IRTF News

On the 60th anniversary of his death, Colombia finally recovered and returned the remains of priest, sociologist, and guerrilla fighter Camilo Torres Restrepo, ending a six-decade disappearance that began with his killing by the Army in 1966. His reburial at the National University crowns a long struggle led by social movements and human rights advocates, turning his case into a powerful symbol of the country’s broader fight for truth, memory, and justice for the disappeared.

This piece highlights five recent in-depth reports that use original data and investigative research to reveal how U.S. immigration enforcement, detention, and deportation systems are expanding and shifting in practice. It argues that careful, expert-driven analysis-—rather than headline news—-offers the clearest view of who is being targeted, how enforcement works, and who profits from it.

Progressive leaders from 20 countries met in Bogotá for the Nuestra América convening, adopting a joint declaration to coordinate resistance to U.S. coercive policies and defend sovereignty and self-determination across the Americas. The gathering launched a new hemispheric alliance of governments, unions, and social movements committed to collective action and international solidarity.

ICE’s detention system is expanding at an unprecedented pace, with 237 facilities now detaining migrants.  Making sense of that expansion requires making the limited data ICE releases publicly accessible and understandable. That means tools that turn spreadsheets into insight, that make facility-level information accessible to reporters on deadline, researchers conducting analysis, and advocates tracking conditions on the ground.DetentionReports.com, a public tool tracking ICE detention facilities, has launched major upgrades including an interactive national map, new comparison graphs, and an archive of ICE detention contracts.

This article revisits the Iran-Contra scandal through a new, accessible account that shows how deeply it undermined democratic norms and the balance of powers in the United States. It argues that far from being a forgotten Cold War footnote, Iran-Contra remains a crucial warning about executive overreach, secrecy, and the erosion of accountability.

The presidential election in Honduras in November 2025 has evolved into a constitutional crisis, with fraud allegations, recount demands, and clashes between government institutions after the electoral council declared Nasry Asfura the winner. The controversy is also tied to U.S. political and corporate interests, including Trump-linked support and high-stakes “model city” investment projects.

A new Salvadoran film about the 1981 El Mozote massacre premiered with government backing, sparking controversy for downplaying state responsibility while promoting the country’s security image. At the same time, survivors won a historic step toward justice as the long-stalled massacre case advanced toward trial after decades of impunity.

This article examines the origins and culture of the U.S. Border Patrol, arguing that its history and structure have fostered aggressive, militarized practices and weak accountability. These longstanding patterns of abuse are now becoming more visible as the agency’s operations expand beyond the border. 

Groups like WOLA (Washington Office on Latin America) and the Southern Border Communities Coalition (SBCC) have been tracking these violent (and sometimes deadly) incidents for years. WOLA’s database identifies a whopping 455 cases of alleged abusive agent conduct just from 2020 to 2024. SBCC has tracked fatal encounters with the Border Patrol since 2010; it has found 364 lives lost. Alex Pretti is the most recent name on the list.

Thomas Mockaitis, a professor of history at DePaul University, studies violent extremism and military history across the world. He described the Border Patrol as a paramilitary force comparable to the Praetorian Guard of ancient Rome, the B Specials in Northern Ireland, or the Stasi in East Germany.

This op-ed recently published in Cleveland.com by Dr Gina Pérez, a cultural anthropologist and professor of Comparative American Studies at Oberlin College, examines a rethoric weaponized by structures of power to defame the ones they murder.  She highlights parallels between the Reagen administration's reaction to the assasination of four women missioners who were murdered in El Salvador in December 1980 and the current administration's response to the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. 

If the rhetoric of Jeane Kirkpatrick, a top foreign policy adviser to President Reagan, sounds familiar ("the nuns were not just nuns; the nuns were also political activists"), it's because we're hearing it again in the discrediting trash-talk from the White House aboutu Renee Good and Alex Pretti ("domestic terrorists").

This aricle published in The Guardian gives insight on what consequences the pardoning of convicted drug smuggler and former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernandez might have on enviromental defenders in Honduras.  Impunity for violent crimes committed against environmental defenders gives a green light to would-be assassins. In February 2025, an environmental defender in the central department of Comayagua, Juan Bautista, and his son were ambushed and killed, with their bodies dismembered and discarded in a canyon. These were just two of at least 155 murders of land and environmental defenders in Honduras documented by Global Witness between 2012 and 2024, the vast majority unresolved.

In response to Trump's pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández, one environmental defender noted: “There is a sense that the brakes are off again. People feel exposed.”