UN Panel Ties Abuses Partly to Trump Rhetoric

A UN-backed panel of independent experts focusing on racial discrimination says racist hate speech by President Trump and other American political leaders, along with a crackdown on immigration in the US, have led to "grave human rights violations." The Geneva-based Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination issued its decision Wednesday and urged the US to suspend immigration enforcement operations at, and near, schools, hospitals, and faith-based institutions, the AP reports. The decision, made under the committee's early warning protocol, is not legally binding but seeks to hold the country involved 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." The Trump administration made mass deportations a central part of its second-term agenda.

Trump, as well as Joe Biden and Barack Obama, have been in office when the UN 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. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, along with Customs and Border Protection, 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 to reduce crime and securing the US border.