UN panel says racist hate speech by Trump and other US leaders has led to human rights violations

GENEVA (AP) — A U.N.-backed panel of independent experts focusing on racial discrimination says racist hate speech by U.S. President Donald Trump and other American political leaders, along with a crackdown on immigration in the United States, have led to “grave human rights violations.”

The Geneva-based Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination issued its decision Wednesday and urged the U.S. to suspend immigration enforcement operations at, and near, schools, hospitals, and faith-based institutions.

The decision, made under the committee’s early warning protocol, is not legally binding but seeks to hold a country — in this case, the U.S. — to its own international commitments.

The committee said it also was “deeply disturbed” by the use of derogatory and dehumanizing language around migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. Committee members attributed a reported rise in racial discrimination to “racist hate speech” targeting those groups but did not point to any specific data. Besides speech, there is also concern about the impact of politicians and other public figures weaponizing stereotypes to incite hate crimes and discrimination.

“Portraying them as criminals or as a burden, by politicians and influential public figures at the highest level, particularly the President,” the committee said in a news release, “may incite racial discrimination and hate crimes.”

Trump, as well as Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, have been in office when the U.N. condemned systemic racism, hate and discrimination. But the panel this time specifically cited Trump’s speech as part of the problem. They did not single out Biden or Obama for their rhetoric.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, along with U.S. Customs and Border Protection also were singled out for racially profiling people of color and conducting identity checks that often seemed arbitrary.

“This United Nations assessment is just as useless as their broken escalator, and their extreme bias continues to prove why no one takes them seriously,” said White House spokesperson Olivia Wales, who noted Trump’s work reducing crime and securing the U.S. border.

“No one cares what the biased United Nations’ so-called ‘experts’ think, because Americans are living in a safer, stronger country than ever before,” she added.

In the report, the committee alleges the U.S. is not living up to its obligations as a party in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which the U.N. adopted in 1965. The report noted incidents involving “discriminatory, dangerous and violent methods” have left eight people dead in the last three months, including Alex Pretti and Renee Good, two U.S. citizens protesting in Minnesota. Pretti and Good died in separate shootings at the hands of federal agents during Operation Metro Surge.

The use of lethal force in those two cases was tantamount to “arbitrary deprivation of life and other gross violations of international human rights law,” the panel stated.

Migrants, refugees and asylum seekers who are detained also deserve humane and equal treatment free from discrimination under the Convention. But, these groups have been denied basic essential services, including health care, education and social support, the report states.

The committee is calling on the U.S. to review whether its immigration policies abide by international human rights law. This should include suspending immigration enforcement operations, including around schools, faith-based institutions and hospitals, repealing “discriminatory measures” related to asylum procedures and putting up safeguards so immigration agencies cannot access personal data in government databases.

However, it’s not clear if the U.N. could actually enforce these proposals.

This is not the first time the panel has criticized the U.S. over racism and discrimination. It did so in 2014, after the widespread Black Lives Matter protests over the police shooting death of Michael Brown and other victims, and again in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd.

Also in 2020, a different U.N. human rights body heard similar arguments from a special rapporteur on contemporary racism, discrimination and xenophobia.

The Trump administration made mass deportations a key part of its second-term agenda and launched a wave of immigration restrictions and heightened enforcement in multiple cities across the country. The crackdown has led to a surge in arrests of immigrants and mounting concerns by critics over the tactics the administration is using both in detention and enforcement.

The administration has cited security and economic concerns for the crackdown.

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination counts 18 independent experts from around the world as members, and they monitor implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. The U.S. ratified the convention in 1994.

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Tang reported from Phoenix. AP writer Collin Binkley in Washington contributed.