(Geneva) “Racist hate speech” by US President Donald Trump and other politicians, combined with a toughening immigration crackdown, is fueling serious human rights abuses, a UN watchdog said on Wednesday.
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The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has expressed deep concern about the rise of “racist hate speech” as well as the use of “dehumanizing language” and harmful stereotypes targeting migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in the United States.
These groups have been described “as criminals or a burden by influential politicians and public figures at the highest levels of the state, particularly its president,” the committee said in a report.
This situation “encourages intolerance and can incite racial discrimination (and) hate crimes,” he warned.
The CERD calls on Washington to “take its responsibilities, in particular by carrying out effective, thorough and impartial investigations” into all alleged violations. He also calls on Washington to publicly condemn racial discrimination and hate speech.
The CERD, which consists of 18 independent experts charged with monitoring states’ implementation of an international convention on the elimination of racism, said it was seriously concerned about the “systematic use of racial profiling” by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other agents deployed as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The targeting “of people of Hispanic/Latino, African or Asian origin and arbitrary identity checks (…) have led to the alleged mass arrest of refugees, asylum seekers, migrants and people perceived as such,” he said.
At least 675,000 people expelled
According to the report, at least 675,000 people have been deported since January 2025, when Donald Trump returned to power.
The committee denounces in particular “the excessive use of force during immigration control operations,” noting that at least eight people have died since January during ICE operations or while in ICE custody.
The CERD report follows an urgent request filed in early February by the influential civil rights organization ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union).
She asked him to “investigate serious violations by the United States of its human rights obligations” in the state of Minnesota, where two demonstrators were shot dead by immigration police in January.
This request was filed under the CERD’s urgent alert and action procedure, which allows it to take up urgent matters between its ordinary sessions.
Thousands of federal agents, including ICE agents, carried out several weeks of massive raids and arrests in Minnesota earlier this year that the Trump administration portrayed as operations targeting criminals.
The controversial operation ended last month amid growing national outrage over the shootings of two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, by federal agents in Minneapolis, and the arrest of a five-year-old child.
The Cerd also denounces the “drastic increase” in the number of people detained in immigration detention centers, which is estimated to have increased from 40,000 at the end of 2024 to around 73,000 at the start of this year.
He is concerned about reports of “inhumane conditions and inadequate medical care” in these centers, deploring the deaths in detention of at least 29 migrants in 2025, and six in January.
CERD is also alarmed by Washington’s decision to repeal long-standing directives limiting immigration enforcement operations and arrests near schools, hospitals and religious institutions. In its recommendations, CERD urges the United States to suspend all such operations and conduct a human rights-based review of legislative measures adopted since January 2025.
