In their joint statement, the organizations highlighted that they have consistently expresseddeep concern over collaboration between EU member states and Libyan authorities. Assistance from the EU has facilitated the interception and forced return of tens of thousands of refugees and migrants annually to Libya, where they have faced abuses including indefinite arbitrary detention in cruel and inhumane conditions, unlawful killings, torture and other ill-treatment, sexual violence, extortion and forced labor.

The rights groups released their statement in the context of heightened cooperation between the EU and Libyan authorities. The NGO Statewatch recently leaked documents dated May 20 that detail how the EU has been collaborating with Libya’s Eastern Forces. The collaboration includes training, technical support and the development of a regional migration control center based in Benghazi. The EU has confirmed plans to establish a “Maritime Rescue Coordination Center” in Benghazi and a surveillance tower with radar in Tobruk, both cities in Eastern Libya controlled by the Libyan Arab Armed Forces. The plan appears to be modelled on a similar 2017 initiative struck with the Western-based government.

Since the NATO intervention in Libya in 2011 and the death of the longtime leader Moammar Qaddafi, Libya has become a hotspot for human trafficking. The grim situation is illustrated the repeated discovery of mass graves, most recently in January. The UN has appealed to the EU on the need for life-saving search and rescue operations at sea, and the suspension of interceptions and returns to Libya, among other remedial directives.

Signatories to the joint statement include Amnesty International, EuroMed Rights, Human Rights Watch, Refugees in Libya and Sea-Watch, among others.

From JURIST, July 19. Used with permission. Internal links added.

Map: Perry-Castañeda Library

Because the Court is a treaty body that only its member states can dissolve, the US lacks the authority to “dismantle” it. The op-ed does not detail specific measures, but a State Department official told Reuters that options under consideration include travel bans, visa revocations, expanded sanctions against the Court and affiliated entities, and diplomatic pressure on member states to withdraw. The official said countries that rely on US security assistance and decline to reject the Court’s authority over Americans are likely to face increased scrutiny.

Rubio cited the Court’s 2020 authorization of an investigation into the situation in Afghanistan, which included possible crimes by US forces, as well as more recent calls by activists and a former ICC prosecutor to treat Trump administration deportations and military strikes as international crimes. According to Reuters, the Court has taken no recent steps against US personnel, and since 2021 prosecutors have de-prioritized the US role in the Afghanistan investigation in favor of alleged Taliban and Afghan government crimes.

The ICC, established in 2002 under the Rome Statute and seated at The Hague in the Netherlands, has 125 states parties, including nearly every US treaty ally in Europe as well as the UK, Japan, South Korea and Australia. The US is not a member. President Bill Clinton signed the Rome Statute in 2000 but declined to submit it to the Senate, and Congress in 2002 passed legislation authorizing the president to use all means necessary to free US citizens detained by the Court.

The announced campaign departs from the approach of prior administrations of both parties, which maintained US non-membership while supporting international criminal justice in specific cases. The US helped establish the Yugoslavia and Rwanda tribunals in the 1990s (under Democrat Bill Clinton), and abstained from but did not veto the Security Council’s referral of Darfur to the ICC in 2005 (under Republican George W. Bush). Washington supported the Security Council’s referral of Libya in 2011, expanded its war crimes rewards program to cover ICC fugitives in 2012 (under Democrat Barack Obama), and initiatedsharing of evidence with the Court’s investigation of Russian conduct in Ukraine after it issued a 2023 arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin (under Democrat Joe Biden). In 2008, State Department legal adviser John Bellinger said it was “not the policy of the United States to try to kill the ICC.”

An ICC spokesperson said the Court would not comment at this stage. Last month, three ICC judges sued Trump administration officials over sanctions imposed on them, arguing the measures were unlawful.

From JURIST, July 13. Used with permission. Internal links added.

Photo: Tony Webster via Wikimedia Commons

RSF and LNA officials denied the investigation’s findings. Limited international action has allowed the apparent Emirati involvement in the war to increase, the report said, with devastating consequences for civilians, particularly in Darfur, and for Sudanese refugees fleeing through Libya.

From The New Humanitarian, July 3. Lightly edited. Internal links added.

Note: The LNA is not answerable to Libya’s internationally recognized government in Tripoli but the breakaway regime of warlord Khalifa Haftar in the east.

Photo of RSF forces in Darfur via Sudan Tribune

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

Photo: US Navy via Wikimedia Commons

A joint investigation by the Internal Security Agency and Battalion 166 led to the unearthing of the mass grave. The investigators ordered that DNA samples be collected from the remains to identify the deceased and that full autopsies be carried out to determine causes of death. The suspect (MFH) had been previously charged with three offenses related to the murder of migrants and additional human trafficking offenses.

Refugees in Libya, a Libyan-run organization registered in Italy that provides support for refugees, urged the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor, Karim Khan, to “assess this case within the Court’s mandate.” The group further stated: “The killings…occurred within a system where people are blocked, intercepted, returned, and abandoned in Libya after being denied safe pathways to protection. This demands accountability beyond Libya.”

Seawatch International, an NGO that saves migrants in distress in the Mediterranean Sea, condemned EU policies for endangering migrant lives: “Horrifying news: In Libya, a mass grave with at least 21 persons was discovered. Their deaths are a direct consequence of EU migration politics. Libya is not a safe place for people on the move!”

Libya has emerged in recent years as a key route for human trafficking. Mass graves of presumed migrants who had been detained and killed by armed groups have been uncovered repeatedly—from 2022 to February and June of last year. Libya is also now serving as a starting point for flights trafficking migrants to Nicaragua, with an intended final destination of the United States.

Article 426 of the Libyan Penal Code prohibits the trafficking of enslaved people, and imposes a punishment of imprisonment not exceeding ten years. Furthermore, Article 428 criminalizes the deprivation of another’s liberty by a period of imprisonment not exceeding five years. A US State Department report identifies the lack of a functioning judiciary, endemic corruption, and the strength of non-state armed groups as causes behind the surge of human trafficking in Libya.

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

Note: This case evidently invovled some coordination between Libya’s two rival governments, as Battalion 166 appears to be aligned with the breakaway regime in the east, yet seemingly cooperated with authorities from the internationally recognized Government of National Unity based in Tripoli. The Internal Security Agency appears to be a holdover agency from the Qaddafi dictatorship, and it is unclear which faction it is aligned with.

Map: Perry-Castañeda Library

In 2023, a UN Fact-Finding Mission in Libya found reasonable grounds to believe that high-ranking staff of the Libyan Coast Guard colluded with human traffickers and smugglers reportedly connected to militia groups. These officials allegedly demanded and received payments in exchange for turning detained migrants over to the militia groups, in whose hands they were subjected to forced labor and other abuses.

Human rights organizations and refugee advocacy groups have consistently called for the termination of the agreement. Civil society networks, like Refugees in Libya, have mobilized efforts to stop renewal of the MoU, which is set to occur on Nov. 2.

Judith Sunderland, associate Europe director at HRW, urged the EU and all of its member states, including Italy, to “stop financing and legitimizing violence against migrants and fundamentally reorient [their] Mediterranean policies to prioritize rescue at sea and safe and legal pathways for migration.”

The HRW statement came days before the European Commission and the EU border control agency Frontex were to host a delegation of Libyan migration officials at the Frontex headquarters in Warsaw. HRW called on EU officials to use the opportunity to demand respect for human rights and accountability for abuses.

From JURIST, Oct. 13. Used with permission.

Map: Perry-Castañeda Library

About 80 bodies, some of them partially charred, were found at sites around Tripoli used for detention of migrants by a semi-official militia, the Stabilization Support Apparatus (SSA). The SSA leader, who went by the nom de guerre Gheniwa, was killed last month in an apparent purge of potentially disloyal elements by the Tripoli government, and his detention sites taken over. Türk called for the sites to be immediately “sealed off” and for Libyan authorities to conduct “prompt, independent, impartial and transparent investigations.” (UN News, CNN)

Photo: Alessio Romenzi/UNICEF via UN News

As President, I must act to protect the national security and national interest of the United States and its people. I remain committed to engaging with those countries willing to cooperate to improve information-sharing and identity-management procedures, and to address both terrorism-related and public-safety risks. Nationals of some countries also pose significant risks of overstaying their visas…which increases burdens on immigration and law enforcement…and often exacerbates other risks related to national security and public safety.

Commentators have criticized the ban, pointing out that it disproportionately affects Muslim-majority and African countries. Amnesty International’s secretary general Agnes Callamard lambasted Trump for the action, calling it inhumane:

President Trump’s new travel ban is discriminatory, racist, and downright cruel. By targeting people based on their race, religion, or nationality, from countries with predominantly Black, Brown and Muslim-majority populations, this blanket ban constitutes racial discrimination under international human rights law. It also spreads hate and disinformation, reinforcing the notion that these populations are more likely to pose security risks or engage in acts of violence.

Leaders of affected countries have also denounced the United States for the action. In a Facebook post, Chad President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno announced a corresponding ban on US citizens and jabbed at Trump for his recent receipt of a Qatari luxury jet:

I have instructed the government in accordance with the principles of reciprocity and suspended the granting of visas to citizens of the United States of America. Chad has neither airplanes nor billions of dollars to give, but Chad has its dignity and its pride.

The ban extends almost completely to nationals of Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Additionally, more partial bans have been placed on nationals from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.

The restrictions bear a striking resemblance to Trump’s 2017 travel ban, which blocked travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries. Some of these countries—namely Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia and Yemen—have suffered under both bans.

Trump justified the current ban in almost identical fashion as the 2017 ban, relying on certain provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Section 212(f) of the act allows the president to deny entry into the country if doing so “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” The administration additionally cited 215(a), which allows the president to block individuals’ entry if they knowingly make false statements or otherwise engage in fraudulent activity.

For both bans, Trump claimed that restrictions were not based on religion or race but rather countries’ deficient screening processes, high terrorist activity, poor information sharing, and high overstay rates.

After multiple challenges, the US Supreme Court ultimately upheld Trump’s first travel ban under the INA and the US Constitution.

Trump stated: “We will restore the travel ban…and keep the radical Islamic terrorists out of our country that was upheld by the Supreme Court.”

From JURIST, June 5. Used with permission.

Note: The 2017 Trump travel ban was overturned by Biden on his first day in office, Jan. 20, 2021.

Photo: Minneapolis protest of 2018 Supreme Court decision upholding Trump’s first travel ban. Credit: Fibonacci Blue/Flickr

Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

Erratum: At approximately 17.20 we recall that in March 2017 Prince Mohammad bin Salman called Trump a “true friend of Muslims” one day before the US bombed a mosque in Syria, killing at least 50. Contrary to what we state, this exchange between Trump and Prince Mohammad did not take place in Riyadh, but in the White House. Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia, where he met again with the prince, was in May 2017.

Production by Chris Rywalt

We ask listeners to support us at one of our three tiers via Patreon: Become a Basic Supporter for just $1 per weekly podcast ($5 per month), or a Special Supporter for $2 per podcast ($10 per month), or a Major Rant Enabler for $5 per podcast ($25 per month). We now have 69 paid subscribers. If you appreciate our work, please become Number 70!

Map: PCL