Türk noted that at least 52 people have died in ICE custody since the beginning of 2025, following President Donald Trump’s return to office and the start of the administration’s expanded immigration enforcement policies. According to official figures, 18 people died in ICE detention during the first five months of this year, with an additional death recorded in June, while 33 deaths were documented during 2025 overall—compared with 11 in 2024.

Türk stressed that governments have an obligation under international human rights law to protect the right to life, particularly when individuals are deprived of their liberty. Authorities must provide detainees with adequate medical care and other necessary protections while in custody, he emphasized.

Human Rights Watch issued a similar warning on June 25. The group also noted that, under official ICE policy, the government is expected to provide families with relevant information following a death in custody, including medical records and investigative findings.

However, a report by Physicians for Human Rights concluded that in all 39 cases it reviewed, the government failed to publicly disclose sufficient information regarding the circumstances surrounding the deaths, or the medical treatment provided in detention, preventing independent clinical assessment.

Earlier this year, Türk expressed concern over US immigration enforcement practices, stating that individuals suspected of lacking legal immigration status have been arrested, “sometimes violently,” at hospitals, places of worship, courthouses, schools, markets and private homes. Noting “unnecessary or disproportionate” use of force in these detentions, he emphasized that under international human rights law, the intentional use of lethal force is permissible only as a last resort against an individual posing an imminent threat to life.

ICE is reportedly detaining more than 60,000 individuals at present, compared with approximately 40,000 detainees in early 2025, and has announced plans to expand detention capacity to 90,000 by the end of 2026.

According to Human Rights Watch, the mortality rate in ICE custody has reached its highest level in more than a decade, exceeding rates recorded during both the first Trump administration and the COVID-19 pandemic. Rights groups and the UN have both called for urgent action to ensure accountability for deaths in custody and to safeguard the lives of those held in immigration detention.

From JURIST, June 26. Used with permission.

Photo: ICE via Wikimedia Commons

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on June 18 detailed abuses endured by communities in Minneapolis and St. Paul during the occupation of the Twin Cities area by immigration officers. According to HRW, officers terrorized residents, committed widespread human rights violations, and exposed “deeply abusive” tendencies within US immigration enforcement.

The statement accompanied HRW’s new report, “A Manufactured Crisis,” an in-depth accounting of the abuses committed by federal agents in the Twin Cities between December 2025 and March 2026—the duration of their deployment in Minnesota.

HRW found that Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and other federal officers engaged in racial profiling, threatened residents with lethal force, deployed chemical irritants, demolished property, and fatally shot two US citizens during their campaign.

“The federal government sent hordes of masked, armed agents to grab people off the street, whisk them away in shackles, and abuse those who sought to bear witness,” said Reagan Williams, HRW conflict and crisis researcher.

Dubbed “Operation Metro Surge,” the massive deployment of ICE agents in Minnesota was part of President Donald Trump’s broader controversial immigration enforcement scheme, and was the largest interior deployment of immigration agents since he took office in January 2025. President Trump has deployed ICE agents to several cities across the US, including Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) indicated that the purpose of the federal operation was to “keep Americans safe and ERADICATE fraud,” saying they would not leave the city until they achieved the agency’s objective. However, the HRW report asserts that the occupation had the opposite effect, creating a widespread atmosphere of terror.

Throughout his new term, President Trump has made clear his intent to enforce stricter immigration and mass deportation policies, often stating that he would primarily target non-citizen residents with criminal histories. However, HRW found that during the Minnesota campaign, ICE officials detained approximately 4,000 immigrants, over 75% of whom had no criminal history, and many of whom were detained arbitrarily.

While the Trump administration has officially concluded Operation Metro Surge, its effects will reverberate through the state of Minnesota for many years to come. The city of Minneapolis has estimated nearly $700 million in community impacts, stemming from property damage, residents’ inability to go to work, and food and shelter needs. Additionally, the Trump administration is prosecuting Minnesota residents and government officials on separate charges related to impeding federal agents during the raids.

The HRW report calls for “urgent and comprehensive” action to repair the harms suffered in Minnesota, and for the federal government to stop its abuse of immigrants and other US residents.

“Operation Metro Surge put the violent and abusive practices of these agencies on full display. We have clear proof of how they operate when impunity prevails, and we need to urgently chart a new way forward through accountability and structural reforms that put an end to these abuses,” Williams added.

From JURIST, June 18. Used with permission. Internal links added.

Photo: Chad Davis

The issue before the court was whether First Nations can assert Aboriginal title when private parties hold a fee simple interest in land. The top court’s refusal to hear the appeal makes final a lower court’s decision, holding that the Wolastoqey Nation cannot seek declarations of Aboriginal title over privately-owned lands but may seek damages against the government for unjustified infringement of Aboriginal title.

In response to the refusal, the Wolastoqey Nation maintained that it does not remove the government’s duty to First Nations. Chief Patricia Bernard of Madawaska said: “Our ancestors never surrendered our lands and waters. The Peace and Friendship Treaties signed with the British Crown in the 1700s were treaties of peace and alliance—not land surrender or cession. Our title has not been extinguished… The fight for our homeland will continue.”

In 2021, the six Wolastoqey Nation communities commenced an action against the Canadian and New Brunswick governments, and several private companies. They sought to assert Aboriginal title over government and private lands owned by the defendants. In 2024, Justice Kathryn A. Gregory removed the private defendants from the case, saying they had no direct legal relationships with the Wolastoqey. The ruling still allowed the plaintiffs to pursue claims against the government even over the private lands, finding that it has a reposnibility adjudicate or order resolutions in such cases.

In December 2025, however, a three-judge panel at the Court of Appeals of New Brunswick unanimously limited the claim only to government lands. Even when the Wolastoqey Nation can prove Aboriginal title existed before the government assigned the land to private owners, they may only seek compensation from the government in relation to the lands owned by private individuals—not actual restitution of the lands.

In August 2025, the Supreme Court of British Columbia adopted a different approach to the overlapping Aboriginal title and private ownership in Cowichan Tribes v. Canada. Justice Barbara M. Young held that Aboriginal title and fee simple interest can coexist on the same land, urging the government to negotiate with the First Nations communities. She issued a declaration rendering the fee simple interests defective and invalid for 18 months, allowing time for negotiation. The federal and provincial governments are appealing the decision.

At the House of Commons, Conservative lawmaker Jamie Schmale introduced a motion on May 25, calling on the government to take all necessary actions to prioritize private property in the Cowichan Tribes case over all other titles. It was defeated, with all parties except the Conservatives voting against the motion.

From JURIST, May 29. Used with permission.

See our last report on the Indigenous struggle in Canada.

Map of traditional Wabanaki Confederacy lands: Wikimedia Commons

The new laws are included in the state’s Fiscal Year 27 Enacted Budget. They consist of the New York for All Act and the Dignity not Detention Act. With their passage, ICE must have a judicial warrant to enter many public locations, including schools, hospitals, libraries, public parks, and polling locations. Many private locations, including houses of worship, are now explicitly allowed to require ICE to have a warrant as well. State and local employees and agencies are prohibited from sharing personal information with ICE.

The new legislation also more broadly limits cooperation with ICE by state and local employees and agencies. In particular, local governments, police forces and corrections agencies are no longer allowed to enter 287(g) agreements, under which ICE delegates immigration enforcement to state or local officers. “Police officers are taken off their jobs to do civil ICE enforcement, civil immigration enforcement,” said Hochul. “Not fighting crimes, not protecting the city, but to do ICE’s job for them. That’s what we’re ending.”

Local governments may no longer contribute to the cost of operating immigration detention centers, and they must solicit public opinion before changing zoning to allow buildings to be constructed or converted for immigrant detention.

Students’ right to a free appropriate public education (FAPE) is explicitly protected under the new laws, which state that students have this right regardless of immigration status. The law also limits the collection and sharing of data related to immigration status. ICE agents will also no longer be allowed to conceal their identity with masks within New York state.

From JURIST, May 30. Used with permission.

Note: The 287(g) program has been expanded by Trump, and is being aggresively embracedin Texas. Massachusetts has already prohibited the program. It has long been met with protest for inviting abuses.

Photo of ICE agents in Minnesota: Chad Davis

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Image via frgdr Blog. Hebrew lettering in background spells names of places in Europe where Jews were exterminated.

Elections Alberta affirmed that it received the petition, “A Referendum Relating to Alberta Independence,” and signature sheets from a “pro-sovereignty” group, Stay Free Alberta. The group told the CBC News that it has collected over 301,000 signatures, significantly more than the 178,000 threshold. The proposed referendum will ask voters: “Do you agree that the Province of Alberta should cease to be a part of Canada to become an independent state?”

On April 10, Justice Shaina Leonard of the Alberta Court of King’s Bench granted a temporary stay, barring the Chief Electoral Officer Gordon McClure from verifying the petition. She accepted that the lack of consultation could cause irreparable harm to First Nations, including Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, Piikani Nation, Siksika Nation and Blood Tribe. The First Nations welcomed the decision. Following the stay, the verification cannot take place until the court completes the judicial review.

There are other doubts on the legality of the petition. On Dec. 6, 2025, the same court heldthat the referendum proposal is unconstitutional. Justice Colin Feasby found that the proposal does not guarantee Charter rights or Aboriginal and Treaty rights to the same extent as the provided by Constitution Act, 1982. However, an amendment to the Citizen Initiative Act (CIA) came into effect on Dec. 11. It removes the provision requiring a referendum proposal to be compatible with the aforementioned rights. A “transitional provision” also ensures that the amendment applies to the referendum proposal, which predated the amendment. In granting the stay, Leonard agreed that the constitutionality of the CIA amendment and the potential applicability of the previous ruling are serious questions to be adjudicated.

Meanwhile, pro-unity group Forever Canadian claimed that it had already received over 404,000 signatures in support of the province remaining in Canada.

In related news, Elections Alberta is investigating a breach of the provincial voter list. On April 30, the authority revealed that the Republican Party of Alberta provided the voter list to a pro-sovereignty Centurion Project Ltd., which then publicized the list. While the provincial Election Act allows political parties to access the list, it strictly forbids distributing the list to a third party.

McClure said the authority was unable to investigate sooner because the recent Election Statutes Amendment Act, 2025, heightened the threshold for for opening an investigation from “grounds to warrant” to “reasonable grounds.” Similarly, the provincial privacy commissioner Diane McLeod said Alberta’s Personal Information Protection Act does not regulate political parties. They both called for reforms to their empowering statutes to strengthen accountability.

From JURIST, May 7. Used with permission.

Note: Prime Minister Mark Carney has admonished the US not to interfere in the Alberta independence drive, telling reporters in January: “We expect the US administration to respect Canadian sovereignty.” This comes in response to reports that leaders of the separatist Alberta Prosperity Project met with Trump administration officials. British Columbia Premier David Eby also sharply criticized the meetings, saying they amounted to “treason.” Carney and Eby were also responding to an aggressive online campaign—including AI-produced “slopaganda”—in support of Alberta becoming the “51st state.” However, while much of this propaganda comes from the US, reports indicate that some of it is being produced in Russia as well. (Politico, El Pais, NBC, The Hill, CBC, CBC)

See our last report on the struggle in Alberta, and our podcast, “MAGA-fascism and the struggle in Canada”

Photo: Magalie L’Abbe via Alberta Politics

The organizations report that the administration in April re-arrested and forcibly transferred to third countries people who had previously been granted withholding of removal by US immigration judges and had prevailed on habeas petitions challenging the legality of their detention. The report documents an attempted transfer of individuals to Libya last year in violation of a court order then in effect.

Approximately 16,000 of the documented transfers have been to Mexico. That figure includes thousands of individuals the administration failed to acknowledge in a March 5 disclosure to a federal court. Roughly 1,400 additional people have been sent to 20 other countries, including Eswatini, South Sudan and Uganda. A March 2026 agreement with Costa Rica provides for regular weekly transfers.

The tracker reports that the administration has paid at least $44 million to receiving governments in connection with the agreements and has used the threat of third-country transfer to pressure detained immigrants into abandoning their legal claims.

Separately, the tracker reports that government attorneys have filed motions to “pretermit,” or dismiss without merits review, thousands of pending asylum cases in immigration court on the basis of Asylum Cooperative Agreements with Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras and Uganda. Citing data compiled by immigration advocacy group Mobile Pathways from Executive Office for Immigration Review records, the tracker counts nearly 9,500 such pretermissions as of February 2026. The following month, the Department of Homeland Security directed Immigration & Customs Enforcement attorneys to stop filing new pretermission motions but did not withdraw those already pending.

The administration has invoked a range of statutory and constitutional authorities to justify the transfers, including the Alien Enemies Act, and the suspension-of-entry provision at 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f). Federal judges have held several uses of those authorities unlawful, including in challenges to expulsions of Venezuelans to El Salvador and to forced transfers of people with final removal orders carried out without notice or an opportunity to raise fear-based claims.

From JURIST, May 5. Used with permission.

See our last report on the third-country deportations.

See our podcast “MAGA-fascism and the struggle in Libya”

Photo: Venezuelan deportees in Honduras. Credit: ICE via Wikimedia Commons

At issue in the appeal was whether Chief Dsta’hyl could make a defense on the ground that he was acting in accordance with a co-existing Indigenous legal order. Chief Justice Leonard Merchand, writing for the three-judge panel, held that the court would recognize the defense if violating a court injunction was a last resort. However, as the defendant could have challenged the injunction, the court found that violating the injunction was not necessary to uphold the Wet’suwet’en law of trespass.

In his concluding remark, Chief Justice Merchand wrote:

Indigenous law has been denied, supressed [sic], and at times outlawed, for over a century in Canada. Canadian law has a role to play in undoing that harm and is learning to make space for Indigenous legal orders in various ways. But that work does not include allowing parties, Indigenous or non-Indigenous, to breach court orders.

In 2019, the British Columbia Supreme Court issued an injunction banning protests in the construction area of the Coastal GasLink pipeline project. Defying the injunction, Chief Dsta’hyl organized a blockade in an attempt to halt the construction in 2021. At trial, he contended that the protests were necessary to uphold the traditional Wet’suwet’en law of trespass and fulfill his duties as a chief to preserve and protect their yintah (territory). The trial judge rejected the defense, holding that it was an impermissible “collateral attack” on the injunction.

When the trial judge found Chief Dsta’hyl guilty of contempt, Amnesty International declaredhim Canada’s first prisoner of conscience. The group contended that the 60 days of house arrest were an unjustified criminal penalty for his work to protect Indigenous rights and the environment. In 2023, the group also published a report, accusing the Royal Canadian Mounted Police of conducting arbitrary arrests, harassment, intimidation and unlawful surveillance of the Wet’suwet’en and their allies that were incompatible with the right to freedom of peaceful assembly.

Nationwide protests erupted in 2020 against the pipeline project. While Coastal Gaslink claimed that it had reached agreements with 20 elected First Nation councils, the Wet’suwet’en maintained that the Hereditary Chiefs who retained authority in the region had not agreed to the construction. According to Indigenous lawyers Kate Gunn and Bruce McIvor, the elected band councils only had the decision-making authority on reserve lands under the federal Indian Act. The project, also situated in the traditional unceded territories of the Wet’suwet’en beyond the reserve lands, was said to have violated the right to free, prior and informed consent of the Wet’suwet’en.

From JURIST, April 30. Used with permission. Internal links added.

See our last report on the Indigenous struggle in British Columbia.

Image: Front Line Defenders

The surreal spectacle of ex-FBI director James Comey surrendering to federal authorities to face charges of threatening Donald Trump over an innocent Instagram post illustrates the line between a mere conservative and an actual fascist. CounterVortex chief ranter Bill Weinberg had a personal run-in with Comey back when he was a federal prosecutor. Later, as FBI chief, Comey was accused of trying to prejudice the electorate against Hillary Clinton—only to be himself targeted by the Trump Justice Department. The absurdity of the latest charges against Comey are obvious to anyone who has worked in the restaurant industry. Trump should indeed be eighty-sixed—through legal and constitutional means, such as impeachment, 25th Amendment invocation, or nullification of his illegitimate election. And, indeed, sent to face war crimes charges at The Hague. In Episode 326 of the CounterVortex podcast, Weinberg says: Yes, #8647! Fuckin’ A!

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Screenshot via, inter alia, CNN

The ruling in Pacito v. Trump stated that the president has broad discretion to restrict the entry of non-citizens when it is necessary to protect national interests under federal immigration laws. The court found that the president likely has the legal authority, pursuant to 8 USC § 1182(f), to suspend the entry of non-citizens, including refugees. The statute gives the president the ability to suspend the entry of “all aliens or any class of aliens” whose entry would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.” The ruling was partly based on the US Supreme Court decision in Trump v. Hawaii, which gave the president broad discretion to make immigration decisions.

Nevertheless, the Ninth Circuit did affirm the district court’s preliminary injunctions in part, particularly in regard to refugees already in the country and domestic organizations aiding refugees. The appellate court concurred with the district court that, while the president is in charge of border control, the executive branch is not at liberty to dismantle domestic programs that Congress has mandated the government to execute. The appellate court ruled that the district court did not err in its findings that the government likely violated the law when it failed to provide refugees with “reception and placement” services. The Ninth Circuit ruled that the government has a mandatory duty under 8 USC § 1522 to provide refugees with the aforementioned services as long as Congress has allocated the funds for the program.

The appellate court also concurred with the district court that the government likely violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) when it unilaterally terminated the cooperative agreements with resettlement organizations. The Ninth Circuit held that the government did not provide a “reasoned explanation” for the terminations and did not consider the “serious reliance interests” of refugees and those aiding them who have organized their lives around the aforementioned government contracts.

Refugees and refugee resettlement organizations filed the lawsuit challenging a January 2025 executive order signed by President Trump, which suspended refugee resettlement programs in the United States. The lawsuit, filed in a federal district court in Washington state, won a preliminary injunction requiring the government to continue aspects of the refugee program. The government appealed the decision, stating that the refugee program was within the president’s legal authority.

The dispute may ultimately reach the US Supreme Court if the parties seek further review of the Ninth Circuit’s decision.

From JURIST, March 6. Used with permission.

Photo: Grace Deng/Washington State Standard