1. Advancing Human Rights
A Status Report on Human Rights in the United States
This report is a publication of the US Human Rights Network
December 2014

2. 1
Acknowledgments
We could not have completed this report without
the generous support of the following individuals:
Author:
Salimah Hankins
Editor, Design, and Photographs:
Balthazar Becker
Balthazar Becker authored the chapters on
“Criminal Justice & Mass Incarceration”
and “Right to Life & Security of Person”
A Warm Thanks Goes to the Following Researchers:
Johnny Holschuh
(Environmental & Climate Justice; Criminal Justice)
Kelsi Steele
(Marriage & Family; Reproductive Justice)
Krystal Utara
(Immigration Policy; Voter Suppression)
Further research or help was provided by:
Ashley Ngozi Agbasoga, Emily Hwang,
Tehmiena Lughmani, Afif Rahman,
Kia Roberts, Omotorera Sotinwa,
James Tourkistas, and Jara White.

3. Table of Contents
Overview 1
The United States and Human Rights Implementation 2
Environmental & Climate Justice 7
Immigration Policy 15
Criminal Justice & Mass Incarceration 24
Right to Life & Security of Person 30
Decent Work 41
Voter Suppression 48
Marriage & Family 54
Reproductive Justice 59
Healthcare 65
Education 71
Housing 77
Privacy 84

4. 1
OVERVIEW
The year 2014 has been tumultuous for hu-man
rights in the United States. We have seen
continued criminalization and police violence
directed at black and brown people, mass de-portations,
militarized responses to protests,
water shutoffs in Detroit, and reversal of
women’s reproductive rights—all indications
that the United States is far from its claim of
human rights exceptionalism. This year has
also been a time for impressive human rights
organizing to hold the United States govern-ment
accountable. The United States was re-viewed
on its compliance with three human
rights treaties this year. The reviews garnered
unprecedented media attention nationally and
internationally. Also in 2014, we saw renewed
energy around human rights movement-building,
be it to challenge police killings, call
to action around climate change, or demand a
living wage. This report provides a status up-date
on human rights in the United States in
the last year. We hope that you will use it to
amplify the various human rights efforts in
the United States.
WHAT ARE HUMAN RIGHTS?
Human rights are rights that we all have
simply because we are human. They are the
basic claims that we have to dignity and re-spect
without regard to our race, nationality,
gender, gender identity, sexuality, age, religion,
(dis)ability, language, income, immigration
status, or other statuses. Human rights include
civil, cultural, development, economic, envi-ronmental,
political, sexual, and social rights.
Examples of human rights include housing,
health, education, food, water, freedom from
discrimination, freedom from torture, and
freedom of expression.
Commonly accepted human rights are ex-pressed
and guaranteed in a body of interna-tional
law. The Universal Declaration of Hu-man
Rights (UDHR), which was adopted by
the United Nations on December 10th of
1948—now known as Human Rights Day—
was one of the first documents to outline the
full range of human rights. Since then, human
rights law has developed to include numerous
laws, treaties, and agreements that aim to pro-tect
people around the world.
Human rights laws not only articulate basic
rights and freedoms that all people and
Peoples are entitled to, but also establish the
role of government in advancing these protec-tions.
It asserts that governments have an
obligation to respect, protect, and fulfill the
rights of all people. This means that not only
must governments refrain from violating hu-man
rights itself, but they must also affirma-tively
ensure that others are not violating our
human rights and must provide all of the
conditions necessary for people to enjoy their
human rights. In recognition that govern-ments
are increasingly compromised by the
role of money in politics and governance, the
human rights community has also highlighted
human rights abuses occurring at the hands of
transnational corporations. These kinds of
profit-making entities in many cases not only
violate human rights, but are increasingly er-roneously
looked to as a solution. The re-sponsibility
of business enterprises to respect
human rights refers to all internationally rec-ognized
human rights – understood, at a min-imum,
as those expressed in the International
Bill of Human Rights and “the principles con-cerning
fundamental rights set out in the In-ternational
Labour Organization’s Declaration
on Fundamental Principles and Rights at
Work.”

5. 2
THE UNITED STATES AND
HUMAN RIGHTS IMPLEMENTATION
The United States has historically been seen as
a champion for human rights around the
globe and was instrumental in the drafting of
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(UDHR)—the birth-document of legally en-shrined
human rights around the globe. On
the other hand, many individuals within the
jurisdiction of the United States face egre-gious
human rights violations in nearly every
area imaginable. This and the failure of the
United States government to support the full
enforceability of human rights law ensures
that the United States is not held accountable
to the same human rights standards and laws
that it insists on for other countries.
In addition to signing the UDHR, the United
States has formally accepted and ratified
three out of the ten core human rights
treaties. The treaties that the United States
has ratified include the International Cove-nant
on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),
the International Convention on the Elimina-tion
of all forms of Racial Discrimination
(CERD), and the Convention against Torture
and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment (CAT). The United
States has not ratified treaties that would ad-vance
the rights of women, children, persons
with disabilities, and migrant workers, or that
would advance economic, social, and cultural
rights.
In 2014, the United Nations human rights
experts who oversee implementation of all
three of the above human rights treaties have
renewed the call for the United States to rat-ify
core international human rights trea-ties
including the Convention on the Rights
of the Child (CRC), the International Conven-tion
on the Rights of Migrant Workers
(ICMW), and the Convention on the Elimina-tion
of Discrimination Against Women
(CEDAW). While President Obama signed
the Convention on the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities (CRPD) in 2009 and the United
States Senate considered its ratification on
December 4, 2012, it fell 5 votes short of the
super-majority vote required to ratify it. Sig-nificantly,
the United States has also failed to
ratify the International Covenant on Econom-ic,
Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR),
which along with the UDHR and ICCPR
make up the international bill of human
rights. This failure, coupled with the non-ratification
of CRPD, CMW, CEDAW, and
the CRC—all of which include substantive
economic, social and cultural rights protec-tions,
reflects a deeper failure to recognize
and protect core economic and social rights
(which the United States Constitution does
not recognize).
Though the United States has long pro-claimed
its commitment to complying with
human rights standards, when it ratifies trea-ties
it does so with qualifications known as
Reservations, Understandings, and Decla-rations
(RUD) that typically limit the en-forceability
of the treaties. The government
claims that domestic law is sufficient to meet
the standards enshrined in human rights laws,
but, as detailed in this report, domestic pro-tections
falls short in a variety of ways that
leave people vulnerable to human rights abus-es.
Accepting some human rights and reject-ing
others is problematic because “all human
rights are universal, indivisible, interdependent
and interrelated.” This makes it counter-productive
for governments to pick and
choose among human rights “those which
they will honor while interpreting other hu-man
rights as optional, dispensable, non-obligatory,
or even as ‘unreal." Viewing hu-man
rights as normative responses to experi-ences
of oppression and domination provides
the key to understanding how human rights
function and how they hang together to form
a unit.
Human rights must be interdependent
because if they were not, tyrants and oppres-sors
could simply employ a different tech-

6. 3
nique of repression to maintain their systems
of oppression. We cannot enjoy civil and po-litical
rights unless we enjoy economic, cultur-al,
and social rights, likewise, we cannot avail
ourselves of our economic, social and cultural
rights, unless we can exercise our civil and
political rights. Or, as Martin Luther King, Jr.
famously said about the Greensboro Lunch
Counter sit-ins, “What good is having the
right to sit at a lunch counter if you can’t af-ford
to buy a hamburger?” Ratification of the
International Covenant on Economic, Social
and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and other core
human rights treaties without qualifications,
would serve as an important step to combat-ing
inequality and preventing the suffering
created by economic downturns. By recogniz-ing
the United States government's obligation
to respect, protect and fulfill core human
rights, we will ensure that like many people
around the world, people in America can also
enjoy the right to housing, education, health,
work, and social security.
The constitutional and institutional structure
of federalism poses unique challenges for
the United States when it comes to interna-tional
law obligations. The federalist system
gives a sovereign federal government a set of
powers while giving the state governments of
50 sovereign states another set of powers. In-ternational
law obligations bind all countries,
regardless of each of their internal governing
operations. Because of this, federal, state, and
local authorities share responsibility for im-plementing
international human rights obliga-tions.
Indeed, in its 2014 Concluding Obser-vations
for the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights, the Human Rights
Committee emphasized that the United States
government must work at “federal, state and
local levels, taking into account that the obli-gations
under the Covenant are binding on
the State party as a whole, and that all branch-es
of government and other public or gov-ernmental
authorities at every level are in a
position to engage the responsibility of the
State party”
The United States has repeatedly affirmed that
state and local governments, who are on
front lines of addressing “key human rights
issues, are vital to comprehensive human
rights implementation within and throughout
the country.” Given this reality, no national
institutionalized effort exists to “encourage,
coordinate and support human rights educa-tion,
monitoring or implementation at the
state and local levels.” The federalist system
does, in fact, present unique challenges, but
the federal government itself has much to ad-dress
regarding its mass surveillance and in-definite
detention programs. These dilemmas,
among many others, pose a threat to the cred-ibility
of the United States government both
at home and abroad.
The Civil Rights Division of the Department
of Justice in partnership with the Department
of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human
Rights, and Labor launched a federal level,
inter-agency Equality Working Group in
March 2012 to coordinate federal agencies
around human rights. In order to be effective,
the Equality Working Group’s mandate
“will need to be expanded to include all hu-man
rights obligations, and it will need to
be institutionalized.” It will also need to en-gage
with state and local governments. The
Office of the United Nations High Commis-sioner
for Human Rights (OHCHR) has long
encouraged the growth of National Human
Rights Institutions (NHRIs), which are organ-izations
that promote and monitor the im-plementation
of international human rights
standards at the national level. Although there
are over 150 state and local civil and human
rights agencies that enforce federal, state, and
local human and civil rights laws, conduct re-search,
issue policy recommendations, and
engage in education and training, the United
States does not have an NHRI.
The Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination (CERD Committee) recom-mended
that the United States government
create a permanent coordinating mecha-

7. 4
nism such as a national human rights institu-tion
to “ensure the effective implementation
and monitoring of CERD at the federal, state
and local levels.” The CERD Committee also
raised concerns about the absence of a plan to
combat racial discrimination and recommend-ed
that the United States government adopt a
National Action Plan to combat structural
racial discrimination and promote human
rights education. Combating institutionalized
racism is key to fully implementing human
rights in the United States. Human rights ed-ucation
is a key component for building a cul-ture
of accountability. There is currently no
comprehensive national framework or plan
for human rights education within K-12 edu-cation,
higher education, or the training of
educators. Where it exists, human rights edu-cation
is often taught through a strictly histor-ical
lens, without attention to its contempo-rary
application.
Overall, the United States lacks strong struc-tures
to hold the government accountable for
its human rights obligations. However, there
is a vibrant and growing movement afoot
and communities are fighting back to protect
the human rights of all people living in the
United States. These include members and
partners of the US Human Rights Network
(USHRN). We are challenging the notion that
human rights violations are primarily a con-cern
of other countries. We reject the implica-tion
that there are people who are not deserv-ing
of human rights. We are working across
movements and building power from the
grassroots to ensure that people are always
prioritized over profit. We are growing a hu-man
rights movement led by people who are
most directly impacted. We are demanding
that the United States live up to its founding
values as a nation, which holds that all people
are created equal. This idea—the inherent
dignity of all human beings—is the basis of
the human rights movement.
WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE DO
The US Human Rights Network (USHRN) is
a national network of organizations and indi-viduals
working to strengthen a human
rights movement and culture within the
United States led by those most impacted by
human rights violations. We work to secure
dignity and justice for all. USHRN serves as
an anchor to build the collective power of
communities across the country and to ex-pand
the base of a bold, vibrant, and broad-based
people-centered human rights move-ment.
USHRN is the primary organization coordi-nating
the participation of social justice
and human rights groups in using the in-ternational
human rights mechanisms to
hold the United States government accounta-ble.
In March of 2014, USHRN led a delega-tion
to Geneva to testify before the United
Nations Human Rights Committee regarding
the United States’ implementation of the In-ternational
Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights (ICCPR). Again, in August, the United
Nations Committee on the Elimination of
Racial Discrimination (hereafter, the Commit-tee)
reviewed the United States government’s
record under the International Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Dis-crimination
(commonly known as ICERD or
CERD). During the review process, the
Committee received reports and heard testi-mony
from over 100 organizations. Among
the civil society delegation were people direct-ly
impacted by human rights violations, in-cluding
Ron Davis and Sybrina Fulton, whose
sons (Jordan Davis and Trayvon Martin, re-spectively)
were shot to death in Florida—one
of many states with Stand Your Ground laws
on the books. In November of 2014 before
the Committee Against Toture (CAT), the
parents of Michael Brown (the unarmed
black teenager who was killed by police of-ficer
Darren Wilson) testified about the killing
of their sons and other black boys and men by
police. During the same review, Martinez Sut-

8. 5
ton testified about the killing of his sister,
Rekia Boyd, an unarmed Black woman shot
and killed by police. Breanna Champion of
We Charge Genocide (WCG), testified about
the beating of her brother by police and the
WCG delegation stood in protest of the mur-der
of Dominique Franklin Jr. at the hands of
the Chicago police. In addition, United States
civil society submitted its alternative reports
(those submitted through USHRN can be
found here) and testimonies to give the
CERD Committee an accurate picture of ra-cial
discrimination in the United States.
SOME CURRENT USHRN CAMPAIGNS
2014 UDHR Campaign: The #udhr2014
campaign leads up to Human Rights Day,
marked on December 10 to celebrate the
United Nation's proclamation of the Univer-sal
Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).
Stories are posted on this page regularly until
December 10, so check back often. To join
the #udhr2014 campaign: Join the conversa-tion
using #udhr2014, Share the videos and
stories posted, Sign up for the UDHR Thun-derclap.
Tell us your (or your organization’s)
human rights story.
National Plan of Action for Racial Justice:
The Once and For All campaign was launched
on the International Day for the Elimination
of Racial Discrimination (March 21) last year
by the USHRN and the Human Rights at
Home Campaign (HuRAH). The purpose was
to call on the Obama Administration to estab-lish
a National Plan of Action for Racial Jus-tice
to comprehensively address persistent
forms of racial discrimination and race dispar-ities
in almost every sphere of life.
Human Rights At Home Campaign
(HuRAH): Founded in 2008, the Human
Rights at Home Campaign (HuRAH) is a coa-lition
of human rights groups working togeth-er
to demand human rights accountability on
a governmental level. In 2014, HuRAH has
been working with the USHRN Taskforces
on ICCPR, CERD, CAT, and the Universal
Periodic Review (UPR) to leverage all human
rights reviews to organize for a human rights
agenda in the United States including the
adoption of a National Plan of Action for Ra-cial
Justice. For more information, Join the
HuRAH listserv
Member Initiated Action Teams (MIATs):
MIATs provide members of the US Human
Rights Network with the opportunity to initi-ate
their own teams around human rights top-ics
that interest them so that members can
learn from one another, collaborate across
constituency and region, and take action.
Environmental Justice & Reproductive
Health Working Group is made up of non-governmental
organizations across the United
States working to identify companies and lo-cations
manufacturing restricted and banned
pesticides for use and export using the Free-dom
of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain
information about them. Their goals are to
use the information obtained to take action in
stopping the production and export of these
chemicals and to hold companies and states
accountable.
Human Rights Defenders Member Initi-ated
Action Team works to help United
States human rights advocates to recognize
themselves as Human Rights Defenders
(HRDs), understand their protections under
international human rights law, take advantage
of international human rights mechanisms,
and incorporate the HRDs framework into
their advocacy.
International Decade of People of African
Descent MIAT works to recognize and hon-or
people of African descent for their politi-cal,
cultural, social, economic, and spiritual
contributions to the world. This MIAT also
seeks to address the historical and continuous
discrimination and racism faced by people of
African descent that violate their human

9. 6
rights promulgated by the Universal Declara-tion
of Human Rights and all of the United
Nations treaties.
Land and Housing Action Group (Take
Back the Land Movement Coordinating
Committee) aims to challenge the housing
crisis in the United States by coordinating
support for homeowners and tenants facing
eviction, residents of public housing; develop-ing
creative strategies to address foreclosures
and housing shortages; and creating a dis-course
where housing and land are de-commoditized.
The Action Group is inspired
by the direct action initiatives of Network
members Coalition to Defend Public Housing
in Chicago, Take Back the Land in Miami,
Survivors Village in New Orleans, and Picture
the Homeless in New York City.
Political Prisoner and State Repression
Working Group uses human rights standards
to obtain amnesty and freedom of United
States-imprisoned human rights defenders.
Sexual Rights and Gender Justice Work-ing
Group aims to meaningfully and consist-ently
integrate sexual rights and gender justice
into the broader agenda of the domestic hu-man
rights movement in the United States;
increase the membership and participation of
groups working on gender justice and sexual
rights within the US Human Rights Net-work;
develop the capacity of LGBT, repro-ductive
justice, sexual freedom, sex worker,
intersex, kink/BDSM and poly/non-monogamy
activists to effectively use human
rights language, standards and strategies in
their domestic advocacy and organizing; and
to build solidarity with sexual rights activists
throughout the Inter-American region and the
world.
Southeast Asian Freedom Network (SEA-FN)
is a newly formed collective of grass-roots
Southeast Asian organizing groups from
around the United States that are aligned in
radical transformation of our communities
and intersectional analysis that calls us to true
solidarity with communities of color around
us. Through deep sharing of experience and
strategy, SEAFN has identified seven rising
themes in Southeast Asian movement build-ing
work that will guide us towards liberation,
transformation, and solidarity.
We invite you to learn more about us at
http://www.ushrnetwork.org/ and to join the
movement.
WHY A STATUS REPORT
This report aspires to present a 2014 snap-shot
of the status of human rights in the
United States using plain language for the
purpose of broad accessibility. The report is
derived from research conducted by partners,
allies, and journalists as well as original
sources that include hyperlinks. It is by no
means a comprehensive report. The focus is
on domestic issues with an emphasis on eco-nomic,
social, and cultural rights. Foreign pol-icy
and international anti-terrorism measures,
which are equally important human rights
concerns, are not addressed. We invite you to
respond to us with your thoughts at
info@ushrnetwork.org.
Notes:
In this report, the following terms are used inter-changeably:
Native American, Indigenous Peoples and
American Indian to refer to persons who are “of some
degree Indian blood and [are] recognized as an Indian
by a [nation] village and/or the United States.” Hispanic
and Latina/o to refer to persons or communities of Lat-in
American origin or from Spanish speaking countries.
LGBTQI, GLBT & LGBT to refer to those individuals who
identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer,
Non-Gendered and Intersex. People of color and racial
minorities to refer to people who are not white. Black
and African American refers to people of African de-scent
with varying ethnicities and immigration statuses
including “descendants of Africans enslaved in the Unit-ed
States as well as more recent immigrants from places
such as Africa, the Caribbean, or the West Indies.”

10. 7
Environmental & Climate Justice
A healthy, safe, clean, and sustainable envi-ronment
is necessary for, and dependent on,
the fulfillment of a host of other human
rights, including the rights to life, adequate
health, adequate housing, food, sanitation, and
water. Any successful approach to securing a
healthy environment for all must be holistic,
and prioritize the needs of groups that are
most economically and politically marginal-ized.
The effects of climate change include,
among other things, a rise in the temperature
of the planet and oceans (known as global
warming), rising sea levels, increased risk of
drought, fire and floods, more heat-related
illnesses and diseases, economic losses and
stronger storms such as Hurricane Katrina
and Superstorm Sandy. Two days before Pres-ident
Obama and world leaders attended
a climate summit at the United Nations, an
estimated “570,000 people took part in 2,700
simultaneous climate events in 161 countries
around the world.” This People’s Climate
March was the largest climate march in history
and its purpose was to “demand action to end
the climate crisis.” Frontline communities—
people of color and poor communities who
are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate
change—led the march while and it was en-dorsed
by over 1,500 organizations.
____________________
United Nations Human Rights
Commission; in Resolution 2005/57
A democratic and equitable international order
requires, inter alia, the realization of the right of
every person and all peoples to a healthy environ-ment.
____________________

11. 8
Climate Justice views climate change as an
ethical issue and considers how its “causes
and effects relate to concepts of justice, par-ticularly
environmental justice” (which in-volves
the fair distribution of environmental
benefits and burdens) and social justice, “in
terms of the distribution of wealth, opportuni-ties,
and privileges within a society.” Climate
Justice is a struggle over “land, forest, water,
culture, food sovereignty, collective and social
rights” and it examines issues of “equality,
human rights, collective rights and historical
responsibility in relation to climate change.”
Led primarily by African-Americans, Latinos,
Asians, Pacific Islanders and Indigenous Peo-ples,
the environmental justice movement
“addresses a statistical fact: people who live,
work and play in America's most polluted en-vironments
are commonly people of color
and the poor.” Communities of color, which
are often poor, “are routinely targeted to host
facilities that have negative environmental im-pacts
-- say, a landfill, dirty industrial plant or
truck depot.” The statistics provide clear evi-dence
of what the movement rightly calls en-vironmental
racism—the placement of low-income
or minority communities “in proximi-ty
of environmentally hazardous or degraded
environments, such as toxic waste, pollution
and urban decay.”
People of color comprise more than half of
Unite States residents exposed to toxic
pollution, despite comprising 30% of United
States population. African Americans are 79%
more likely than whites to live in neighbor-hoods
where industrial pollution is suspected
of posing greatest danger to health. Indige-nous
Peoples, African Americans, Latinos,
Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders make
up 69% of residents in neighborhoods where
there are two or more polluting facilities lo-cated
in a cluster. Three-fifths of Blacks and
Latinos, and half of Indigenous Peoples,
Asians, and Pacific Islanders live in communi-ties
with uncontrolled waste sites.
The United States government has failed to
address human rights concerns of commu-nities
living near chemical factories and oil
refineries, specifically in Richmond, California
and West, Texas. The health impacts caused
by the emission of toxic chemicals dispropor-tionately
impacts low income communities
and communities of color.” And in Westlake,
Louisiana, an explosion at the Axiall Corpora-tion
chemical plant injured 18 people and sent
a cloud of smoke and chemicals toward,
Mossville, a historic African-American com-munity
located in Southwest Louisiana. Many
of its residents have, since the accident, suf-fered
from a number of severe health prob-lems
due to toxic industrial pollution caused
by nearby petrochemical factories.
Descendants of slaves have made
Africatown, in Alabama their home for gen-erations,
but the nearby Scott Paper Compa-ny's
pollution has led to high cancer
rates. Residents say that they could “smell
the odor from International Paper Compa-ny.
It would be so bad you’d have to cover
your mouth… it would smell like what you
call ammonia now, it would be in the air so
strong.” Recently, Canadian National rail cars
began carrying tar sands oil into Mobile, Ala-bama
and soon 120 car loads - totaling more
than “2 million gallons every day - are ex-pected
to transport the toxic sludge along
those same tracks.” Residents and others fear
that the tar sands would be shipped from
storage tanks through a more than thirty-year
old pipeline that runs under Africatown.
Communities of color in Chicago also remain
especially vulnerable to environmental injus-tices
caused by polluting industries. In south
Chicago refining tar sands has meant that a
byproduct known as Petcoke is polluting the
air and waterways.
Communities of color in Bernalillo County
New Mexico are facing significant public
health and environmental challenges due to
urban air pollution and unequal implementa-tion
of air pollution laws by local regulatory
agencies supervised by the Environmental

12. 9
Protection Agency (EPA). Also, in New
Mexico, the radioactive and toxic pollution
caused by the waste from uranium mining and
processing continues to have adverse envi-ronmental
and health effects, which pose ra-dioactive
threats to predominantly Indigenous
communities, in particular, the Navajo Na-tion.
This waste is “chemically toxic, which
further increases the health burdens on these
communities.” Uranium mining and pro-cessing
waste has also “contaminated untold
amounts of water, perhaps the most im-portant
resource in the desert southwestern
[while] new proposed uranium mines promise
to contaminate even more water sources.”
Vietnamese Americans, many of whom are
fishermen and women living mostly along the
coast of Louisiana, are disproportionately af-fected
by land and water contamination. After
Hurricane Katrina there was “one landfill for
all the toxic waste, which was situated one
kilometre from the community, which seeped
into the community and was colloquially re-ferred
to as ‘cancer alley.” More than four
years after the BP Deepwater Horizon oil
drilling platform exploded killing 11 workers
and sending roughly five million barrels of oil
gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, oil droplets
from the massive disaster have spread over
“1,235 square miles of the seafloor.”
Yellowfin and Bluefin Tuna and Amberjack
fish (large predatory fish) that were embryos,
larvae, or juveniles when the spill occurred
may be developing heart defects that reduce
their capacity to catch food, which is likely to
cause these fish to die-off. The United States
Coast Guard reports that oil is still washing
ashore from Florida to Louisiana. This disas-ter
affected many of the same Vietnamese
fishermen as Hurricane Katrina—this time by
“making huge swaths of the Gulf off limits to
fishing and potentially destroying their liveli-hoods.”
According to preliminary results from
a study conducted by the National Institute
for Environmental Health Sciences, “workers
are carrying biomarkers in their bodies of
chemicals contained in the oil spilled from the
BP Macondo well.”
Climate change impacts women, according
to a recent United Nations study, Gender and
Climate Change, more severely than men. It
predicts that the physical, economic, social,
and cultural impacts of global warming will
“jeopardize women far more then men. Just
as Hurricane Katrina […] disproportionately
affected women far more then men.” Women
are more severely affected by climate change
and natural disasters “because of their social
roles and because of discrimination and pov-erty.”
To make matters worse, they are also
“underrepresented in decision-making about
climate change, greenhouse gas emissions,
and, most critically, discussions and decisions
about adaptation and mitigation.” In addition
to other health issues related to environmental
toxins, pollution can interfere with a woman’s
ability to have children. The preliminary re-sults
of a study of 500 women and children
conducted by the National Institute for Envi-ronmental
Health Sciences revealed that in the
initial period of exposure to the BP Oil Spill,
the participants reported experiencing many
symptoms such as: “wheezing; tightness in
chest; watery, burning or itchy eyes; burning
in nose, throat or lungs; skin rash; severe
headaches or migranes; nausea; excessive fa-tigue
or tiredness; diarrhea; sore throat; and
being unable to concentrate.” These women
could have been exposed to fumes from the
spill “in the air, from washing clothes, from
participating in hunting and fishing trips” in
areas contaminated with oil, or by visiting
nearby beaches.
The human rights to safe drinking water
and sanitation and to adequate housing both
derive from the right to an adequate standard
of living, which is protected under, among
other things, the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights that is fully applicable to the
United States. Increasingly water, which as a
basic human right should be a public good,
has been privatized. The result is that more
people are finding their enjoyment of the right
linked to their financial state. Thus, the City
of Detroit is facing a major water crisis as a
result of decades of policies that have put

13. 10
“corporate business and profit ahead of the
public good and human rights.” In an effort
to recover lost water revenues, the City of De-troit
cut off water to thousands of residents.
Indeed, “22,000 homes lost water between
March and August, although 15,251 had ser-vice
restored.” As of the end of October
2014, there were still “2,300 homes without
water.” These residents have seen water rates
rise by 119% within the last decade. The
“burden of paying for city services has fallen
onto the residents who have stayed within the
economically depressed city” in which 80 per-cent
of the population is African American.
According to data from 2013, 40.7 percent of
Detroit’s population lives below the poverty
level and 99 percent of the poor are African
American. Twenty percent of the population
is living on $800 or less per month, while the
average monthly water bill is currently $70.67.
This is simply unaffordable for thousands of
residents. These types of policies affect more
cities than Detroit, for example, in Boston,
Massachusetts, low-income communities and
communities of color are more likely to re-ceive
water shut-off notices. This is evidence
of extreme and ongoing patterns of racial and
economic inequality. Of particular concern are
the facts that “residents in communities of
color and low-income neighborhoods are
more likely to be in arrears with respect to
their monthly water bills and the city has “no
publicly-stated mechanism to reduce water
bills for those who cannot afford their water
bills.”
On October 18-20, 2014, the United Na-tions
Special Rapporteur on the Human
Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanita-tion
visited Detroit at the invitation of civil
society organizations. According the Special
Rapporteur, “the scale of water shut-offs car-ried
out by a contracted company since last
year is an unprecedented level. The utility has
passed on the increased costs of leakages due
to an aging infrastructure onto all remaining
residents by increasing water rates by 8.7 per-cent.”
In addition, repeated cases of gross er-rors
on water bills have been reported, which
are also used as a ground for disconnections.
In practice, people have no means to prove
errors and hence these bills are impossible to
challenge.
Without water, people cannot live a life
with dignity—they have no water for drink-ing,
cooking, bathing, flushing toilets, and
keeping their clothes and houses clean. Ac-cording
to one Detroit resident, "we're filling
up our buckets to flush the toilet, to bathe
with […]. We can't clean, we can't wash our-selves,
it's really disgusting, and we need help.
Half the people on my block have had their
water turned off; we can't pay our bills.” De-spite
the fact that water is essential for surviv-al,
the city has no data on how many people
have been and are living without tap water, let
alone information on age, disabilities, chronic
illness, race or income level of the affected
population.
Essential to the right to water is that it be
safe, clean, and free of toxins. Actions that
threaten the water supply of communities,
such as “fracking”, can contaminate ground-water
and drinking water from wells. Many
chemicals used in fracking fluid have increas-ingly
been found to be harmful both to the
environment and to human health, yet “poor
regulations and legislation governing fracking
often allow accidents which contaminate sur-rounding
water sources.” To give just one ex-ample
for this greater problem: criminal
charges have been filed against Exxon Mobile
subsidiary XTO energy for illegally disposing
of tens of thousands of gallons of waste from
fracking in 2010.
The contamination of natural water sources is
also occurring because of mountaintop re-moval
–“a mining practice where the tops of
mountains are removed, exposing the seams
of coal [and] where the earth from the moun-taintop
is dumped in the neighboring val-leys”—
which threatens to make ground water
in West Virginia undrinkable. In January of
2014, a chemical spill in Elk River, West Vir-ginia
resulted in 300,000 people being unable

14. 11
to use their water for five days. In Illinois,
low-income communities and communities of
color continue to endure health disparities as
a result of environmental racism. In southern
Illinois, the rapid expansion of the hydraulic
fracking industry threatens rural areas, includ-ing
Indigenous communities. Coal power
plants continue to pollute waterways and pro-duce
high rates of respiratory illnesses in
nearby communities of color.
The Keystone XL pipeline, would, if com-pleted,
transport tar-sands oil (which is dirtier
than other forms of oil production and releas-es
more carbon dioxide) “1,700 miles across
six states and hundreds of waterways, posing
an unacceptable risk of spill, threatening sa-cred
burial grounds, and potentially contami-nating
the only source of water in the plains.”
The pipeline would carry millions of gallons
of crude oil from Alberta in Canada to Amer-ican
refineries on the Gulf Coast. The pipeline
would go through the Ogallala Aquifer, the
source of drinking water for much of the
Great Plains region, including the land of
Sovereign Indigenous Peoples in South Dako-ta.
A study published by the Stockholm Envi-ronment
Institute in August of 2014 finds that
the pipeline could produce four times more
global-warming-fuelling pollution than esti-mated
by the State Department. TransCanada,
the company building the pipeline, has already
begun shipping crude oil through its southern
leg which is completed, but “the company is
still waiting for the State Department to de-cide
whether to issue a permit for the 1,179-
mile northern leg that would carry predomi-nantly
heavy oil from Canada’s oil sands ,
cross the border in Montana and run to the
small town of Steele City, Neb[raska]. There it
would connect with existing pipelines.” Ne-braska
had given TransCanada "the ability to
use eminent domain in order to take land for
construction, and some landowners object-ed.”
A lower court in Nebraska has stopped
the pipeline from being built, but the Supreme
Court of Nebraska will hear the case on
whether the governor had authority to author-ize
the pipeline in the first place. Despite
mounting pressure from environmental activ-ists,
President Obama has announced that he
will delay his decision until after the Nebraska
Supreme Court case, meaning he will not
make a decision until after the November
elections. In November, the House of Repre-sentatives
passed a Keystone XL Pipeline bill,
but a similar bill was narrowly defeated in the
Senate, but could likely pass in the next con-gressional
session. As of December, President
Obama has yet to make a decision on the
pipeline. While politicians, environmentalists
and others have been focused on the Key-stone
XL Pipeline, Enbridge Inc. and its Unit-ed
States subsidiary “have circumvented the
pipeline permitting process. By the middle of
next year, the Calgary-based company will be
transporting 800,000 bpd of tar-sands oil
from western Canada into the U.S.” Enbridge
has pipelines already built in Canada and the
United States and through a series of legal
maneuvers, will connect them to start trans-mitting
tar sands oil. Enbridge also had a role
in the “largest inland oil spill in U.S. history,
the result of a ruptured pipe in 2010.”
Climate Justice is a struggle over, land, air, and
water, but also the right of food sovereign-ty—
particularly because the health of the
former, greatly impacts the latter. Racialized
policies in the United States have led to food
insecurity including “inadequate distribution
of healthy and nutritious food and food de-serts
in the United States which
“disproportionately impact the health and well
being of many communities of color.” De-spite
efforts across the country to eliminate
food deserts, according to the United States
Department of Agriculture, 23.5 million peo-ple
in America live in food deserts (where in-dividuals’
choices about what to eat are se-verely
limited by the options available to them
and what they can afford) and/or food
swamps (where residents are inundated with
fast food chains selling inexpensive foods that
have low nutritional values and are high in fat,
sugar, and salt).

15. 12
Evidence suggests that many low-income
communities, communities of color, and
sparsely populated rural areas do not have
sufficient opportunities to buy healthy,
affordable food. Decreased access to healthy
food “means people in low-income communi-ties
suffer more from diet-related diseases like
obesity and diabetes than those in higher-income
neighborhoods” with easy access to
healthy food, particularly fresh fruits and veg-etables.
A multi-state study conducted in 2010
by PolicyLink found that eight percent of Af-rican
Americans live in a census tract with a
supermarket, compared to 31 percent of
Whites. And a nationwide analysis found
there are 418 rural “food desert” counties
where all residents live more than 10 miles
from a supermarket or supercenter—this is 20
percent of rural counties.” Predominately La-tino
zip codes had only one-third the number
of supermarkets of predominately White
neighborhoods.
By the end of 2013, 49.1 million people lived
in food-insecure households which means
“at times during the year, these households
were uncertain of having, or unable to ac-quire,
enough food to meet the needs of all
their members because they had insufficient
money or other resources for food.” Also,
8.6 million children lived in food-insecure
households in which children, along with
adults, were food insecure. Some groups’ rates
are much higher than the national average of
14.3 percent. Households with children head-ed
by a single woman are at more than twice
the national average at 34.4 percent of food
insecurity. Black households are insecure at a
rate of 26.1 percent, while Hispanic house-holds
follow closely at 23. 7 percent. Accord-ing
to a new report, 2.4 million (29%) LGBT
adults experienced a time in the last year when
they did not have enough money to feed
themselves or their family. LGBT people are
particularly vulnerable to food insecurity as
“one in four bisexuals (25 percent) receive
food stamps [and] 34 percent of LGBT wom-en
were food insecure in the last year.” Thirty-seven
percent of LGBT African Americans,
55% of LGBT Native Americans, and 78% of
LGBT Native Hawaiians experienced food
insecurity in the last year.
Along with a lack of access to healthy food,
food-insecurity is caused by a lack of money
and other resources at times during the year.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program (SNAP, formerly known as food
stamps) operates as a cushion for families
who struggle to provide adequate food.
Though Democrats and Republicans have
struggled to agree on virtually every issue,
both parties agreed, during a time of severe
economic hardship, to cut $8.7 billion in food
stamps over the next decade. In February of
2014, Congress passed and President Obama
signed, the bipartisan FARM bill causing
850,000 already struggling households across
the country to lose an average of $90 per
month in food stamp benefits including more
than 9 million elderly and disabled people.
Meanwhile, the same bill (FARM)—a biparti-san
bill which cut from the SNAP pro-gram
$8.7 billion over 10 years and removes
subsidies for small farmers, gives large
handouts (in the form of subsidized crop in-surance)
to wealthy corporate farmers at a
time of record crop prices and federal deficits.
In fact, the current farm bill expands the pro-gram
to cost the government $90 billion over
ten years, an increase of $7 billion.
More than one 1 in 5 LGB adults aged 18-44
(21%), approximately 1.1 million, participated
in the SNAP program through receipt of food
stamps in the past year. More than 1 in 8
same-sex couples (13%), approximately
84,000 couples and 4 in 10 LGB adults age
18-44 raising children (43%), approximately
650,000, participated in SNAP. For Indige-nous
Peoples, nutrition programs on reserva-tions
are already underfunded. The programs
in many instances “are the primary source of
food for [Indigenous] families and their chil-dren.”
According to recent federal data,
SNAP in 2008 served an average of “540,000
low-income people who identified as Ameri-can
Indian/Alaska Native alone and 260,000

16. 13
who identified as American Indian/Alaska
Native and White per month.”
Many people turn to food pantries to help,
but they have suffered severe government
cuts which sent millions of Americans off of
the “Hunger Cliff” when automatic cuts in
food stamps took effect, sending “a deluge of
new hungry people to [food pantries], which
are already strained.” Nearly half of New
York City’s food pantries ran out of supplies
after the SNAP cuts took effect. It is also
harder for older and disabled people to fill
in the “gaps left by the food stamp program,
since going in-person to various soup kitchens
and food pantries is not an option for many
of them.”
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)
are a major threat to health, the environment,
and small farmers. Amongst other things, ge-netic
engineering disrupts the sequence of a
food’s genetic code, which can give rise to
potentially toxic or allergenic molecules or
alter the nutritional value of the food that is
produced. It also causes genetic contamina-tion
of natural species. Patented GMO seeds
marginalize small farmers by concentrating
power in a few biotech corporations. For this
and other reasons, 26 countries have banned
GMOs. Many advocates argue that consumers
have a right to know whether the food that
they are consuming contains GMOs and
should be labeled as such. In the absence of
federal legislation on this issue, more than 60
bills have been introduced in over 20 states to
require GMO labeling or prohibiting genet-ically
engineered foods altogether. Maine,
Connecticut, and Vermont have passed a
GMO labeling laws and Vermont is being
sued by the food industry because of this.
Eight other states, including Massachusetts,
New Jersey and Colorado are considering sim-ilar
laws.
SPECIFIC HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITMENTS
MADE BY THE UNITED STATES
In 2013 and 2014, President Obama an-nounced
and implemented a number of exec-utive
actions to decrease carbon pollution;
increase U.S. preparation for climate change
impacts; and coordinate international efforts
in addressing climate change. President
Obama also urged action against climate
change at the United Nations Summit on
Climate Change in New York in 2014.
The President issued an executive order to:
require Federal agencies to factor climate
resilience into the design of their interna-tional
development programs and invest-ments;
develop new outlooks for risks caused
by extreme-weather; provide meteorologists in
developing nations tools and knowledge; and
develop a public-private partnership on cli-mate
data and information for resilient devel-opment.
Obama has also used the Clean Air
Act to curb emissions from Power Plants by
30% from 2005 levels by 2030.
In its 2013 report to the Committee on the
Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the
United States government said it would “Re-energize”
the Federal Interagency Working
Group on Environmental Justice. Regard-ing
pollution/toxic waste and its impact on
people of color, the Environmental Protec-tion
Agency’s plan, the Plan Environmental
Justice 2014, will develop stronger relation-ships
with communities and increase the
agency’s efforts to improve the environmental
and health conditions of overburdened com-munities.
Regarding food insecurity, the United States
touted the Supplemental Food Nutrition Pro-gram
for Women, Infants and Children which
“contributes significantly to low-income
women and children’s well being by providing
low-income, high-risk pregnant and post-partum
women, infants and children under
five years old with nutritious foods, nutrition

17. 14
education, and health care referrals and
screenings.” This has contributed to reducing
incidences of pre-term births, low-birth
weight, infant mortality, and the costs of
health care.
Recommendations
The United States government should mobi-lize
international will to adopt a binding in-ternational
agreement on climate change
at the Paris Climate Conference in December
2015; reduce national greenhouse gas emis-sions;
and advocate for new carbon regula-tions
and enforcement of existing regulations.
The Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination, in its 2014 Concluding Ob-servations,
expressed concern that racial and
ethnic minorities in the United States, as
well as Indigenous Peoples, “continue to be
disproportionately affected by the negative
health impact of pollution.” The Committee
called upon the United States government to
ensure that federal legislation prohibiting en-vironmental
pollution is effectively enforced
at state and local levels. It also called on the
government to “clean up any remaining radio-active
and toxic waste as a matter of urgency.”
The Committee also suggested that the gov-ernment
investigate cases of environmentally
polluting activities, “bringing those responsi-ble
to account and making sure that those af-fected
have access to appropriate remedies.”
Regarding the water-shut offs in Detroit, the
Special Rapporteur urges that the City of De-troit
“restore water connections to residents
unable to pay and vulnerable groups of peo-ple,
stop further disconnections of water
when residents are unable to pay, and provide
them the opportunity to seek assistance that
must be made available through social assis-tance
schemes.”
The Human Rights Committee, in its Interna-tional
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
Concluding Observations expressed concern
regarding the “insufficient measures taken to
protect the sacred areas of Indigenous
Peoples “against desecration, contamination
and destruction as a result of urbanization,
extractive industries, industrial development,
tourism and toxic contamination.”
Regarding food insecurity, the United States
government should incorporate the right to
food as a basic human right and target gov-ernment
programs towards low-income
communities and communities of color. The
government should also provide a larger
budget for SNAP programs in the Farm Bill,
provide affordable and healthy food for pub-lic
school K-12 students and fund govern-ment
surveys to collect information on dispar-ities
in food security on the basis of income,
ethnicity, race, gender, and immigration status.
Human Rights Groups Advancing Envi-ronmental
& Climate Justice
Advocates for Environmental Human Rights
• Coastal Women for Change • International
Indian Treaty Council • New Mexico Envi-ronmental
Law Center • Environment and
Human Rights Advisory • Survivors Village •
Moving Forward Gulf Coast, Inc. • Mvskoke
Food Sovereignty Initiative • North Carolina
Environmental Justice Network • Tonatierra •
WE ACT for Environmental Justice • Texas
Environmental Justice Advocacy Services •
Alaska Community Action on Toxics • United
Houma Nation • Mossville Environmental
Action Now (MEAN) • The Mississippi Coa-lition
of Vietnamese American Fisherfolk and
Families • Public Interest Law and Advocacy
Resource (PILAR) of Coastal Louisiana •
Africatown Community Development Corp •
EarthJustice • Praxis Project

18. 15
Immigration Policy
The fact that the United States does not have
a comprehensive immigration policy cre-ates
conditions in which immigrants are vul-nerable
to a variety of human rights abuses
and indignities. As a result, the human rights
of undocumented immigrants (i.e individu-als
who are out-of-status—do not have cur-rent
green cards, work visas or other similar
documentation) are not protected. This lack
of protections put individuals and families at
risk of separation, indefinite confinement, de-portation
back to dangerous places, and even
death. In a report released by the Pew Re-search
Center in September 2014, there were
11.3 million undocumented immigrants living
in the United States as of March 2013, “about
the same as the 11.2 million in 2012 and un-changed
since 2009.” The slowdown in new
arrivals means “those who remain are more
____________________
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Articles
1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 23, & 25
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and
rights. No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery
and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person
before the law. All are equal before the law and are entitled
without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.
Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the compe-tent
national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental
rights granted him by the constitution or by law. No one
shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employ-ment,
to just and favorable conditions of work and to pro-tection
against unemployment. Everyone has the right to a
standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of
himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing
and medical care and necessary social services, and the right
to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disabil-ity,
widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in cir-cumstances
beyond his control.
____________________

19. 16
likely to be long-term residents, and to live
with their U.S.-born children.”
Though the Obama Administration has re-cently
decided to rethink its deportation poli-cy,
the President has acquired the nickname
“Deporter In Chief”, because of his depor-tation
record which has likely hit and sur-passed
the 2 million mark. In September of
2014, the Department of Homeland Security
released its deportation statistics from 2013,
which revealed that the Obama administration
set a record for deportations, removing
438,421 individuals from the United States—
up nearly 5 percent from the 418,397 remov-als
in 2012. Moreover, the administration “has
changed enforcement tactics to achieve these
record-breaking removals.” The deportation
machine is increasingly made up of out-of-court
deportations and in 2013, summary
removals reached “an all-time high of 83 per-cent
of all removals—363,000 individuals
removed without a court hearing.” Forty-four
percent of removals (193,032) were “ex-pedited
removals,” of those apprehended at
or within 100 miles of a border without prop-er
papers.
Operation Streamline requires the federal
criminal prosecution and imprisonment of all
people who cross the United States.-Mexico
border without the permission from the gov-ernment.
This removes prosecutorial discre-tion
to decide whether the immigrant should
be deported through the formal removal pro-cess
in the civil immigration system. The in-crease
in petty immigration cases is the re-sult
of zero-tolerance immigration enforce-ment
programs and not an increase in mi-grants
attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico
border. Most Operation Streamline defend-ants
are migrants from Mexico or Central
America who do not have prior criminal
convictions and who have crossed the border
to find work or to reunite with family. This
has caused a surge in case loads in 8 of the 11
districts along the border resulting in en masse
hearings where as many as 80 defendants
plead guilty at one time, which deprives these
individuals of their right to due process. A full
99% of Operation Streamline defendants
plead guilty resulting in 80 new prosecutions
per day in Del Rio, TX, 70 prosecutions daily
in Tucson, AZ, there are 70 prosecutions dai-ly
and 20 prosecutions a day in El Paso, TX.
Many of these defendants complete the entire
criminal proceeding in one day, including
meeting with counsel, making an initial ap-pearance,
pleading guilty, and being sen-tenced.
Criminal Justice Act Panel attorneys
serve as counsel for a majority of the defend-ants
and are appointed to represent up to 80
clients in one hearing which virtually prohibits
individualized representation. As a direct re-sult
of Operation Streamline, Judge Robert
Brack from New Mexico was named by ABC
News in 2008 “America’s busiest judge” be-cause
he sentenced 1,400 criminal defendants
and the national average is around 75.
These rapid deportations have a devastating
impact on families and communities be-cause
many of these families have mixed-statuses
– a mixture of United States citizens
as well as members with and without docu-mentation.
Immigration and Customs En-forcement
(ICE) last year “carried out more
than 72,000 deportations of parents who
said they had U.S.-born children.” As of 2011,
there were at least “5,100 children in foster
care due to a parent being deported or de-tained.”
It estimates that another “15,000
children will enter the foster care system”
within the subsequent five years. The likeli-hood
of these children being reunified with
family is slim.
President Obama said the government is go-ing
after “criminals, gang bangers, people
who are hurting the community, not after stu-dents,
not after folks who are here just be-cause
they’re trying to figure out how to feed
their families.” But records show that
since President Obama took office, two-thirds
of the roughly two million deporta-tion
cases “involve people who had commit-

20. 17
ted minor infractions, including traffic vio-lations,
or had no criminal record at all.” On-ly
20%—or about 394,000—of the cases in-volved
people convicted of serious crimes,
including drug-related offenses. Further, even
if individuals have been convicted of drug of-fenses
or violent crimes, the immigration sys-tem
fails to take into account a criminal justice
system that unfairly and illegally targets people
of color.
Race and ethnicity have often been a bed-rock
component of American immigration
“including the slave trade, the Chinese rail-road
workers, and Hispanics in agriculture.”
In 1790, Congress passed a law allowing the
naturalization of free White persons, “a
racial requirement for American citizenship
which remained on the books until 1952.”
The Immigration Act of 1917 designated
Asia as a barred zone, “allowing only Japa-nese
and Philippine immigrants. A barred
zoned limits the number people allowed to
come into the U.S. from a certain area.” Race
was further embedded in immigration law in
1882 when Chinese were prevented from
entry into the United States for decades by
the Chinese Exclusion Act. It was not until
the Immigration Act of 1965, which was en-couraged
and only made possible by the
Civil Rights Movement, was “race-based
immigration admission...replaced by criteria
that involved skills, profession or by family
relation to U.S. citizens.”
Nearly 41 million immigrants lived in the
United States in 2012—“a historical numeric
high for a country that has been a major des-tination
for international migrants throughout
its history.” Of the foreign born population in
the United States in 2012, 48 percent reported
their race as white, 9 percent as black, 25 per-cent
as Asian, and 16 percent as some other
race; more than 2 percent reported having
two or more races. In 2012, 46 percent (18.9
million) of immigrants reported having His-panic
or Latino origins. The top five U.S.
states by number of immigrants were Cali-fornia
(10.3 million), New York (4.4 million),
Texas (4.3 million), Florida (3.7 million), and
New Jersey (1.9 million).
Racial profiling and discrimination
against Latinos, Asians and Muslims has
been sanctioned by various states in the Unit-ed
States. Arizona’s S.B. 1070 (most of which
was struck down by the United States Su-preme
Court) compels police to ask for pa-pers
from anyone they have a reasonable sus-picion
of being without status. Under this law
any person of color, or anyone with a for-eign
accent, can be “required to prove their
status and be jailed—regardless of whether
they are a citizen or an immigrant—until they
can do so.” According to the Pew Hispanic
Center’s 2008 National Survey of Latinos,
nearly one-in-ten (9%) Hispanics said they
had been stopped by the police or other au-thorities
and asked about their immigration
status.
Black immigrants who are out of status “are
being detained and overrepresented in immi-gration
detention despite their small numbers
in the larger population.” This mirrors the
similar type of overrepresentation of Afri-can
Americans in the criminal justice sys-tem.
The impact of racial profiling across the
board impacts all Black communities regard-less
of where they were born. And this is
“very pronounced in a city like New York
City where Jamaicans, Haitians and Domini-cans
have the highest deportation numbers.
This ultimately means thousands of families
being torn apart and fragmented communi-ties.”
While Blacks make up only about 10
percent of the immigrant population, they are
“five times more likely to be detained or
deported.”
Despite the humanitarian crisis in Haiti, the
United States is deporting Haitians back to
dangerous conditions in Haiti. Haiti is cur-rently
undergoing a Cholera crisis, which has
killed over 8,000 people and sickened 670,000
(more than 6% of the Haitian population). On

21. 18
January 20, 2011, the same day that the Unites
States issued travel warnings advising United
States citizens to avoid travelling to Haiti due
to Cholera the United States deported 26 Hai-tian
nationals. On April 1, 2011, U.S. Immi-gration
and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is-sued
a new policy regarding the deportation
of Haitians that stated the United States
would “resume limited removal of convicted
criminal Haitians with final orders of remov-al.”
To date, the ICE continues to deport in-dividuals
with non-violent minor crimes
even though the policy requires ICE to weigh
a number of factors including the severity and
number of convictions against, significant
medical issues, and length of residence in the
United States.
United Nations Independent Expert on
the Situation of Human Rights in Haiti
has raised serious concerns about the de-portation
to Haiti for individuals with severe,
life threatening medical conditions due to the
lack or limited supply of medicine in Haiti.
The Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights (IACHR) recognized that deporta-tions
to Haiti constitute a human rights
violation and has urged the U.S. to discontin-ue
deportations and in June 2011, the UN
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR)
and the UN Office of the High Commissioner
for Human Rights (OHCHR) issued a joint
statement calling for all states to restrain
from deportation in light of the humani-tarian
crisis.
The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA)
requires all applicants applying for a green
card to submit to a medical examination,
which can have a disproportionately negative
impact on immigrants with disabilities. An
individual may be deemed inadmissible if they
have been determined to have a physical or
mental disorder and a history of behavior
associated with the disorder “that may pose
or has posed a threat to the property, safety or
welfare of themselves or others.”
Currently, 80 countries criminalize people
who are LGBT often making their immigra-tion
to the United States a matter of life or
death. Heartland Alliance’s National Immi-grant
Justice Center filed 17 complaints in
2011 with the Department of Homeland
(DHS) in response to reports of abuse
against LGBT immigrants in DHS custo-dy.
Complaints have documented epithets,
shaming and other degrading treatment lev-eled
at LGBT detainees. Detainees are fre-quently
housed with other detainees of a
gender with which they do not identify,
(e.g. transgender woman detainee housed with
male detainees) and according to a lawsuit
filed by the ACLU in October 2011, nearly
200 incidents of sexual assault had oc-curred
in its detention facilities since 2007.
Solitary confinement is often used to “pro-tect”
the LGBT detainees and transgender
detainees are denied hormone treatment and
many U.S. Circuit Courts have found this
“denial to be a violation of the 8th
Amendment’s requirement that the incarcer-ated
receive ‘adequate medical care.” In addi-tion
to this, LGBT and HIV-positive de-tainees
are at risk and lacking access to proper
medical treatment.
The broken immigration system has resulted
in gross violations of the right to freedom
from torture, security of person, and the
right to life. The Department of Homeland
Security Immigration and Customs Enforce-ment
(ICE) detained more than 420,000 peo-ple
last year, more than double the amount of
people who were in its custody four years ago.
Mandatory detention is prescribed in two
sections of the Immigration and Naturaliza-tion
Act and requires that ICE detain certain
categories of people without a bond hearing
or any individualized assessment. Fully, 70%
of people in immigration detention are there
because they are subject to mandatory deten-tion.
DHS asserts that Congress has directed
ICE to fill—each day—every detention bed
for which Congress has appropriated funds.

22. 19
Congressional appropriations language on
ICE detention budget states that "funding
made available under this heading shall main-tain
a level of not less than 34,000 detention
beds." The immigration detention bed quota
requires ICE to lock-up an average of “34,000
immigrants in detention at any given time -
close to half a million immigrants annually” -
in a network of over 250 county and state
jails, private prisons and federal facilities.
About 50% of ICE detention beds are cur-rently
private while 100% of Criminal Alien
Requirement (CAR) beds (segregated prisons
for immigrants serving time for drug offenses
or illegal entry/reentry convictions in the fed-eral
Bureau of Prisons system) are private.
This creates an incentive for private prison
corporations to lobby for the laws and poli-cies
that lead to increases in the number of
immigrants being incarcerated. Corrections
Corporation of America (CCA) is the largest
ICE detention contractor, operating a total of
fifteen ICE contracted facilities with a total of
5,800 beds. GEO Group, Inc. (GEO) is the
second largest ICE contractor and it operates
seven facilities with a total of 7,183 beds. The
three corporations holding the largest per-centage
of ICE detention contracts, collec-tively
spent at least $45 million in the past
decade on campaign donations and lobbyists
at the state and federal levels. While GEO and
CCA have both denied trying to influence
immigration policies, lobbying disclosure
forms show that GEO has hired Navigators
Global to lobby on behalf of the company
with both the Senate and the House on “is-sues
related to comprehensive immigration
reform.”
The notion that we need to increase border
security is rooted in fear. Increased militari-zation
of the border has led to “hundreds
of deaths over the years as well as unprece-dented
levels of violence in border towns.”
Indigenous Peoples, and their lands, have
been negatively impacted by increased border
militarization. The Obama Administration has
deployed thousands of new Border Patrol
agents “to the southern border of Arizona, a
state known for its controversial crackdown
on immigrants.” Caught in the middle of the
border militarization are about 28,000 mem-bers
of the Tohono O’odham Nation.
Their federally recognized reservation is about
the size of the state of Connecticut, and for a
“76-mile stretch it spans both sides of the
U.S.-Mexico border.” Because of the number
of border patrol agents, checkpoints, drones,
and overall surveillance, the Tohono
O’odham people are caught “in the midst of
colonial policies that are now militarizing
[their] lands.”
From 2010 to October of 2014 at least 36
people were killed by Customs and Border
Protection (CBP). Other deaths at the bor-der
were caused by extreme conditions includ-ing
dehydration, heat exposure, and hypo-thermia
in the deserts which claims hundreds
of lives on Unites States soil each year. Since
1998, the Tucson sector has accounted for 38
percent of all migrant human remains found
in wilderness zones north of the border. In
2012, 177 remains were found through the
Rio Grande Valley sector and since 2013, the
Missing Migrant Project of the Colibri Center
for Human Rights has received over 1,700
reports of migrants who are missing. Several
humanitarian groups in southern Arizona rou-tinely
leave water for migrants in the desert.
Some ranchers have also installed drinking
fountain valves in their cattle water troughs
for migrants to use, and carry water jugs in
their trucks in case they encounter migrants in
distress on their lands. Similarly, Border Patrol
in the Tucson sector reported a 37 percent
increase in rescues of migrants in distress be-tween
2012 and 2013.
In addition to the number of children of im-migrants
in foster care, children face many
other challenges when coming into contact
with the United States immigration system.
Groups of child migrants traveling alone to
cross into the United States along the Mexican

23. 20
border has garnered national and international
attention as, according to President Obama,
"urgent humanitarian situation”. The number
of “undocumented children—mostly teens,
but some as young as five—apprehended
crossing the border without parents or guardi-ans
has more than doubled in the past two
years.” By the end of fiscal year 2013, “38,833
'unaccompanied minors' [where] apprehended
by the Border Patrol in fiscal year 2013.” That
is a 59 percent jump from the year before, and
a 142 percent increase from fiscal year 2011.
As of September 30, 2014, “68,434 minors
without their parents were detained along the
border.” The United Nations High Commis-sioner
for Refugees (UNHCR) found in a
March survey of children who arrived at the
United States border that 58 percent of chil-dren
from the three countries cited violence
as a key reason for leaving their homes. More
than three-quarters of the children are from
mostly poor and violent towns in three coun-tries:
El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
Children from Mexico, once the largest group,
now make up less than a quarter of the total.
A small number come from 43 other coun-tries.
Honduras has a world-leading homicide
rate of 90 for every 100,000 people, with El
Salvador and Guatemala in the top ten at 41.2
and 39.9 per 100,000 people. For some con-text,
at the peak of Mexico’s drug violence, its
homicide rate topped out at 22.8 per 100,000.
Since Jan. 1, 2013 more than 30,000 of these
children have been placed with sponsors, usu-ally
parents or relatives. They remain there
while their cases are being processed. The ma-jority
of the children are in Texas, New York,
California and Florida. A large number have
also been sent to Maryland, Virginia, Georgia
and Louisiana.
Many of these children, however, are being
detained in adult detention facilities. Ac-cording
to the National Immigrant Justice
Center, from 2008 to 2012, children under the
age of 18 spent a combined total of 36,598
days in 30 adult detention facilities around the
country. DHS detained at least 1,366 children
in adult facilities for periods ranging from
three days to more than one year, and nearly
1,000 children spent at least one week in adult
custody. This is in violation of the Flores v.
Reno settlement agreement - a class action law-suit
was filed against the Immigration and
Naturalization Service (INS) challenging the
way the agency processed, apprehended, de-tained,
and released children in its custody.
The agreement requires that juveniles be held
in the least restrictive setting appropriate to
their age and special needs to ensure their
protection and wellbeing. Overall,
“approximately 21,000 individuals appre-hended
as children were removed in the
past five fiscal years.” Between five and ten
migrant children have been killed since
February 2014 after the United States de-ported
them back to Honduras. Lawmakers
have yet to come up with best practices to
deal with the waves of unaccompanied chil-dren,
but some politicians refute claims that
children are fleeing violence and are opting
instead to fund legislation that would fast-track
their deportations.
Even those in danger, who attempt to go
through formal channels to remain in the
United States face extreme challenges. Ac-cording
to the UN Refugee agency, an
asylum-seeker is “someone who says he or
she is a refugee [a person forced to flee their
homes due to persecution, whether on an in-dividual
basis or as part of a mass exodus due
to political, religious, military or other prob-lems],
but whose claim has not yet been defin-itively
evaluated.” Those asylum-seekers
deemed not to be refugees, nor to be in need
of any other form of international protection,
can be sent back to their home countries.
The Refugee Act of 1980 is supposed to pro-vide
for the “effective resettlement of refu-gees
and to assist them to achieve economic
self-sufficiency as quickly as possible after ar-rival
in the United States" However, in 1996,
Congress enacted a one-year filing deadline
that requires asylum seekers to apply within a

24. 21
year or prove by "clear and convincing" evi-dence
that the application was delayed due to
"changed or extraordinary circumstances. This
deadline results in 1 in 5 refugees being de-nied
asylum and facing deportation back to
the country that they fled from. Many refu-gees
do not have access to this information or
legal counsel to help them file their applica-tions.
Additionally, many refugees do not
speak English, which creates a barrier to un-derstanding
the complex immigration laws. A
favorable Credible Fear Interview (CFI)—“a
preliminary step in the lengthy and rigorous
asylum review process”—only allows the asy-lum
seeker to proceed with his or her protec-tion
claim before an immigration judge (which
is not normally at a port of entry). When asy-lum
seekers are unaware of the legal process
and/or their rights, the CFI process is more
likely to erroneously exclude bona fide asylum
seekers rather than permit entry to fraudulent
applicants. When an asylum seeker is denied
access through the CFI process and deported
back to his or her home country and later tries
to seek asylum again he or she will be denied
based on the previous deportation order
which make him or her ineligible for asylum.
As a result of a grassroots human rights
campaign led by the DREAMers—youth
who put pressure on the Obama Administra-tion
by “coming out” as being “undocument-ed”—
the Deferred Action for Childhood Ar-rivals
(DACA) was signed into law in June
2012. DACA is a “kind of [temporary] admin-istrative
relief from deportation that has been
around a long time. Through it, DHS author-izes
a non–U.S. citizen to remain in the U.S.
temporarily. The person may also apply for an
employment authorization document (a ‘work
permit’) for the period during which he or she
has deferred action. A grant of deferred ac-tion
is temporary and does not provide a path
to lawful permanent resident status or U.S.
citizenship.” With the initiation of DACA,
hundreds of thousands of these young people
have enjoyed the benefits of widened access
to the American mainstream, as of March
2014, “673,417 young people have applied to
the program and 553,197 have been ap-proved.”
While DACA does not offer a
pathway to citizenship,, it has the potential to
“move large numbers of eligible young adults
into mainstream life, thereby improving their
social and economic well-being.” In June of
2014, marking the two-year anniversary of the
signing of DACA, the Immigration Policy
Center conducted a survey which found that
nearly 60 percent of DACA beneficiaries have
obtained a new job since receiving DACA,
and 45 percent have increased their earnings.
These findings provide direct evidence of the
economic boost provided by DACA. Because
new jobs and increased earnings translate into
a greater tax base, DACA is also providing an
important boost to the economy. In addition
to this, DACA has lead to higher rates of
driver’s licenses, bank accounts and credit
carts, higher rates of healthcare and the bene-fits
are “strongest for those attending four-year
colleges and those with college degrees.”
While DACA was a result of executive action
alone, the DREAM Act requires legislative
approval in order to become law and includes
a path to citizenship. The DREAM Act would
permit certain immigrant students who have
grown up in the U.S. to apply for temporary
legal status and to eventually “obtain perma-nent
legal status and become eligible for U.S.
citizenship if they go to college or serve in the
U.S. military; and [It would] eliminate a feder-al
provision that penalizes states that provide
in-state tuition without regard to immigration
status.” In the absence of the passage of the
DREAM Act at the national level or compre-hensive,
national immigration reform, some
states have taken matters into their own
hands. Twelve states have passed their own
versions of the DREAM Act offering in-state
tuition and in some cases, allow applicants to
apply for state funded financial aid and com-munity
college fee waivers.
On November 20, 2014, President Obama
announced a series of executive actions on

25. 22
immigration. Five million immigrants could
be affected by these actions, 4 million of
whom do not have documentation.” Under
the plan, most of the people who could be
protected from deportation would be parents
of United States citizens or green card
holders who have lived in the country for
more than five years. The Migration Policy
Institute says that as many as 3.7 million un-documented
immigrants could fall into this
category “beginning next spring, they could
register with the government, undergo a
background check… and gain protected status
for up to three years.”
An additional 290,000 undocumented im-migrants
who were brought to the United
States as children would be newly protect-ed
under an expansion of Obama's original
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
(DACA) program. The White House says an-other
“1 million immigrants would be newly
protected from deportation under the other
reforms in the president's directive.” Seven-teen
states, led by Texas, are suing the Obama
administration over the executive actions on
immigration.
Specific Human Rights Commitments
Made by the United States
In its 2013 periodic report to the United Na-tions
Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination, the United States says that it
“strongly shares the Committee’s view that
citizens and noncitizens alike should enjoy
protection of their human rights and fun-damental
freedoms.” In 2012, the United
States admitted 58,238 refugees through its
refugee resettlement program.
On October 17, 2014, DHS announced a Hai-tian
Family Reunification Parole Program
(HFRP), which will expedite family reunifica-tion
by allowing already approved family-based
immigrant visa recipients legal entrance
into the United States.
Regarding border killings, the United States
says that it is implementing measures to pre-vent
the use of illegal force by police against
protected groups. The United States Constitu-tion
and federal statutes prohibit racially
discriminatory actions by law enforcement
agencies, e.g. the Pattern or Practice of Police
Misconduct provision of the Violent Crime
Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994,
the Omnibus Crime Control and the Safe
Streets Act of 1968. Since 2009, the Admin-istration
says that it has intensified its en-forcement
of these laws. Federal law prohib-its
the use of excessive force by any law en-forcement
officer against any individual in the
United States, including members of racial
and ethnic minorities, and undocumented
migrants crossing United States borders. Vic-tims
of police brutality may seek legal reme-dies,
such as criminal punishment of the per-petrator
or civil damages. According to the
Department of Justice, they have successfully
prosecuted law enforcement officers and pub-lic
officials where sufficient evidence indicates
that they willfully violated a person’s constitu-tional
rights.
The Obama Administration claims while un-accompanied
children are in custody, gov-ernment
personnel ensures that the needs of
this vulnerable population are addressed
promptly, including by immediately segregat-ing
children from unrelated adults.

26. 23
Recommendations
In April 2014, the United Nations Human
Rights Committee issued recommendations
under the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR) that the United
States review its policies of mandatory de-tention
and deportation of certain categories
of immigrants in order to allow for individual-ized
decisions; take measures to ensure that
affected persons have access to legal represen-tation;
and identify ways to facilitate access to
adequate health care, including reproductive
health-care services, by undocumented immi-grants
and immigrants and their families who
have been residing lawfully in the United
States for less than five years.
In August 2014, under the Convention on
the Elimination of all forms of Racial Dis-crimination
(CERD), the CERD Committee
called upon the United States to ensure that
the rights of non-citizens are fully guaran-teed
in law and in practice, including among
other things: (a) abolishing “Operation
Streamline” and dealing with any breaches of
immigration law through civil, rather than
criminal immigration system; (b) undertaking
thorough and individualized assessment for
decisions concerning detention and deporta-tion
and guaranteeing access to legal represen-tation
in all immigration-related matters.
The United States should immediately sus-pend
all deportations to Haiti. The United
States should not resume removals until it is
determined that conditions are safe and hu-mane
for individuals to be returned to Haiti.
Regarding border killings, the United States
should ensure that the new Customs and Bor-der
Patrol Directive on the use of deadly force
is applied and enforced in practice.
The United States should ensure that de-tained
children are kept in facilities separate
from those for adults in conformity with
international standards and end the use of
expedited removal procedures as a re-sponse
to the surge in unaccompanied chil-dren
that have recently arrived at the southern
United States border.
Human Rights Groups Advancing the
Human Rights of Immigrants
Amnesty International USA • Detention
Watch Network • Rights Working Group •
Amigos Multicultural Services Center; Border
Network for Human Rights • Border Action
Network • National Network for Immigrant
and Refugee Rights • Black Alliance for Just
Immigration • Asian Americans Advancing
Justice - Asian Law Caucus • Alianza Indigena
Sin Fronteras • Florida Immigration Coalition
• Families for Freedom • PUENTE Arizona •
Haitian Women of Miami • Leadership Con-ference
on Civil and Human Rights • National
Immigrant Justice Center • ACLU Human
Rights Project.

27. Criminal Justice & Mass Incarceration
24
The United States, according to the Sentenc-ing
Project, remains the world’s leader in
incarceration, with 2.2 million people cur-rently
in the nation's prisons or jails—a 500%
increase over the past thirty years. Of these,
about 216,000 are held in federal prisons and
1,360,000 in state prisons. About 720,000
people are incarcerated in local jails, mostly
awaiting trial and thus without a conviction
and in many cases individuals who cannot af-ford
bail. As a result, the United States still
incarcerates more people, per capita, than any
other nation. These trends have resulted in
prison overcrowding and state governments
being overwhelmed by the burden of funding
a rapidly expanding penal system, despite in-creasing
evidence that large-scale incarceration
is not the most effective means of achieving
public safety. As a result, the Sentencing Pro-ject
reports that more than 60% of the people
____________________
Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
Article 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman
or degrading treatment or punishment. Everyone has the
right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any
discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are
entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in
violation of this Declaration and against any incitement
to such discrimination. Everyone has the right to an ef-fective
remedy by the competent national tribunals for
acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the
constitution or by law. No one shall be subjected to arbi-trary
arrest, detention or exile. Everyone is entitled in
full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independ-ent
and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his
rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against
him.
____________________

28. 25
in prison are now racial and ethnic minorities,
while for black males in their thirties, one in
every 10 is in prison or jail on any given day.
One in three black men will be imprisoned
during their lifetime, while only one out of 17
white men will serve prison time. Most im-portantly,
it is changes in sentencing law and
policy—such as the use of “one size fits all"
mandatory minimum sentences, not increases
in crime rates, that explain most of the six-fold
increase in the national prison popula-tion.
Disparate treatment in the American criminal
justice system often begins with racial profil-ing.
In their shadow report for the August
2014 hearing at the United Nations on the
United States’ compliance/non-compliance
with the international Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimi-nation
(CERD), the ACLU lamented that ra-cial
profiling in law enforcement is a persis-tent
problem in the United States. Echoing
previous complaints, they further criticized
that, despite repeated calls by civil society, the
U.S. Department of Justice has failed to issue
a revision to its 2003 Guidance on the Use of
Race by Federal Law Enforcement. In par-ticular,
the ACLU demonstrates in their re-port
that the Guidance tacitly authorizes racial
profiling by allowing for exemptions in cases
that are related to national security and border
control. In addition, the Guidance does not
explicitly ban profiling based on religion, na-tional
origin, or sexual orientation. As such,
the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),
Transportation Security Administration
(TSA), various border and immigration en-forcement,
and local law enforcement agen-cies—
most notoriously the NYPD—routinely
engage in practices of racial profiling.
These racial disparities continue in sen-tencing.
As the above mentioned report de-tails,
sentences imposed on black males in the
federal system are nearly 20 percent longer
than those imposed on white males convicted
of similar crimes. Black and Latino offenders
sentenced in state and federal courts face sig-nificantly
greater odds of incarceration than
similarly situated white offenders and receive
longer sentences than their white counterparts
in some jurisdictions. As the ACLU further
finds, racial disparities increase with the sever-ity
of the sentence imposed. African Ameri-cans
are thus disproportionally represented
among convicts who receive life sentences
without the possibility of parole (LWOP) and
the death sentence. Thus, although African
Americans constitute only about 13 percent of
the United States population, they constitute
28.3 percent of all lifers, 56.4 percent of those
serving LWOP, and 56.1 percent of those
who received LWOP for offenses committed
as a juvenile. In total, 65.4 percent of prison-ers
serving LWOP for nonviolent offenses are
African American. As a consequence of these
disparities, African Americans are treated un-equally
at every stage of the criminal justice
system, including stops and searches, arrests,
prosecutions and plea negotiations, trials, and
sentencing. Race matters at all phases and as-pects
of the criminal process, including the
quality of representation, the charging phase,
and the availability of plea agreements, each
of which impact whether juvenile and adult
defendants face a potential LWOP sentence.
Driven by both a concern for civil rights and
for sustainable budgets, the United States
Congress and other lawmakers have taken
small steps to reform the criminal justice
system at the federal level. As part of the
2014 omnibus spending bill, the Charles Col-son
Task Force—an independent, nine-member
panel of experts tasked with issuing
recommendations on federal prison reform—
was formed. The year 2013 also saw a record
number of exonerations, with 87 people walk-ing
free after being wrongly convicted of
crimes they did not commit, or that never
even happened. In April 2014, the Justice De-partment
announced an initiative to extend
presidential clemency to potentially thousands
of federal prisoners who received harsh sen-tences
during the heyday of the ‘war on drugs’

29. 26
and who would receive more lenient rulings if
they were sentenced and convicted today. The
Department of Justice immediately singled
out and prioritized 23,000 inmates who fit the
ideal for this retrofitting of prison sentences,
namely inmates who are nonviolent, low-level
drug offenders, with no significant history of
crime or violence, who have served at least 10
years of their prison sentences and demon-strated
good conduct in prison. Due to the
systemic racism that runs throughout the legal
and penal systems and that has rendered many
inmates ineligible for this clemency program,
this step was more symbolic than reformative.
At the state level, the push-back against mass
incarceration proceeds at a much slower pace
than at the federal one. Driven by both finan-cial
incentives offered by the prison-industrial
complex and by a misunder-standing
of substance abuse as a crisis of
policing, instead of a public health crisis, the
state of Louisiana, for instance, increased drug
penalties in 2014, raising the mandatory min-imum
for the distribution, possession with
intent to distribute, manufacture and sale of
any quantity of schedule I narcotic drugs from
5 to 10 years. As the ACLU reports, the dou-bling
the mandatory minimum sentence of a
law that saw 1,600 people sentenced under it
just last year will lead to substantially higher
sentences for thousands of people and a real
increase in the prison population. The private,
profit-driven penal apparatus is also at work
in several states where local municipalities
have handed over the collection of outstand-ing
court fees to profit-driven probation
companies, a move that entraps individuals in
spiraling debts, which in many cases end in
imprisonment for missed payments. On the
other hand, California’s Proposition 47, which
passed in November 2014, aims to redefine
certain nonviolent offenses—such as minor
drug or property offences—as misdemeanors,
rather than felonies, as they had previously
been categorized. The bill plans to save the
state of California several hundreds of mil-lions
of dollars every year that will be relegat-ed
to fund schools, crime victims, mental
health, and drug treatment. It needs to be
noted, however, that, according to opponents
of the bill, it reduces penalties for possession
of ‘date rape’ drugs.
In the blindspot of highly publicized efforts to
reform the prison system and reassess penal
excess of the past, the situation of numerous
inmates who have been classified as “political
prisoners” or “prisoners of conscience” by
various national and international organiza-tions
remains unchanged. As such, the Indig-enous
activist Leonard Peltier, the legal cir-cumstances
of whose conviction have long
been questioned, has been imprisoned for 35-
years. Likewise, Mumia Abu-Jamal, although
released from death-row into the general pris-on
population in 2011, has been denied a new
trial despite calls for a retrial by numerous na-tional
and international bodies, governments,
and individuals. In October 2014, in a barely
camouflaged move to silence Abu-Jamal, who
has continued to speak out against global in-justice
from behind bars, Pennsylvania gover-nor
Tom Corbett signed a new bill, euphemis-tically
entitled Revictimization Relief Act,
which allows the state of Pennsylvania to sue
inmates for speaking out. In a response, the
ACLU asserted that the bill “can’t pass consti-tutional
muster under the First Amendment.”
Representative of a great number of former
Black Panther Party, Republic of New Afrika,
and Black Liberation Army activists who still
remain incarcerated, on February 20, 2014,
Russell Maroon Shoats was finally released
into the general prison population after more
than 22 consecutive years in solitary confine-ment
at State Correctional Institution (SCI)
Graterford. Elsewhere, in September 2014,
the ACLU, on behalf of Chelsea Manning—
sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking
video and documents chronicling U.S. war
crimes in Iraq, sued the Pentagon for denying
gender-transition medical care and failing to
follow other protocols for treating gender
dysphoria. In addition, the Cuban 5, several
Chicano and Puerto Rican activists, MOVE