VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN providing them with adequate access to Indigenous women continued to experience asylum procedures or effective screenings for disproportionately high levels of rape and the harm they could face upon return.4 sexual violence and lacked access to basic ARBITRARY DETENTION post-rape care. Additionally, Indigenous women continued to experience high rates of Thirty-nine Muslim men remained arbitrarily disappearance and murder. The exact and indefinitely detained by the US military in number of Indigenous women victims of the detention facility at the US Naval Base in violence or who went missing remained Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in violation of unknown as the US government did not international law. The authorities made little collect data or adequately coordinate with progress in closing the facility, despite the Tribal governments. Biden administration´s stated intention to do Rates of intimate partner violence showed so. no signs of slowing from their increases due In October, two detainees held in to the Covid-19 pandemic and ensuing Guantánamo Bay were approved for transfer lockdowns, yet the main legislative by the Periodic Review Board, bringing to 12 mechanism for funding violence response the number of detainees who remained at the and prevention remained lapsed as Congress facility after being cleared for transfer, some again failed to reauthorize the Violence for over a decade. Only two detainees had Against Women Act (VAWA). been transferred out of the facility since January 2017, including just one since REFUGEES’ AND MIGRANTS’ RIGHTS Joseph Biden took office. None of the Authorities continued to drastically limit remaining detainees had access to adequate access to asylum at the USA-Mexico border, medical treatment and those who survived resulting in irreparable harm to many torture and other ill-treatment by US agents thousands of people, including children, who were not given adequate rehabilitative were seeking safety from persecution or other services. serious human rights violations in their Ten of them faced charges in the military 3 countries of origin. commission system, in breach of Border control officials carried out international law and standards relating to fair unnecessary and unlawful pushbacks of trials, and could face the death penalty if nearly 1.5 million refugees and migrants at convicted. The use of capital punishment in the USA-Mexico border, both at and between these cases, after proceedings that did not official ports of entry, using as a pretext meet international standards, would public health provisions under Title 42 of the constitute arbitrary deprivation of life. US Code during the Covid-19 pandemic. The trials of those accused of crimes related Returnees were summarily expelled without to the 11 September 2001 attacks were access to asylum procedures, legal remedies, scheduled to begin on 11 January 2021, but or individual risk assessments. Upon his after the suspension of hearings in 2020 and resignation, a senior legal adviser to the US most of 2021, the cases were nowhere near Department of State denounced the mass ready for trial, following nine years of pretrial 5 expulsions of Haitian asylum seekers as hearings. constituting unlawful forced returns. FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY Although the Biden administration exempted unaccompanied migrant children Authorities failed to adopt and implement from expulsions under Title 42, US Border significant police oversight and accountability Patrol misused an anti-trafficking law to measures promised by the Biden continue to summarily repatriate thousands administration in response to nationwide of unaccompanied Mexican children (over protests against police violence in 2020, 95% of those apprehended), without Amnesty International Report 2021/22 391