“We are all witness to a dangerous trajectory under President Trump that has already led to a human rights emergency,” said the leader of Amnesty International USA

 

Exactly a year into President Donald Trump’s second term in office, a leading human rights group on Tuesday released a report cataloging the administration’s rapid escalation of authoritarian practices—and outlining the steps that can and must be taken in the US to halt Trump’s attacks on immigrants and refugees, the press, protesters, and his political opponents.

Amnesty International’s report, titled Ringing the Alarm Bells: Rising Authoritarian Practices and Erosion of Human Rights in the United States, details interlocking areas in which the president is “cracking the pillars of a free society.”

The group has documented human rights abuses and the patterns followed by authoritarian regimes around the world and has found that while the rise of autocratic leaders can happen within numerous contexts, the similarities shared by authoritarian escalations include the consolidation of government power, the control of information, the discrediting of critics, the punishment of dissent, the closure of civic space, and the weakening of mechanisms that ensure accountability.

Those patterns have all been documented in the US since January 20, 2025, when Trump took office for a second time. “We are all witness to a dangerous trajectory under President Trump that has already led to a human rights emergency,” said Paul O’Brien, executive director of Amnesty International USA. “By shredding norms and concentrating power, the administration is trying to make it impossible for anyone to hold them accountable.”

The areas in which Trump is eroding human rights and accelerating toward authoritarianism, according to Amnesty, include:

-Targeting freedom of the press,

-Targeting freedom of expression and assembly,

-Targeting political opponents and critics,

-Targeting judges, lawyers, and the legal system,

-Undermining due process,

-Attacking refugee and migrant rights,

-Scapegoating populations and rolling back non-discrimination policies,

-Using the military for domestic purposes,

-Dismantling checks on corporate accountability and anti-corruption measures,

-Increasing state surveillance, and

-Undermining international systems that protect human rights.

Amnesty emphasized that the authoritarian tactics are “mutually reinforcing,” with Trump cracking down on protesters early in his term—targeting foreign-born students who had organized protests against Israel’s US-backed assault on Gaza and revoking thousands of student visas, hundreds of which were revoked after the administration began monitoring foreign students’ social media and accused visa holders of “support for terrorism” under a broad federal statute.

In recent months, Trump’s attacks on refugees and immigrants have gone hand in hand with his militarization of law enforcement and targeting of First Amendment rights.

The president has deployed the National Guard and sent thousands of armed, masked federal agents into communities including Chicago; Los Angeles, Portland, and Minneapolis; in the latter city, a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent shot and killed a woman who had come out to help protect immigrants in her neighborhood earlier this month.

Masked agents have “seized migrants, asylum seekers, and US citizens” as they have searched for people to arrest to fulfill Trump’s campaign pledge to ramp up deportations. Those who have been detained are being held in facilities like Camp Montana East in El Paso, Texas, which recently recorded its third detainee death in less than two months, and “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida, where Amnesty last month documented treatment that amounts to torture.

The report also details Trump’s attacks on the press, with the president hand-picking outlets that are permitted to cover the White House and barring the Associated Press from “restricted spaces” in the government building because of its refusal to call the Gulf of Mexico by Trump’s preferred name, the “Gulf of America.” 

The Pentagon also demanded that journalists sign agreements waiving their First Amendment rights, resulting in reporters walking out and turning in their press badges, pledging to continue covering the Department of Defense without the administration’s approval.

A White House official also aggressively attacked a journalist last week for asking about an ICE agent’s killing of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, accusing him of being a “left-wing activist” who was posing as a reporter when he did not accept the administration’s claims that the agent had shot Good in self-defense.

The report also details the Department of Justice’s efforts to investigate groups it deems “domestic terrorist” organizations "while moving toward classifying the filming of immigration arrests—a constitutional right—as domestic terrorism. 

Trump’s weaponization of the DOJ against his political opponents including New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey; his executive actions targeting law firms that represent individuals and groups that challenge the government, which resulted in some firms acquiescing; and his abandonment of due process, including through his ”extraordinary“ use of the Alien Enemies Act to expel hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers to an El Salvador prison known for torture.

“Trump’s attacks on civic space and the rule of law and the erosion of human rights in the United States mirrors the global pattern Amnesty has seen and warned about for decades,” said O’Brien. “Importantly, our experience shows that by the time authoritarian practices are fully entrenched, the institutions meant to restrain abuses of power are already severely compromised.”

The report warns that “the Trump administration has moved swiftly—oftentimes outside the bounds of the law—to trample on rights and dangerously consolidate power,” and calls on institutions to take decisive action to respond to the “alarm bells” detailed in the report.

“We know where this path leads, and we know the human cost when alarm bells go unanswered,” reads the report.

Recommendations for the US Congress include:

-Strengthening guardrails against the domestic use of the military for law enforcement and prohibiting finding for “militarized protest suppression that violates human rights standards,”

-Conduct oversight of discriminatory press restrictions,

-Pass legislation to develop national guidelines on respecting and facilitating the right to peaceful protest and for all law enforcement agencies to review their policies and the equipment used in the policing of demonstrations,

-Conduct oversight of immigration agencies including through “unannounced inspections of detention facilities and immigration enforcement,” and

-Decriminalize migration and establish a pathway to citizenship for people within the US.

The group also called on international leaders to continue scrutiny of human rights developments in the US, oppose US reprisals and sanctions against international courts and investigators, and mitigate humanitarian harms where US assistance is abruptly withdrawn by coordinating support for affected communities and frontline organizations.

Kerry Moscugiuri, interim chief executive of Amnesty International UK, called on British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to “use every tool at his disposal to confront Donald Trump’s seemingly out of control anti-rights agenda.”

“A year into Trump’s second term and it’s never been clearer: this is a pivotal point in world history,” said Moscugiuri. “Starmer must also speak out on the US government’s support for Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. 

Failure to oppose and stop the genocide has led us all to where we are now. Silence and inaction as the global human rights architecture is dismantled is not an option. Leaders across the globe must wake up to the world they seem to be sleepwalking into—before it is too late.”

O’Brien added that “authoritarian practices only take root when they are allowed to become normalized. We cannot let that happen in the United States.” “Together,” he said, “we all have an opportunity, and a responsibility, to rise to this challenging time in our history and to protect human rights.”

-Julia Conley, Common Dreams