Our Voices

This Week’s Spotlight on Human Rights

The Department of Homeland Security said Friday that it is terminating legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitians, setting them up for potential deportation. DHS said that conditions in Haiti have improved and Haitians no longer meet the conditions for the temporary legal protections. The termination of temporary protected status, or TPS, applies to about 500,000 Haitians who are already in the United States, some of whom have lived here for more than a decade. It is coming three months after the Trump administration revoked legal protections for thousands of Haitians who arrived legally in the country under a humanitarian parole program, and it is part of a series of measures implemented to curb immigration.


US immigration enforcement is set for the most dramatic expansion in decades with the Republican-controlled Congress on track to approve a budget bill that will fund President Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans. The sweeping legislation which Trump said he wants to sign by Friday, allocates more than $150 billion for the administration’s border and immigration crackdown. Most of the money will go to the Department of Homeland Security and its enforcement arms, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. 


Venezuela’s ruling party-controlled National Assembly on Tuesday declared Volker Türk, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, persona non grata, criticizing the U.N. official for failing to protect the rights of Venezuelan migrants deported by the Trump administration to a prison in El Salvador. The rare diplomatic designation has no immediate practical effect but reflected the broader anger of President Nicolás Maduro at the U.N. agency that monitors and defends human rights. It comes just days after Türk said his office has documented increasing arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances and torture under Maduro’s government.


The US Agency for International Development (USAID) is the largest funding agency for humanitarian and development aid worldwide. The aim of this study is to comprehensively evaluate the effect of all USAID funding on adult and child mortality over the past two decades and forecast the future effect of its defunding.