Trump Orders State Department to Overlook International Human Rights Abuses

The State Department is gutting its human rights reporting by excising information detailing abuses by foreign governments from the department’s annual reports, The Intercept has learned. Officially called “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices,” the annual documents are required by law to be “a full and complete report regarding the status of internationally recognized human rights” in nearly 200 countries and territories worldwide. They are used “by the U.S. Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches as a resource for shaping policy and guiding decisions, informing diplomatic engagements, and determining the allocation of foreign aid and security sector assistance,” according to the State Department.

The reports will no longer call out governments for abuses like restrictions on free and fair elections, significant corruption, or serious harassment of domestic or international human rights organizations, according to instructions issued earlier this year to the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor — known as DRL — which, itself, has been eviscerated under an “America First” reorganization by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The undated memo from earlier this year, reviewed by The Intercept, says the reports will also turn a blind eye to the forcible expulsion of refugees or asylum-seekers to countries where they may face torture or persecution. This comes as the Trump administration is building a global gulag, pursuing deals with around a third of the world’s nations to expel immigrants to places where they do not hold citizenship. Once exiled, these so-called “third-country nationals” are sometimes detained, imprisoned, or in danger of being sent back to their country of origin — which they may have fled to escape violence, torture, or political persecution.

A recent Intercept investigation found that the nations that the Trump administration is collaborating with to accept expelled “third country” immigrants are some of the worst human rights offenders on the planet, according to last year’s State Department human rights reports. The new country reports, expected to be released within days, will effectively launder abuses by nations that the administration is targeting as potential deportee dumping grounds. The memo also instructs the agency to “identify and delete references to discrimination or violence against ‘LGBTQI+’ persons, ‘transgender’ persons, or similar framing.”

https://theintercept.com/2025/08/08/trump-orders-state-department-to-overlook-international-human-rights-abuses/