On August 21, 2025, UWCHR released our latest report, “Gross Human Rights Violations in Washington State: Enforced Disappearance and Refoulement,” tracing the connections between Washington state institutions and grave human rights violations against Washingtonian migrants by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). We found evidence of greater local involvement

Executive summary This report reviews local involvement in gross human rights abuses against immigrants, focusing on forced disappearance and refoulement. Its findings reveal that the connections between Washington state and these crimes are broader and deeper than has been previously known. They are broader because there are many more cases of Washingtonians being subjected to

On June 3, 2025, a court in rural El Salvador read the text of its historic verdict, for the first time holding high-ranking former military men accountable for the violence against civilians that characterized the country’s long and bloody armed conflict. The case involved the March 1982 killings of Dutch journalists Koos Koster, Jan Kuiper,

This report is part of a series regarding Human Rights Conditions at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, based on ongoing research efforts and released to highlight initial findings in the urgent context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Contents: • Introduction • Background, Methodology, and Human Rights Standards • Sanitation of Food and Laundry •

In 2025, the UW Center for Human Rights is proud to present fellowships to seven students carrying out human rights research and projects.   HANADY SHAQUR, ABE OSHEROFF AND GUNNEL CLARK FELLOW Hanady Shaqur is an undergraduate student studying medical anthropology. She is the co-president of Zaytoon UW, where she works to advocate for the

Since 2017, as part of a longstanding effort to examine the human rights implications of federal immigration enforcement, the Center for Human Rights has sought to obtain information about conditions of immigrant detention in Washington state.  Our findings are published in an ongoing series of reports, Conditions at the Northwest Detention Center, with the newest

This report is part of a series regarding Human Rights Conditions at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, based on ongoing research efforts and released to highlight initial findings in the urgent context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Contents: • Introduction • Background, Methodology, and Human Rights Standards • Sanitation of Food and Laundry •

Since the Trump administration’s recent pivot to using military planes in addition to private charter flights to conduct deportation flights, UWCHR researchers have found that between the start of the flights on January 24, 2025, to February 13, 2025, most military deportation flights were by planes stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) in WA state.

For almost 35 years, different generations of UW students have come together to examine human rights policy at the national and international levels, exploring policy-making processes in Washington, D.C., and formulating individual human rights projects. The UW Bothell Washington, D.C. Human Rights Seminar is a unique experience allowing selected students to spend a week in

Center’s seventh FOIA lawsuit would compel proactive release of three key types of documents on a quarterly basis On November 13, 2024, the University of Washington Center for Human Rights (UWCHR) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), seeking to require