Background

Campaigns for the presidential elections focused on issues around inflation and the cost of living, access to housing and immigration at the southern border. They involved divisive rhetoric that targeted communities including migrants and refugees, people seeking access to reproductive healthcare, LGBTI people and racialized groups.

Donald Trump was elected for a new presidential term in November.

Sexual and reproductive rights

The legality and accessibility of abortion varied greatly across the country. Nineteen states had total or near-total abortion bans by the end of the year. The 2024 release of a maternal mortality review from 2022 confirmed that at least two women had died in Georgia due to delayed care after a six-week abortion ban had taken effect there.

Bans and restrictions to abortion created fear, confusion and devastation. It forced people to delay care and threatened their rights to life and health and, ultimately, forced people to give birth against their will.¹

Additional barriers existed for many people, including Black and other racialized people, Indigenous Peoples, undocumented immigrants, transgender people, rural residents and people living in poverty. Medical professionals increasingly left states with severe abortion bans, further widening reproductive healthcare “deserts”, particularly in rural and low-income areas. Socio-economic barriers prevented many individuals from being able to travel out of state to seek abortion services.

People in seven states voted to protect the right to abortion.

Refugees’ and migrants’ rights

Migration measures continued to drastically limit access to asylum at the US-Mexico border. A Presidential Proclamation in June suspended entry at the border if there had been a seven-day average of 2,500 or more encounters, continuing until there have been 28 consecutive calendar days in which the seven-consecutive-calendar-day average was less than 1,500. The border closure did not apply to individuals who had obtained an appointment through the “CBP One” mobile application (among other limited exceptions), but appointments were limited. The application’s mandatory use of facial recognition and GPS tracking raised serious privacy, surveillance and discrimination concerns.² The proclamation also prohibited border agents from asking people about their protection needs, resulting in increased deportations without access to asylum screenings. Screenings imposed more stringent standards and access to due process was limited. These policies continued to force asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for long periods of time, prolonging their exposure to violence, particularly affecting Black, Indigenous and LGBTI people.

The administration granted, extended and redesignated Temporary Protected Status for Ethiopian, Haitian, Lebanese, Myanmar, Somalian, Syrian and Yemeni nationals, extending work authorization and protection from removal. Approximately 177,190 people were granted travel authorization through the parole process for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans between January and August.

Authorities expanded the system of arbitrary mass immigration detention, surveillance and electronic monitoring.

Anti-immigrant, racist rhetoric grew – particularly during the presidential campaign – resulting in violent attacks and threats to immigrant communities and humanitarian service providers.

Freedom of peaceful assembly

Students and staff at universities across the country engaged in protests in opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and US complicity, demanding their academic institutions issue official calls for a ceasefire, calling on the government to end its supply of arms to Israel, and urging their schools to divest from companies profiting from the conflict.

Largely peaceful protests and encampments faced academic sanctions and punishments, violence from counter-protesters, and violence from law enforcement summoned by college administrations.³ Police, often in riot gear, used force, including batons, rubber bullets and rounds, pepper spray and tear gas to disperse and detain protesters. At least 3,100 students, staff and others were arrested or detained. Amnesty International and UN experts criticized the summoning of law enforcement to disperse these protests.⁴

Congress and 19 states introduced 52 bills restricting the right to protest, with seven bills enacted in four states.

Right to a healthy environment

Pollution from the hundreds of fossil fuel and petrochemical plants along the Houston Ship Channel in Texas harmed the health and human rights of residents, disproportionately affecting marginalized and racialized communities.⁵ The lack of regulatory oversight continued, creating a “sacrifice zone” that perpetuated environmental racism and a legacy of racially discriminatory housing practices.

In August, a federal court blocked the government from requiring Louisiana to implement safeguards against the impacts of pollution. The safeguards related to federal civil rights laws prohibiting discrimination based on race, skin colour or national origin.

According to the most recent data from the Department of Energy, fossil fuel production comprised 84% of US energy production in 2023. The US expanded fossil fuel production to the highest levels of any country ever. In June, a liquefied natural gas export project was approved in Louisiana, expected to become one of the largest US gas export projects.

In March, President Biden signed an appropriations bill designating USD 931.9 million for international climate finance for the 2024 fiscal year, despite previously pledging USD 3 billion for that year.

Excessive use of force

According to media sources, police shot and killed 1,133 people in 2024. Black people were disproportionately impacted by the use of lethal force, comprising nearly 22% of deaths from police use of firearms, despite representing 13% of the population. After 10 years, the government still had not fully implemented the Death in Custody Reporting Act to document the number of people killed by law enforcement every year.

Congress failed to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which included policies such as a ban on racial profiling, and law enforcement accountability.

Death penalty

Alabama conducted three executions by nitrogen hypoxia, despite condemnation by national and international groups.⁶ UN experts called for a ban of the method, labelling it “human experimentation” that “amounted to torture”. South Carolina carried out its first execution in 13 years following a state court decision that its execution methods were not “cruel and unusual punishment”. Indiana conducted its first execution since 2009.

Louisiana enacted legislation to include nitrogen hypoxia and the electric chair as methods of execution, while Kansas attempted to pass a bill adding nitrogen hypoxia as an option for executions. Iowa attempted to reinstate the death penalty for first-degree murder of a police officer or prison official. Tennessee expanded the crimes subject to capital punishment to include “aggravated rape of a child” despite being unconstitutional. Alabama failed to pass a bill applying its 2017 ban on judicial override for death penalty cases retroactively, which could have overturned the sentences of at least 30 individuals. Delaware officially repealed the death penalty after it was found unconstitutional in 2016.

Arbitrary detention

Twenty-six Muslim men remained arbitrarily and indefinitely detained in the US detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in violation of international law. The Biden administration transferred four detainees out of Guantánamo in 2024. Fourteen of the remaining detainees have been cleared for transfer, some for over a decade, without progress. Congress continued to block the transfer of Guantánamo detainees to the USA, so they can only be transferred to third countries where their human rights would be respected.

There continued to be no accountability, redress or adequate medical treatment for detainees who have been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment and/or enforced disappearance.

Eight detainees, including five men accused of participating in the 11 September 2001 attacks, continued to face charges in the military commission system, in breach of international law and standards relating to fair trials. They could face the death penalty if convicted, which would constitute arbitrary deprivation of life since proceedings did not meet international standards, and the detainees were systematically tortured. Three of the defendants in the 9/11 military commission case reached an agreement to plead guilty and avoid the death penalty, but the Secretary of Defense quashed that agreement and the case remained in limbo. After 23 years, there had been no accountability for the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks.

Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist, was serving two consecutive life sentences relating to the deaths of two federal agents in South Dakota in 1975. Serious concerns remained about his conviction and sentencing. Now 80 years old with serious, chronic health issues, his application for compassionate release was denied in April and his application for parole was rejected in July.⁷ An application for clemency to President Biden was pending at the end of the year.

Right to life and security of the person

According to government statistics released in 2024, at least 48,204 people were killed by gun violence in 2022, the most recent year for which data exists. Gun violence was the leading cause of death among children and adolescents. Gun violence swelled in 2024 with 503 mass shootings, and at least 112 primary/secondary school or college shootings where a victim was injured or killed. The government’s failure to enact evidence-based firearm regulations jeopardized the human rights of the whole population.

In the absence of congressional action on gun violence prevention and gun reform legislation, President Biden issued several executive orders expanding background checks on firearm purchasers, addressing safe storage of guns, and providing support for states that were disarming domestic abusers.

Unlawful killings

The USA continued to use lethal force, which in some cases could amount to extrajudicial executions, around the world and withheld information regarding the legal and policy standards and criteria applied by US forces to the use of lethal force.

The administration created a new civilian harm mitigation and response policy in which it agreed to conduct more thorough investigations of civilian harm and created a Center of Excellence to guide those investigations. However, it refused to revisit well-documented cases of civilian deaths and harm, and failed to provide reparations for past civilian killings, including those it had acknowledged.

US-made bombs and components were identified by Amnesty International in unlawful deadly air strikes by the Israeli military on residential homes and a makeshift camp for displaced people in the occupied Gaza Strip in January,⁸ April,⁹ and May.¹⁰ The continued supply of munitions to Israel violated US laws and policies regarding the transfer and sale of arms, intended to prevent arms transfers that risk contributing to civilian harm and violations of human rights or international humanitarian law.

In February, President Biden issued an executive order that imposed sanctions on individual Israeli settlers, Israeli settler organizations, and a Palestinian armed group for undermining peace, security and stability in the West Bank.

In September, the Department of Justice announced indictments against Hamas members covering a period from 1997 and including charges of “conspiracy to murder US nationals” and “conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization resulting in death”.

Discrimination

Individuals experienced worrying levels of violence based on their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity, especially racialized transgender people. Government data from 2024 showed that at least 2,900 hate crimes against LGBTI people were reported in 2023. According to the Human Rights Campaign, 84% of transgender people killed were people of colour and 50% were Black transgender women.

State legislatures introduced 574 anti-LGBTI bills, of which 46 passed into law. These laws impacted LGBTI individuals’ access to healthcare and public facilities, ability to access legal documents in their preferred identity, participation in school activities, and access to LGBTI-related educational materials, among others.

In January, the California Legislative Black Caucus proposed a reparations package with 14 bills to dismantle the legacies of slavery and systemic racism affecting people of African descent, of which 11 had either passed into law or were pending committee review.

In June, the Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed a case brought by Viola Fletcher and Lessie Benningfield seeking reparatory justice as the last survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, in which a mob of white people attacked and killed hundreds of Black residents. A rehearing was dismissed in September, denying accountability for one of the USA’s worst anti-Black racist crimes of the 20th century.

In July, the Department of the Interior published its final report on the Federal Indian Boarding School initiative, which sought to address the intergenerational trauma inflicted on Indigenous children by the violent assimilation programme from 1871 to 1969. The investigation identified at least 74 marked and unmarked burial sites at 65 schools and at least 973 confirmed deaths, although the actual number of deaths is estimated to be triple this.

In September, the New York City Council passed legislation to “acknowledge and address the legacy and impact of slavery and racial injustices”.

Congress failed to pass a law to establish a commission to study and develop reparation proposals for African Americans regarding slavery and President Biden failed to issue an executive order that would do the same.

Gender-based violence

The staggering rates of sexual violence against American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) women continued. Government data suggested that AI/AN women were 2.2 times more likely to experience sexual violence than non-Indigenous women. The law continued to restrict the ability of Tribes to prosecute non-Indigenous perpetrators of violence against Indigenous women, although the 2022 Violence Against Women Act, enacted in 2024, included provisions allowing 31 out of 574 federally recognized Tribes to do so thus far.

AI/AN survivors continued to face barriers to accessing post-rape care, including forensic examinations necessary for criminal cases.

1. Abortion in the USA: The Human Rights Crisis in the Aftermath of Dobbs, 5 August ↩︎
2. USA: CBP One: A blessing or a trap?, 8 May ↩︎
3. “Amnesty International urges university administrations to respect and protect students’ rights to protest”, 24 April ; ↩︎
4. “Amnesty International USA condemns university administrations’ responses to campus protests”, 3 May ↩︎
5. USA: The Cost of Doing Business? The Petrochemical Industry’s Toxic Pollution in the USA, 25 January ↩︎
6. “Amnesty International USA condemns Alabama’s execution of Kenneth Smith, calls for moratorium on use of the death penalty as first critical step”, 26 January ↩︎
7. “U.S. Parole Commission denies Leonard Peltier’s request for freedom; President Biden should grant clemency”, 2 July ↩︎
8. “Israel/OPT: New evidence of unlawful Israeli attacks in Gaza causing mass civilian casualties amid real risk of genocide”, 12 February ↩︎
9. “Israel/OPT: Israeli air strikes that killed 44 civilians further evidence of war crimes – new investigation”, 27 May ↩︎
10. “Israel/OPT: Israeli attacks targeting Hamas and other armed group fighters that killed scores of displaced civilians in Rafah should be investigated as war crimes”, 27 August ↩︎