Amnesty International has released its annual report on the state of the world’s human rights, and its findings on the US painted a sweeping portrait of rollback across nearly every rights category, from immigration enforcement to reproductive access to the use of lethal force.
The report devotes significant attention to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement agenda. Nearly all federal law enforcement agencies have been deputized to engage in civil immigration enforcement. Masked agents have seized migrants and citizens, armored vehicles have patrolled streets, and operations have targeted areas near schools, faith centers, and hospitals that were previously off-limits.
New state-funded detention facilities have been built, including “Alligator Alcatraz,” and the mass detention system has been expanded to hold thousands in overcrowded, inhumane facilities with limited access to bail and a resumption of family separation.
The administration’s most dramatic immigration action has come through its invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to expel 252 Venezuelan men to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Centre, subjecting them to what the report called “enforced disappearance and torture.”
After months in detention, they were sent to Venezuela, the country many had originally fled. The administration also ended the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan Parole Program and terminated Temporary Protected Status for nationals of 11 countries, putting thousands at risk of deportation while legal challenges remained ongoing.
The US Refugee Admissions Program was suspended entirely, and a complete travel ban has been imposed on nationals from 19 countries as well as individuals using travel documents issued by the Palestinian Authority.
On campuses, Amnesty points to the continuation and intensification of repression aimed at students protesting Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. The administration has targeted international students and faculty through social media monitoring, visa status tracking, and automated threat assessments.
Approximately 8,000 visas were revoked overall, and among those, 200 to 300 individuals were flagged specifically for “support for terrorism” or expressing “anti-US views” — purportedly for engaging in peaceful protest or posting against the ongoing violence. At least 11 foreign students and protesters were sought for detention and deportation explicitly because of their activism in support of Palestinian rights.
The report catalogues the rollback of LGBTQ+ protections at both the federal and state level. Following a Trump executive order defining sex as “an immutable biological classification as either male or female,” agencies cut programs protecting LGBTQ+ people and erased mentions of LGBTI identity from official materials. The administration shut down the LGBTQ+ youth-specific option on the national suicide hotline in July.
The NGO GLAAD documented 932 anti-LGBTQ+ incidents across 49 states and the District of Columbia over a single year, the equivalent of 2.5 incidents every day, resulting in 84 injuries and 10 deaths. Across the country, 616 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were introduced, with 74 becoming law, restricting healthcare for transgender youth and censoring LGBTQ+ content in schools.
Reproductive rights have similarly undergone erosion. The administration has rescinded prior policies that had expanded access to reproductive care, cut funding for reproductive care facilities, and forced clinic closures that disproportionately impacted people living on lower incomes. Forty-one states had abortion bans of some kind, including 13 with total bans and seven with bans at or before 18 weeks of gestation.
Amnesty cites findings from the Gender Equity Policy Institute that pregnant people in states that banned abortion are “nearly two times as likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth or soon after giving birth” compared with those in states where abortion remains legal.
The rights group also documents the administration’s aggressive expansion of the death penalty, directing the attorney general to pursue capital sentences across eligible federal crimes, support states in obtaining lethal injection drugs, and evaluate whether individuals whose sentences were commuted by President Biden could face state-level capital charges.
States have moved in parallel: Louisiana executed a person using nitrogen hypoxia for the first time in 15 years, South Carolina carried out the first US execution by firing squad in 15 years, and Idaho passed legislation making the firing squad its primary method of execution.
On policing, the rights watchdog reports that police shot and killed 1,143 people in 2025. Black people comprised more than 23% of deaths from police use of firearms while representing just 13% of the population. A Trump executive order has further militarized local law enforcement, provided greater protections for officers accused of misconduct, and threatened federal prosecution of government officials who obstructed criminal law enforcement through their policies.
The Department of Justice has simultaneously halted federal oversight of agencies found to be engaged in patterns of rights-violating policing.
The report also flags the administration’s drone strikes on 35 boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, which killed at least 123 individuals the US claimed were drug traffickers. AI found that those strikes “lacked legal justification and amounted to extrajudicial executions because the boats posed no immediate threat to the USA or to the life of any person.”
