CEJIL urges the United States to implement the standards of human rights in the immigration reform during a public hearing of the IACHR

Washington, D.C., October 28th, 2013.- This afternoon, the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) accompanied a coalition of lawyers specialized in migration, NGOs, law clinics, trade unions and members of directly affected immigrant communities to request the United States to comply with its international obligations through a comprehensive immigration reform during a public hearing before the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR).

CEJIL made a number of requests to the Inter-American Commission; first, to include its comprehensive studies in their annual report as well as to create a thematic report; second, to make an on-site visit to monitor the policies of detention and deportation; and third to monitor the impact of legislative and administrative developments on migrants’ rights with a transversal approach of human rights, bearing in mind the rights of migrant families, children, women, workers and LGBT migrants.

In 2010, CEJIL accomplished a favorable judgment from the IACHR on the case of Wayne Smith and Hugo Armendariz, that meant for the United States a change in its laws in order to take in consideration family and community ties for deportation procedures. Following that line, in 2010, the IACHR issued a number of detailed recommendations for the detention of immigrants and its due process. The United States has not complied with these recommendations yet.

“The lack of compliance from the US Government with their obligations on human rights turns out to be now one of the most generalized violations of the rights of migrant families, children and communities. The United States must take this historic opportunity and finally fulfill international standards of human rights in the comprehensive immigration reform” stated Francisco Quintana, Director of CEJIL for the Program of the Andean, North American and Caribbean Regions. “But there’s a number of administrative measures that the U.S. can -and must- implement immediately to guarantee the human rights of migrant families and children, including the incorporation of human rights regulations in their administrative guidelines for those responsible for decision-making in immigration processes, as we have outlined in our reports.“

CEJIL was accompanied at the hearing by broad-based coalition of representatives from AFL-CIO, Gibbs Houston Pauw, Stanford Immigration Rights Clinic, Boston College Post-Deportation Human Rights Project, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), Immigration Equality, Advocates for Human Rights, the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, and the Boston University Law Clinic, as well as other human rights defenders of religious coalitions.