⚖️ REPORT | Trump administration faces unprecedented human rights hearing over anti-ICE protest crackdown The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights held an unprecedented hearing in Washington on Tuesday examining the Trump administration’s violent suppression of protests against its immigration crackdown. It marked the first time the commission, an autonomous... human rights body of the Organization of American States, financed centrally by the U.S., specifically examined excessive force against immigration-related protesters in the United States. The commission heard from victims, attorneys and experts about lethal and excessive force, attacks on journalists and legal observers, racial profiling, surveillance and the suppression of peaceful assembly. 📌 Thread by Drop Site contributor Joseph Bouchard (Joseph Bouchard) ⤵️show more

🔸 Victims and attorneys testify Speakers included Antonio Romanucci, the attorney representing the family of Renée Good and former counsel for George Floyd’s family; Reverend David Black, who was struck in the head by federal agents outside the Broadview Detention Facility; and Naureen Shah, the ACLU’s director of government affairs. The delegation was represented by lawyers Thomas Becker and Nicholas Rodelo. Becker previously helped successfully prosecute former Bolivian President and U.S. ally Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada over the extrajudicial killings of protesters during a 2003 military crackdown. “These are the exact same tactics used by Latin American dictatorships from the 1970s,” Becker told Drop Site. “These tactics have been propped up by the U.S. for decades and are now coming back here, to be used against Americans.”

🔸 The U.S. called before a system it helped build The hearing carries particular weight because the United States was a principal force behind the creation and funding of the IACHR and the OAS. The commission emerged during the rise of military dictatorships across Latin America, many backed by Washington during the Cold War, including the governments of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Jorge Rafael Videla in Argentina and Hugo Banzer in Bolivia. “For years, the Commission has heard testimony about attacks on protesters carried out by some of the region’s most repressive dictatorships,” Dr. James Cavallaro, a former IACHR president and Columbia University law professor, told Drop Site. “Now, it is the United States that will be called to answer for these abuses.” Cavallaro told Drop Site that those in power increasingly believe “they can suppress dissent” and use violence to “impose their ideology.” “Opposition must be crushed,” he said, describing their policies. “Those in power revel in the suffering they impose.” The Trump administration has attacked other international legal institutions, including the International Criminal Court, raising the possibility that the IACHR could become another target.

🔸 A broader crackdown on dissent Drop Site contributor Joseph Bouchard, who participated in the hearing and subsequent press conference, said the abuses reflect the implementation of National Security Presidential Memorandum 7. “This is clearly a culmination of the implementation of NSPM-7, which, though neither legally binding nor constitutional, has allowed the Trump administration to crack down on dissent,” Bouchard said. “The labeling of all opposition as ‘terrorists’ and ‘drug traffickers’ is now a popular tactic of autocrats in the Americas, including Trump, which goes back to the Reagan-era wars on drugs and communism.” The IACHR has previously examined U.S. abuses at Guantánamo Bay and recently held proceedings concerning U.S. military strikes against alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. Legal experts say those attacks killed people without due process, violated national sovereignty and did little to address drug trafficking.

I really don't get what the big deal is. Trump hasn't even deported hardly anyone. Certainly nothing to the level one could describe as 'mass deportations'. Also, leftist going around and chasing ICE agents, and impeding there very important and sensitive work are subject to a certain level of force.