Amnesty International calls for the abolition of ICE in new report
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An international human rights organization is joining advocates’ calls to abolish ICE, in a report that alleges a pattern of human rights violations.
In the report released Thursday, Amnesty International outlined a lengthy list of violations of international human rights law: unlawful killings, discriminatory detentions, and violent repression of peaceful protest, among others.
Those findings were based on interviews the organization conducted with about 150 people in metro areas that the federal government targeted in immigration enforcement surges, including Minneapolis. Researchers also visited the city earlier this year.
“Our report documents a chilling pattern of human rights violations across the U.S. intended to instill fear within migrant, asylum seeker and refugee communities,” said Nadia Daar, executive director of Amnesty International USA. “ICE’s record of violating human rights is nothing new, but our report shows many of these abuses have reached a perilous new level.”
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It’s the first time the organization has called to abolish ICE.
“The cruelty and human rights violations we documented are not isolated incidents. They reflect a deeper, widespread problem with immigration enforcement operations in the United States,” Daar said. “Piecemeal reform is not the way forward.”
The report reiterates allegations against DHS and ICE outlined in ongoing federal lawsuits, media reports and accounts from community members.
In response to a request for comment on the report, a DHS spokesperson cited a list of people detained by ICE in Chicago, who the agency says have criminal records.
Liliana Zaragoza is the director of the Racial Justice Law Clinic at the University of Minnesota Law School and a resident of south Minneapolis. At a press conference announcing the report, she said she’s hopeful it can be another tool to push for change.
“It's one of the many, many efforts of trying to understand what happened, what can we do differently, how can we get accountability for what happened?” Zaragoza said.
‘Widespread and systemic’ discrimination
While federal leaders said the surge of agents to the Twin Cities was an effort to detain and deport the “worst of the worst” criminals, Amnesty International’s report outlines patterns of federal agents instead detaining people based on race.
“Incidents of targeted enforcement were far outnumbered by the numerous accounts of ICE and Border Patrol stopping and detaining individuals based on their race, skin colour, national origin or ethnicity,” the report reads.
Researchers cite the arrest of Mubashir Khalif Hussen, a 20-year-old U.S. citizen of Somali descent detained by federal agents in Minneapolis in December. Hussen said he asked agents detaining him to check his passport, and agents refused. Agents put Hussen in an unmarked vehicle and drove him to the federal Whipple building. He was released hours later after eventually being allowed to show a photo of his passport.
Hussen later brought a lawsuit against the federal government alleging racial profiling and unlawful arrests.
The Amnesty International report also documents instances of ICE and Border Patrol targeting Indigenous U.S. citizens in the Twin Cities area. Minnesota state Rep. Liish Kozlowski, DFL-Duluth, spoke to researchers for the report, and said Indigenous friends and family faced aggression, including their cousin who was stopped by agents.
“They smashed her window at gun point,” Kozlowski told researchers. “They roughed her up; she was pregnant. Her husband yelled, ‘She’s Native American, here’s her Tribal ID card.’ An ICE agent responded, ‘That doesn’t f****** matter, this is our land now.’”
Amnesty International said that pattern of discrimination and racial profiling constitutes a violation of international human rights agreements.
Inhumane detention
Researchers say the racial profiling led to unlawful detentions.
The report cites accounts from attorneys and residents who say detainees were denied due process. Some detainees were barred from contacting a lawyer, according to the report.
A woman identified only by the first name Sofia told researchers she was detained with her husband in a parking lot in Bloomington by federal agents in civilian clothes. She said they had no identification or warrant, and they never asked her for any identification, either.
She had a pending asylum claim and had been living in the U.S. since 2023. During the arrest, she asked agents if she could call a family member to take care of her children; agents did not let her make the call. She was detained at the Whipple building for over a month and remains in deportation proceedings.
Most detainees in Minnesota were taken to the federal Whipple building. The report says the facility was overcrowded and unsanitary and didn’t comply with human rights standards.
Those violations need more assessment, researchers said.
“The unnecessary and prolonged detention of people in inhumane conditions in facilities not even equipped for overnight detention, combined with coercion to accept ‘voluntary’ departure, may amount to torture,” the report says.
Lethal force
Researchers identified seven incidents in which they say federal agents used lethal force in violation of human rights, including three unlawful killings.
Those include the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, which researchers say “may amount to extrajudicial executions” under international law. They also noted the killing of Silverio Villegas González, who was shot and killed by a federal agent in Chicago in September 2025 – another case that researchers said could amount to an extrajudicial execution.
Researchers also identified lethal force in the shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis in north Minneapolis, which left him injured. The ICE agent who shot Sosa-Celis, Christian Castro, is facing federal and state charges for assault and for lying to investigators in the aftermath of the shooting.
Calling for immediate abolition of ICE
The call to abolish ICE is an unusual move for Amnesty International. Amy Fischer, the organization’s director of refugee and migrant rights, said Amnesty International has never specifically called for a government agency in any country to disband until now.
But she said the patterns of violence and discrimination outlined in the report are foundational to how ICE works — not something that the agency could fix through trainings or policy changes.
“This report really was a tipping point, in the same way that the way we saw the Trump administration do their immigration enforcement across these four cities was also very much a tipping point for immigrant communities and communities that defend immigrants,” Fischer said.
Zaragoza said she’s glad to see this recommendation in the report. She recalled growing up near the U.S.-Mexico border, before ICE was established in 2003, and being able to show her ID and cross into Mexico to visit family without fear.
“We are not safer today because we have a larger immigration apparatus,” Zaragoza said.
She said she wants a return to that safety for her two kids.
“I dream for both my kids, and all of the kids who experienced Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities, and in all of the other cities represented here today, that they can grow up in a time without ICE as well,” Zaragoza said.
The report is one of several assessments of human rights violations in Minnesota, including a recent one by Human Rights Watch.
