Reports

How the U Visa Builds Trust, Counters Fear, and Promotes Community Safety

The 50-page report, “‘We Need U’: How the U Visa Builds Trust, Counters Fear, and Promotes Community Safety,” finds that the administration’s deportation policies undermine federal visa programs that provide a pathway for crime victims to obtain legal residency when they cooperate with law enforcement. Changed enforcement guidance, such as allowing Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials to apprehend people in previously safe places like courthouses and health centers, is a strong deterrent for immigrants who might otherwise report crime to police or seek a protective order.


 

Federal agents detain a woman exiting an immigration court hearing
A woman looks out of the window of a damaged building

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  • September 26, 2002

    Why the International Community Should Reject Australia's Refugee Policies

    The government of Australia has taken increasingly aggressive measures in recent years to prevent unauthorized asylum seekers from reaching its shores. One year ago, on September 26, 2001, it enacted new legislation that extended the legal basis for its policies, which are among the most restrictive in the developed world.
  • July 5, 2002

    The Arbitrary Application of Spanish Immigration Law

    The Human Rights Watch report, "Discretion Without Bounds: The Arbitrary Implementation of Spanish Immigration Law," criticizes the Spanish authorities' uncoordinated and ad hoc application of Spanish Law 8/2000.
  • May 7, 2002

    State Abuses of Unaccompanied Migrant Children by Spain and Morocco

    Moroccan migrant children in Spain are frequently beaten by police and abused by staff and other children in overcrowded, unsanitary residential centers, Human Rights Watch charged in this report. Spain also summarily expels children as young as eleven to Morocco, where Moroccan policebeat and ill-treat them and then abandon them to the streets.
  • February 12, 2002

    Sex Discrimination in the Guatemalan Labor Force

    Women in Guatemala's largest female-dominated labor sectors face persistent sex discrimination and abuse, Human Rights Watch charges in this report. The 147-page report examines two sectors, export processing and private households, which employ tens of thousands of women sewing clothes for sale in the United States and working as live-in domestic workers.
  • October 18, 2001

    The Impact of the September 11 Attacks on Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Migrants in the Afghanistan Region and Worldwide

    The backlash against refugees, asylum seekers and migrants throughout the world is a serious side effect of the September 11 attacks. While governments have legitimate security concerns, there must be a balance with human rights and refugee protection standards.
  • August 31, 2001

    Backgrounder for the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance

    Throughout the world, refugees, asylum seekers, migrants and internally displaced persons are the victims of racial discrimination, racist attacks, xenophobia and ethnic intolerance. Racism is both a cause and a product of forced displacement, and an obstacle to its solution.
  • July 5, 2001

    Continuing Refugee Protection Concerns in Guinea

    Hundreds of thousands of Sierra Leonean and Liberian refugees along Guinea's border were relocated from the embattled border area in early 2001 to camps in the interior of the country. While the organized movement from the border is a welcome and long overdue step, the long-term safety of the refugees is still under threat.
  • May 1, 2001

    The Rwandan government has violated the basic rights of tens of thousands of people by forcing them to abandon their homes in rural areas and move to makeshift dwellings in government-designated sites, Human Rights Watch charges in this report.
  • December 12, 2000

    How countries treat those who have been forced to flee persecution and human rights abuse elsewhere is a litmus test of their commitment to defending human rights and upholding humanitarian values.

  • November 17, 2000

    The November 24-25 summit in Zagreb, with the participation of fifteen European Union (E.U.) states and Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia, provides a unique opportunity for the E.U.
  • July 1, 2000

    Although the government of Burundi has promised Nelson Mandela that it will close its squalid "regroupment" camps, that promise has not yet been fulfilled, Human Rights Watch charged in this report. The former South African president is leading a new round of the Burundi peace talks, opening tomorrow.
  • November 1, 1999

    10th Anniversary of the Convention

    Every recognized country in the world, except for the United States and the collapsed state of Somalia, has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, pledging to uphold its protections for children. Today the convention stands as the single most widely ratified treaty in existence.