Hundreds of Alligator Alcatraz Detainees Drop Off the Grid After Leaving Site
As of the end of August, the whereabouts of two-thirds of more than 1,800 men detained at Alligator Alcatraz during the month of July could not be determined by the Miami Herald. Around 800 detainees showed no record on ICE’s online database. More than 450 listed no location and only instructed the user to “Call ICE for details” — a vague notation that attorneys said could mean that a detainee is still being processed, in the middle of a transfer between two sites or about to be deported.
Petition by Man Against ICE Custody May Provide New Path to Release for Others
Rodney Taylor, a Liberia-born man who is a double amputee and is missing three fingers on one hand has filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court seeking release from Georgia’s Stewart detention center, after being held there by ICE for eight months. The action is “a canary in the coal mine for what’s about to happen” nationwide, said Sarah Owings, Taylor’s immigration attorney. “Thousands of habeas claims are going to be filed across the country,” she said, after a Board of Immigration Appeals decision on 5 September dramatically curtailed the immigration system’s ability to release detainees while awaiting decisions on their status.
Autocrats Move Quickly to Fill Void as Trump Retreats From U.N.
As President Trump threatened to slash American funding for the United Nations this spring, diplomats from around the world met privately at a lakeside resort in Switzerland to weigh painful spending cuts. One proposal hinted at the potential cost of America’s withdrawal: What if the United Nations cut funding for human rights investigations? The ambassadors of China and Cuba, which have long faced scrutiny over their own rights records, were the ones pushing to limit inquiries into government-sanctioned abuses like torture, war crimes, and jailing of dissidents, according to two diplomats who attended the meeting of the Human Rights Council in May in Switzerland.
Mass Grave Reveals Scale of Unlawful Killings by Egyptian Army in Sinai, Say Campaigners
Hundreds of bodies could have been buried at a mass grave discovered in Egypt’s Sinai province by human rights campaigners. Bodies lying on the surface and others buried barely 30cm below were found at a burial site near a military outpost by the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights (SFHR). The group discovered the mass graves while conducting research into disappearances and extrajudicial killings of civilians during a decade of conflict in the Sinai region between Egyptian security forces and Islamic State-aligned militants. “This discovery not only sheds light on the scale of violations committed by the Egyptian army during the conflict, but also demonstrates a systematic pattern of unlawful killings and the secret burial of victims, carried out with total impunity,” said Ahmed Salem, the executive director of SFHR.