US border force reported to the UN for human rights abuse at migrant detention centres

A legal non-profit in the US has sent damning evidence of US border force officials appalling persisting record of human rights abuses at open air detention sites, to the United Nations.

US border force reported to the UN for human rights abuse

On Monday 7 April, the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law (CHRCL) and the Southern Border Communities Coalition (SBCC) submitted a report to the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) on US Customs and Border Protection (CBP)’s continued human rights abuses at open air detention sites.

The CHRCL is a legal non-profit that protects and advances the rights of migrants. SBCC is a coalition of organisations from San Diego, California, to Brownsville, Texas that seeks to hold US border force accountable and ensure they respect migrants’ human rights.

Every five years, members of the UN HRC review all member countries’ human rights records in a unique process known as Universal Periodic Review. Therefore, SBCC and CHRCL submitted a joint report to the UN as part of this process. It’s to urge the council to hold the US accountable for CBP’s continued human rights abuses, including open air detention along the southern border.

As part of this process, SBCC and CHRCL also joined a coalition of two dozen migrants’ rights groups urging action on the deteriorating human rights situation for migrants in the US.

Trump expanding human rights violating detention

On March 19 2025, media announced that the Trump administration may expand open air detention along the border in New Mexico, Arizona, and California.

Reportedly, the government would do so by having the military:

take control of a buffer zone along a sprawling stretch of the southern border and empower[ing] active-duty U.S. troops to temporarily hold migrants who cross into the United States

This would be alongside the Roosevelt Reservation, a narrow 60-foot stretch of land that the federal government controls. Historically, the Department of the Interior has managed it.

Since 2023, SBCC has documented, and members have provided aid at, and advocated against open air detention sites at the US-Mexico border.

In 2024, CHRCL conducted multiple monitoring visits to the sites in its capacity as co-counsel in the Flores Settlement Agreement.  This governs conditions for children in US government custody.

The visits led Flores Counsel to successfully file for enforcement of the Agreement with respect to open air detention sites in February of 2024.

Migrants subjected to ‘inhumane conditions’ by US border force

Border Policy Counsel for the Southern Border Communities Coalition Ricky Garza said:

We reject military occupation and the Administration’s attempts to normalize open air detention.

Human rights law is clear that all people must be treated with dignity and respect regardless of immigration status.

Executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law Sergio Perez echoed this:

The cruelty of forcing asylum-seekers – many of whom have fled unimaginable horrors – into squalid, virtually unsheltered sites along the border is self-evident.

No human being, least of all pregnant persons and vulnerable children, should be subjected to these inhumane conditions. There is no possible justification for such deplorable treatment, and we call on the United Nations to hold the U.S. accountable for violating its human rights treaty obligations and failing to properly care for people seeking a better life.

Featured image via the Canary