie: As a small organization and a tight-knit community, IRTF’s support is direct. This summer, we accompanied migrants to their immigration hearings, speaking with them in a mix of broken English and Spanish, learning their stories and offering them support and companionship. We connected with other community groups to learn how we could best inform local migrant and refugee families through Know Your Rights training. We challenged our own comfort and security by attempting to take on the fear and uncertainty faced by the migrant community.

Lucia: IRTF has been an indispensable part of discerning the world I want to live in, the role I will have in that, and the way I hope to go about it. This haven of social justice, activism, and human-centered civic engagement has become the foundation on which I hope to build a lifetime of advocacy and purposeful action.

Please read more from the reflections of student interns Maddie and Lucia.

Adam Isacson from the Washington Office on Latin America examines the accountability gap in federal immigration enforcement. While DHS has written standards requiring deadly force only when "necessary" and when there's "imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury," these policies are rarely enforced. International standards require both necessity and proportionality—but U.S. agencies don't apply them.

Between July 2025 and January 28, 2026, 35 people have died in immigration detention centers. But those are the ones we know about. So now there is a new independent tracker. Our (Portside.org) information comes from a variety of sources, primarily news reports, government data, and other sources such as immigration legal advocates. The agency involved is also included. About those agencies: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol are both active, though most people call all agents “ICE.” Border Patrol is an agency housed under Customs and Border Protection (CBP); all these agencies are within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Fields are left blank when those details are absent from reports. We will update this tracker as more information becomes available.

The hardline approach to violence, a model used by President Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, is gaining increasing support in Central America, a region that has been historically plagued by insecurity, whether related to gangs or drug trafficking.

Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Honduras are three countries that have adopted measures similar to those implemented by the Salvadoran leader, despite the criticism he receives from human rights organizations.

The article examines Honduras’s fragile political transition after a narrowly contested and widely questioned election, assessing Xiomara Castro’s mixed legacy, the deep crisis of the electoral system, and the enduring power of corruption and impunity. It analyzes the fragmented National Congress, the human rights risks tied to a private-sector-driven economic agenda, and the renewed alignment with the United States under Trump, warning that without structural reforms and accountability, governance will rely on transactional politics rather than democratic legitimacy—at high cost to civic space, Indigenous and Garifuna communities, and long-term stability.

There were 40,000 people in immigration detention in January 2025. Now that number is 73,000. ICE is now using more than 500 detention centers. Changes in arrest practices have led to a 2,450% increase in the number of people with no criminal record being held in ICE detention on any given day. Once people have been arrested, changes in policy have kept them locked up in detention centers for longer or indefinitely, including the establishment of an official no-release policy and the expanded use of “mandatory detention” laws to deny the right to seek bond.

Read a related article, "Immigration Detention Expansion in Trump's Second Term," here: https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/report/immigration-detention/ 

Camp East Montana (at the Fort Bliss military base in El Paso, TX)--called the largest detention facility by the ACLU-- is now responsible for three deaths in the past two months. The latest: Geraldo Lunas Campos.  Although located on an army base, the facility is run by the private corporation Acquisition Logistics LLC. Three detainees have died there over a period of 44 days.