Latest news with #TheIntercept
The Intercept
16 hours ago
- Politics
- The Intercept
Trump's Use of Troops for Policing Hasn't Been Seen Since America Was Ruled by a King
The United States crept closer to becoming a full-blown police state yesterday when President Donald Trump made good on a promise to further militarize the nation's capital. Trump threatened to employ similar tactics in cities across the country as the Pentagon evaluates plans for a 'Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force' composed of hundreds of National Guard troops poised to surge into American cities. The power grab in the District of Columbia, which bypassed the city's elected leaders, follows deployments of federal troops from coast to coast, surges of masked federal agents around the United States, and consistent tyrannical use of executive authority in ways with little precedent in modern U.S. history. 'Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals,' Trump said at a White House news conference on Monday, painting the city as a hellscape filled with 'drugged out maniacs' and 'caravans of mass youth' who 'rampage through city streets' day and night. 'I'm deploying the National Guard to help reestablish law, order and public safety in Washington, D.C.,' he declared. As of Monday afternoon, Guard members had yet to be deployed. 'They've got to muster in. They've got to do a little brief training and processing, and then they're going to move out. But we do expect this to happen pretty rapidly,' an Army spokesperson told The Intercept. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday that the Guard would be 'flowing into the streets of Washington in the coming week.' The timeline for the troop deployment is hazy. According to a memorandum Trump issued on Monday, National Guard troops will remain deployed until the president determines 'that conditions of law and order have been restored.' Justice Department figures show violent crime in the nation's capital is at a 30-year low. 'If we look at both practically the way the Trump administration is using the military around the country and also formally, in what they are asserting about their authority — the ability to use the military anywhere, anytime, for any purpose — it's absolutely unprecedented,' said Joseph Nunn, an attorney with the Brennan Center for Justice's liberty and national security program who focuses on the domestic role of the U.S. military. 'The last person to assert that sort of boundless authority to deploy the military domestically and use it for law enforcement in this country was King George,' he told The Intercept, referencing King George III who lost the American Revolution. 'President Trump's ever-expanding use of the military for domestic matters is beyond alarming,' Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement criticizing the deployment. 'Our military is trained to defend the nation from external threats and assist communities during disasters or emergencies, not to conduct day-to-day domestic policing. This deployment is a serious misuse of the National Guard's time and talent.' Approximately 800 National Guard soldiers were activated as part of the 'D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force,' with about 100 to 200 of them supporting law enforcement at any given time, according to a statement provided to The Intercept by the Army. 'Hey, that's a real thing, man. I double-checked,' the Army spokesperson told The Intercept when asked about the name of the task force. 'I was like, 'That can't be real.' But yeah. It's real.' The Army said that the National Guard forces operating in the capital would perform 'an array of tasks from administrative, logistics and physical presence in support of law enforcement.' D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said she did not believe it was legal 'to use the American military against American citizens on American soil' at a press conference on Monday evening. The White House did not respond to a request for comment regarding Bowser's remarks. The National Guard deployment is one facet of Trump's efforts to put the District of Columbia under federal authority; he also declared that he is temporarily taking control of the city's police department. Hundreds of officers and agents from more than a dozen federal agencies — including the FBI; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Drug Enforcement Administration; Immigration and Customs Enforcement; and the U.S. Marshals Service — have also fanned out across Washington in recent days. The federal crackdown on Washington was precipitated by the attempted carjacking of Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old software engineer and former Department of Government Efficiency staffer better known by his online sobriquet 'Big Balls.' Police officers arrested two 15-year-old suspects, a boy and a girl. Trump invoked a section of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act that grants him the power to temporarily seize control of the city's police department. He said Attorney General Pam Bondi would oversee the federal takeover of the capital's Metropolitan Police Department and, with Hegseth at his side, added that he was prepared to send the military into Washington 'if needed.' In a Monday memorandum, Trump directed Hegseth to coordinate with governors of states and 'authorize the orders of any additional members of the National Guard to active service, as he deems necessary and appropriate, to augment this mission.' Hegseth said that beyond the D.C. National Guard, the Pentagon was prepared to surge other military units into the capital. 'There are other units we are prepared to bring in, other National Guard units, other specialized units,' Hegseth said. 'They will be strong, they will be tough, and they will stand with their law enforcement partners.' He added, 'We will work alongside all D.C. police and federal law enforcement to ensure this city is safe. This city is beautiful.' The Pentagon failed to respond to questions from The Intercept about which units might be deployed, what would precipitate that, and when. This is the second time this summer that Trump has deployed troops to a Democratically governed city. A federal trial began on Monday in San Francisco to decide whether Trump violated the law by deploying National Guard troops to Los Angeles in June without the approval of California Gov.r Gavin Newsom. 'President Trump is exploiting his power and testing it in ways that could lead to more U.S. troops deployed on American soil. As we saw in Los Angeles, President Trump is willing to deploy U.S. military forces on American streets for inflammatory and political reasons,' said Reed, the Rhode Island senator. 'Normalizing the use of U.S. military forces for everyday policing risks eroding the very freedoms our servicemembers swear to protect.' In his first seven months in office, Trump has overseen the deployment of around 20,000 federal troops on American soil, including personnel from the National Guard, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and the Marines, according to the Pentagon. But the true number of troops deployed may be markedly higher. U.S. Northern Command has no running tally of how many troops have been deployed around the country. These federal forces have been operating under Title 10 authority, or federal control, in at least five states — Arizona, California, Florida, New Mexico, and Texas — in service of the Trump administration's anti-immigrant agenda. More than 10,000 troops are deploying or have deployed to the southern border, according to Northern Command. Under the direction of NORTHCOM, military personnel have deployed under the moniker Joint Task Force-Southern Border, or JTF-SB, since March, bolstering approximately 2,500 service members who were already supporting U.S. Customs and Border Protection's border security mission. 'Members of the National Guard should be under no illusions about what they're being sent to do in Washington.' One-third of the U.S. border is now completely militarized due to the creation of four new national defense areas, or NDAs: sprawling extensions of U.S. military bases patrolled by troops who can detain immigrants until they can be handed over to Border Patrol agents. Around 5,500 troops — Marines and California National Guard members — have also been deployed to Los Angeles since early June. The forces were sent to LA over the objections of local officials and Newsom. Experts say that the increasing use of military forces in the interior of the United States represents an extraordinary violation of Posse Comitatus, a bedrock 19th-century law seen as fundamental to the democratic tradition in America. 'Though the rhetoric is sometimes different, from Los Angeles streets to ICE detention centers to our nation's capital, President Trump is repeatedly acting to turn the National Guard into the first-choice implementers of his authoritarian agenda,' Sara Haghdoosti, the executive director of Win Without War, told The Intercept. 'Whether it is assaulting immigrant communities or seizing control of law enforcement in DC, his goal for these deployments is the same: using state violence to strip power, safety, and dignity from people. Members of the National Guard should be under no illusions about what they're being sent to do in Washington.' Many more troops, like the National Guard forces deploying to the capital, are operating under so-called Title 32 status, meaning they are under state, rather than federal, control, unlike deployments in Los Angeles and across the southern border. With no governor to report to, the D.C. National Guard's chain of command runs from its commanding general to the secretary of the Army to Hegseth to the president. The plan for the Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force, which was first reported by the Washington Post on Tuesday, calls for two groups of 300 troops to be on standby for rapid deployment across the country, from military bases in Alabama and Arizona. The proposed force would also reportedly operate under Title 32. The Pentagon refused to offer further details about the initiative. 'The Department of Defense is a planning organization and routinely reviews how the department would respond to a variety of contingencies across the globe,' a defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Intercept on Tuesday. 'We will not discuss these plans through leaked documents, pre-decisional or otherwise.' 'What worries me specifically is when you create a tool for a specific purpose you're going to want to use it — in this case, inserting the military in routine law enforcement,' Nunn, the Brennan Center a attorney, said of the rapid response force. 'Having a button you can push easily, so to speak, to deploy the military domestically will make domestic deployment of the military more frequent and more likely.' Late last month, the Trump administration authorized the deployment of National Guard troops to immigration facilities in 20 states, further entwining the military in civil and law enforcement functions. The National Guard will be deployed in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Virginia, among other states, according to a defense official who was not authorized to disclose the information. On Monday, Trump took aim at numerous cities led by Democratic mayors in states with Democratic governors, threating authoritarian power grabs similar to his effort in Washington. 'If we need to, we're going to do the same thing in Chicago, which is a disaster,' Trump said. 'You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is. We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don't even mention that anymore. They're so far gone,' said Trump. 'We're not going to let it happen. We're not going to lose our cities over this. And this will go further.' The June deployment of troops to Los Angeles did very little and has largely wound down. Newsom warned then that Trump would target other states. 'Who else saw that coming?' he wrote on X on Monday. Last month, Trump also threatened a federal takeover of New York City if Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani is elected. 'We have tremendous power at the White House to run places when we have to,' Trump said in July. 'Maybe we're going to have to straighten it out from Washington.' Nunn pointed to the risks of inserting the military in routine domestic law enforcement. 'The deeper and more fundamental danger is that you don't want the people with guns, tanks, and bombers to be looking inward, at their own country, and thinking of themselves as a domestic political actor,' he told The Intercept. 'The military is and should be a fundamentally outward-looking entity. You don't have to look very far around the world to see what happens when the military sees itself as a domestic political actor.'
Days of Palestine
2 days ago
- Politics
- Days of Palestine
American Investigation: Israel Uses Starvation as Weapon of War
DaysofPal- A U.S.-based investigative outlet The Intercept stated that 'Israel' is employing starvation as a deliberate weapon of war against Gaza's population, according to a new investigative report it conducted. The report described the policy as a systematic violation of international humanitarian law. Despite abundant food in surrounding areas, Gaza's 2 million residents face severe famine, not from a shortage of supplies, but from the Israeli blockade and stringent military restrictions on aid deliveries. The report cited Bob Kitchen, Vice President of Emergency at the International Rescue Committee, who called the crisis 'a completely man-made famine' and condemned the Israeli closure of border crossings and obstruction of humanitarian aid. According to Gaza's Ministry of Health, at least 222 people, including 101 children, have died from hunger in recent weeks. Over 18,000 children have been treated for severe acute malnutrition since the start of the year, while many others are denied treatment due to shortages of medicines and equipment. More than 1,500 people have also been killed while trying to reach food distribution points. Food prices have soared amid the blockade, with a bag of flour selling for around $100 when available. Thousands of tons of aid remain stuck at Gaza's borders in Jordan and Egypt, awaiting Israeli approval that is often denied. Before the current war, international agencies operated hundreds of aid distribution points across Gaza. Today, only four remain, all in the south, forcing civilians to risk dangerous journeys through checkpoints or war zones to access basic food supplies. International law explicitly prohibits the use of starvation as a method of warfare, whereas Human rights groups say the Israeli actions constitute war crimes under the Geneva Conventions. They warn that temporary 'humanitarian pauses' or limited 'safe corridors' are insufficient and call for sustained, unrestricted aid deliveries to restore minimal food security. Kitchen emphasized that the blockade's end requires 'intense international pressure,' particularly from governments with influence over the Israeli occupation, including the United States. The report concludes that Gaza's crisis is not the result of natural disaster or global supply shortages but of 'a deliberate political and military decision' to impose a siege and use hunger to subdue an entire population, a policy that, if left unchanged, could condemn an entire generation to death or lifelong suffering. Shortlink for this post:
The Intercept
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Intercept
ICE Agent Caught on Camera Disguised as a Construction Worker
Despite their proclivity for wearing masks, the Department of Homeland Security denies that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents refuse to identify themselves in the field. 'I've been on a number of these operations,' Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said last month. 'They are wearing vests that say ICE or ERO, which is the enforcement arm of ICE or Homeland Security Investigations. They clearly verbally identify themselves.' But video from a confrontation in a New York state town that was reviewed by The Intercept contradicts her claims. In the footage, Juan Fonseca Tapia, the co-founder and organizer of the Connecticut-based immigrant advocacy group Greater Danbury Unites for Immigrants, questions a man dressed as a construction worker. 'What agency are you with?' asks Fonseca Tapia, filming through his car window. 'I'm not going to tell you,' responds the man, who is wearing a high-visibility construction vest, an orange helmet and glasses, with a camouflage mask covering most of his face. 'It's none of your business.' The construction worker getup was actually a disguise — ICE confirmed to The Intercept that the man in the hard hat is an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. 'ICE New York City officers were conducting surveillance in Brewster, New York, August 2, when anti-ICE agitators followed them and attempted to disrupt their operation,' an ICE spokesperson told The Intercept by email. In the video – which was posted last weekend on social media by Greater Danbury Area Unites for Immigrants – the ICE agent said only that he is a member of 'federal law enforcement.' Neither 'ICE' nor 'ERO' is visible on his vest in the footage. That puts the lie to McLaughlin's claims that ICE agents identify themselves. Fonseca Tapia told The Intercept that he spotted a second man who was similarly disguised as a construction worker. 'I find it outrageous. It's indefensible. This is where we are crossing a dangerous line on immigration enforcement into these paramilitary type tactics with a secret police force,' said New York State Senator Patricia Fahy who last month introduced the Mandating End of Lawless Tactics (MELT) Act which would ban the use of face coverings and plainclothes by ICE and other federal enforcement agents during civilian immigration actions conducted in New York State. 'The first three words of the provision that we're adding into law are 'Masks and disguises prohibited,' period. And this video is Exhibit A. This is exactly what we are alarmed about.' On Tuesday, at a National Conference of State Legislators in Boston, Fahy joined colleagues from Massachusetts and Pennsylvania in condemning the use of 'paramilitary-type secret police' tactics by ICE agents. 'We started to reach out to all the states that have legislation concerning masked ICE agents and said, 'Let's do this jointly. Let's collectively bring attention to this,'' Fahy told The Intercept. 'We had a couple of dozen lawmakers all standing up to say 'This is not who we are' and calling out these authoritarian-type tactics.' The interaction with the disguised construction worker began when Fonseca Tapia spotted a group of people he believed to be ICE agents in downtown Brewster. He began alerting day laborers who congregate in the area, while driving in his car. Soon, Fonseca Tapia said, realized that he was being followed in a vehicle by the man in the construction worker get-up. Eventually, he found himself surrounded by several vehicles with dark tinted windows. Fonseca Tapia said that the man in the construction worker disguise confronted him and repeatedly tried to persuade him to roll down his window or get out of the car. He said he feared that he might be 'kidnapped' by ICE. After Fonseca Tapia stopped filming, he said that the masked agent issued a warning: 'More of my guys are coming and we're going to take care of you.' To Fonseca Tapia, that sounded like an act of intimidation. 'It's literally a threat,' said Fonseca Tapia. 'You have three vehicles with very tinted windows, so it's impossible to see inside. People are wearing masks and refuse to identify themselves and one of them tells you he is going to call more of them to 'take care of you?' This is for sure an intimidation tactic to instill fear in people who are working to alert the community when there is an ICE presence.' 'It's undermining all of law enforcement because they come across as impersonators.' An ICE spokesperson cited 'increased assaults toward ICE,' as the reason that the ICE agent confronted individuals who followed and filmed them in Brewster. 'The officer was concerned for the safety of himself and others,' the spokesperson wrote. 'I don't know what the concern was — because he was following me,' said Fonseca Tapia. 'If he thought I posed a threat, I don't think he would put himself in danger by following me.' Since President Trump's return to office, masked ICE agents carrying out immigration raids have become increasingly common. Across the country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies working with ICE, launch operations wearing disguises or plainclothes and sometimes arrive in unmarked vehicles and arrest people without warrants. Often ICE agents don masks, balaclavas, neck gaiters or other facial coverings to conceal their identities. Lawmakers, veteran law enforcement officials, activists, and citizens have criticized the donning of masks by law enforcement as anti-American and for sowing confusion, chaos, and fear, while reducing accountability and undermining public trust. 'The failure of ICE officers and agents to promptly and clearly identify who they are and the authority under which they are acting has led witnesses of immigration enforcement operations to justifiably question the law enforcement status, authority, and constitutionality of ICE officers and agents and their operations,' wrote U.S. Senators Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) in a May letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, Tom Homan, the Executive Associate Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations, and top ICE officials. 'We remain deeply concerned that ICE's lack of transparency will lead the public to intercede in enforcement efforts, escalating an already tense interaction, and risking an entirely avoidable violent situation.' Fahy emphasized that she had a family member who served in law enforcement and that she saw the use of masks and disguises as a threat to law and order. 'It's undermining all of law enforcement because they come across as impersonators. There's no accountability and there's no transparency, so it erodes public trust and undermines decades of work and millions of dollars spent,' she told The Intercept. 'When they use disguises, these arrests – without presenting an arrest warrant, neither a judicial or even administrative warrant – come across as abductions or kidnapping. These are third-world tactics, and they should shock the collective conscience.' Read Our Complete Coverage The International Association of Chiefs of Police warns that 'members of the general public may be intimidated or fearful of officers wearing a face covering, which may heighten their defensive reactions.' An ICE spokesperson said the agency has no policy on masks, aside from pandemic safety requirements. The Department of Homeland Security has endorsed the agents' right to wear masks, citing attacks on agents or the doxing of law enforcement or their families. In an email, DHS specifically mentioned one Texas man's threat to shoot ICE agents as a reason to allow masks although it was unclear how a mask would protect an agent from a bullet. Nonetheless, DHS insisted that because of such fears, ICE would not discourage its agents from wearing masks during anti-immigrant raids. For almost two months, DHS has failed to respond to The Intercept's questions about escalating statistics quoted by government officials about supposed assaults of federal agents. In June, DHS told The Intercept that 'ICE law enforcement and their families are being targeted and are facing an over 400% increase in assaults.' ICE now claims that figure has jumped to 830 percent. ICE failed to answer The Intercept's questions about the use of disguises by ICE agents and if the agent who failed to identify himself in Brewster had been reprimanded. 'At no time did the officer attempt to make an arrest or detain anyone without being plainly marked as an ICE officer,' the spokesperson said. The New York City Bar Association has noted that secret police tactics are a gateway to further lawlessness. 'Allowing masked ICE agents to conduct detentions also makes it increasingly likely that third-party actors will impersonate federal agents and use their anonymity to subject vulnerable populations to harassment and violence under the apparent color of law,' the group said in a June statement. Bad actors have, indeed, masqueraded as ICE agents from coast to coast this year. Various people have reportedly impersonated ICE agents to commit or attempt robbery in Pennsylvania, kidnapping in Florida and South Carolina, scams in California, sexual assault in North Carolina, rape in New York, as well as acts of impersonation, intimidation and other offenses in California, Florida, North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and Washinton State. In Congress, Democrats have introduced several bills, including the No Secret Police Act, which would bar federal agents from concealing their faces with 'home-made, non-tactical masks' and require law enforcement officers and DHS agents engaged in border security and civil immigration enforcement to clearly display identification and insignia when detaining or arresting people 'If you uphold the peace of a democratic society, you should not be anonymous,' saidRep. Adriano Espaillat, D-NY, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. 'DHS and ICE agents wearing masks and hiding identification echoes the tactics of secret police authoritarian regimes – and deviates from the practices of local law enforcement, which contributes to confusion in communities.' An ICE spokesperson claimed the persons filming the agent in Brewster presented 'a safety concern for the officers, the community and even the agitators themselves' and that the 'ICE officer contacted the local police.' The Village of Brewster Police Department, however, told The Intercept that it did not take part in any such interaction. The Putnam County Sheriff's Office refused to entertain The Intercept's questions. 'We don't have somebody that would handle even communicating that to the press if it was even for the press's knowledge,' said a person who replied to a request for her name with 'No, thank you,' before hanging up. A message left for the department's civil affairs division was not returned. Fonseca Tapia said that personnel from both the Brewster Police Department and the Putnam County Sheriff's Office were called to the scene and spoke with him. 'This is a call to action for people to understand that this is wrong and this is not normal. Nobody is coming to save us. We are all we got,' Fonseca Tapia told The Intercept. 'Now is the time for action. People need to get involved because today it's immigrants' rights but who knows what group it's going to be tomorrow?'
Al Bawaba
3 days ago
- Business
- Al Bawaba
Trump's crypto fortune soars to $11.6 billion
ALBAWABA- A new investigative analysis claims that U.S. President Donald Trump has amassed a personal fortune of $11.6 billion from cryptocurrency holdings, making up nearly three-quarters of his estimated $15.9 billion net worth, while in office. The report, published Thursday by watchdog group Accountable and detailed by The Intercept, alleges that Trump rapidly built his crypto empire by leveraging his presidential powers to benefit his private financial interests. According to the group, this shift marks a stark departure from his pre-presidency wealth base, with traditional business ventures now accounting for less than half of his fortune. 'The more the President's wealth depends on anonymous investors around the world with hidden agendas, the greater the risk.' — The Intercept (@theintercept) August 9, 2025 'Soon after signing his 'Big Ugly' law that strips health care and food security from millions, President Trump pushed legislation that padded his net worth by billions through dubious crypto schemes,' said Caroline Ciccone, president of Accountable. She warned that the President's reliance on 'anonymous investors' worldwide poses risks to U.S. national security and public trust. The group's findings challenge earlier Bloomberg estimates that pegged Trump's crypto assets at roughly $620 million out of a $6.4 billion net worth. Accountable argues that Bloomberg significantly undercounted both his digital holdings and total wealth, citing the volatile value of meme coins like the $TRUMP token and other assets linked to his family's World Liberty Financial venture. Critics have also noted that Trump has aggressively rolled back cryptocurrency regulations, signed the 'stablecoin' law, and hosted high-profile receptions for meme coin holders. The White House rejected the allegations, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt calling them 'fabricated conflicts of interest' and reaffirming the administration's pledge to make the United States 'the crypto capital of the world.'
The Intercept
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Intercept
Trump Orders State Department to Overlook International Human Rights Abuses
The State Department is gutting its human rights reporting by excising information detailing abuses by foreign governments from the department's annual reports, The Intercept has learned. Officially called 'Country Reports on Human Rights Practices,' the annual documents are required by law to be a 'a full and complete report regarding the status of internationally recognized human rights' in nearly 200 countries and territories worldwide. They are used 'by the U.S. Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches as a resource for shaping policy and guiding decisions, informing diplomatic engagements, and determining the allocation of foreign aid and security sector assistance,' according to the State Department. The reports will no longer call out governments for abuses like restrictions on free and fair elections, significant corruption, or serious harassment of domestic or international human rights organizations, according to instructions issued earlier this year to the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) which, itself, has been eviscerated under an 'America First' reorganization by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The undated memo from earlier this year, reviewed by The Intercept, says the reports will also turn a blind eye to the forcible expulsion of refugees or asylum-seekers to countries where they may face torture or persecution. This comes as the Trump administration is building a global gulag, pursuing deals with around a third of the world's nations to expel immigrants to places where they do not hold citizenship. Once exiled, these so-called 'third-country nationals' are sometimes detained, imprisoned, or in danger of being sent back to their country of origin — which they may have fled to escape violence, torture, or political persecution. A recent Intercept investigation found that the nations that the Trump administration is collaborating with to accept expelled 'third country' immigrants are some of the worst human rights offenders on the planet, according to last year's State Department human rights reports. The new country reports, expected to be released within days, will effectively launder abuses by nations that the administration is targeting as potential deportee dumping grounds. The memo also instructs the agency to 'identify and delete references to discrimination or violence against 'LGBTQI+' persons, 'transgender' persons, or similar framing.' 'People will suffer. Immigration courts in the United States and asylum claim adjudicators around the world look at these reports for guidance.' 'Donald Trump has made it his personal mission to limit transparency and accountability, and the State Department's upcoming human rights report — or what remains of it — will certainly reflect that,' Senator Peter Welch, D-Vt., told The Intercept. 'He's more concerned with denying human rights here and abroad, and cozying up to dictators and authoritarian leaders, than he is with fighting for those who need it most.' The State Department did not respond to repeated questions from The Intercept regarding the human rights reports. Annelle Sheline, who served as a Foreign Affairs Officer in DRL's Office of Near Eastern Affairs until last year and previously worked on annual country human rights reports, expects the forthcoming documents to be completely hollowed out. In conversations with former colleagues, she heard that a working draft on human rights in Egypt, which in past versions has run 70 or 80 pages, had been slashed down to only 20 pages. She said she heard that a 60-page Tunisia draft report submitted early this year had been stripped down to just 15 pages. The instructions to DRL issued earlier this year take specific aim at non-refoulement — derived from a French word for return — which forbids sending people to places where they are at risk of harm. It is a bedrock principle of international human rights, refugee, and customary international law, and is embedded in U.S. domestic law. State Department employees were specifically instructed that the upcoming country reports should 'remove any reference' to 'refoulment of persons to a country where they would face torture or persecution,' according to the memo. State Department officials did not respond to repeated questions by The Intercept concerning the role the Trump administration's own third-country deportations played in the new directive. Experts say that watering down the human rights reports will cause real harm. 'People will suffer. Immigration courts in the United States and asylum claim adjudicators around the world look at these reports for guidance. If you redefine what persecution looks like in a particular country or what fear of retribution means, it can do real damage to real people,' said Amanda Klasing, national director of government relations and advocacy with Amnesty International USA. 'The U.S. government has an obligation of non-refoulment – that is to ensure it isn't sending or deporting people back to torture,' Klasing said. 'If theTrump administration ignores or rewrites the extent to which torture or other threatening conditions are happening in a country, it can create at least the façade of plausible deniability of allowing refoulement for individuals it is deporting, and that's dangerous.' More than 8,100 people have been expelled to third countries since January 20, and the U.S. has made arrangements to send people to at least 13 nations, so far, across the globe. Of them, 12 have been cited by the State Department for significant human rights abuses. But the Trump administration has cast a much wider net for its third-country deportations. The U.S. has solicited 64 nations to participate in its growing network of detainee dumping grounds for expelled immigrants. Fifty-eight of them — roughly 91 percent — were rebuked for human rights violations in last year's State Department human rights reports. The newest additions to America's global gulag are among the least free countries on the planet. Last month, the administration expelled five men — from Cuba, Jamaica, Laos, Vietnam, and Yemen — to the Southern African kingdom of Eswatini, an absolute monarchy with a dismal human rights record. The move closely followed the U.S. deportation of eight men to violence-plagued South Sudan, one of the most repressive nations in the world. The State Department's 2024 assessment of South Sudan catalogs an enormous range of serious abuses, including reports of extrajudicial killings; disappearances by or on behalf of government authorities; and instances in which 'security forces mutilated, tortured, beat, and harassed political opponents, journalists, and human rights activists.' The human rights report on Eswatini from last year refers to credible reports of arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings; torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; and the incarceration of political prisoners. Experts emphasize that the State Department's record on calling out human rights violations has been imperfect at best – and has suffered a severe crisis of credibility over Israel's war in Gaza. Still, even critics have commended the DRL's annual reports. Sheline, who resigned in March 2024 to protest the Biden administration's support for Israel's war in Gaza, referenced the longtime disconnect between the State Department's rhetoric and action in terms of human rights and its selective outrage over violations. 'All that said, there still was a certain expectation there that the United States cared about human rights. So now to have totally abandoned that is significant,' she told The Intercept, noting that even last year's report on Israel's human rights abuses 'was pretty damning, even with some material stripped out of it.' Sheline added: 'What we would hear on the ground in foreign countries is that the reports mattered to human rights groups who could point out to their governments that the 'United States is watching you.' Even if it didn't impact U. S. policy, it still carried the weight of a U.S. government document.' Josh Paul, who spent more than 11 years as the director of congressional and public affairs at the State Department bureau that oversees arms transfers to foreign nations before resigning in 2023 over U.S. military assistance to Israel, echoed these sentiments. 'For all the failings of the U.S. government when it comes to policy decisions, the Human Rights Report has long been a key and trusted annual snapshot of the state of global human rights whose conclusions, although often hard-fought within the bureaucracy, have rarely pulled their punches,' he said. 'Sadly, that is not what we expect this year, in which it is clear that Secretary Rubio has demanded a more politicized approach that will result in a report that lacks credibility.' Last Friday, a group of senators including Welch introduced the Safeguarding the Integrity of Human Rights Reports Act,which aims to 'ensure that the Department of State's annual Country Reports on Human Rights remain robust and free from political influence' and mandate inclusion of abuses that the Trump administration ordered DRL to strip away like restrictions on participation in the political process and violence or discrimination against LGBTQI+ individuals, persons with disabilities and indigenous people, among others. 'The original purpose of these reports is to inform Congress about how to ensure taxpayer funding is not going to countries that undermine human rights,' said Klasing. 'It's a check on the executive. It's Congress holding the president – any president – accountable to making good long-term human rights-centered decisions instead of short-term diplomatic wins.'
