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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center

@kennedyhrc.bsky.social
1.7K followers 40 following 800 posts

Exposing injustice and championing human rights, inspired by the legacy of Sen. Robert and Ethel Kennedy. Not Affiliated with RFK Jr.

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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
1/ In 2021, our President @kerrykennedy.bsky.social and a KHRC delegation traveled to Del Rio, Texas, to join Guerline Jozef and @haitianbridge.bsky.social to document the conditions and treatment of Haitian asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border.
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Kerry Kennedy @kerrykennedy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
1/ “I almost had a heart attack... The darkest thoughts imaginable went through my mind as to what my mother could be going through.” That is how one man described the terror of discovering that his elderly, disabled mother had disappeared from ICE’s online detainee locator.
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Kerry Kennedy @kerrykennedy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
2/ When ICE removes someone from the detainee locator, they don’t just disappear from the database. They actually disappear themselves. And once they disappear, so does their access to their families, their attorneys, the courts, and the due process they’re entitled to.
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Kerry Kennedy @kerrykennedy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
3/ Enforced disappearances like this violate international law. That’s why @kennedyhrc.bsky.social joined 30+ organizations in petitioning the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances to intervene. 🔗 Here’s everything we’re asking the UN to do: rekhrc.org/3Vj91tu
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
1/ ICE’s unprecedented policy change is designed to allow the swift deportation of people without access to counsel, the courts, or due process, and has resulted in the United States government’s enforced disappearance of thousands of people in its custody.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
1/ Fardin Sharifipour came to the U.S. from Afghanistan at age eight and has spent more than 40 years building a life in New York State. He’s a husband, father, grandfather, and small-business owner who runs a pizza shop in his community.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
1/ ICE has placed more than 50,000 people on 24/7 surveillance since June 2025, when it quietly adopted a new rule requiring GPS ankle shackling of people fighting deportation in immigration court, absent any evidence of flight risk. That’s why we filed a lawsuit to stop ICE in June 2026.
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Austin Kocher, PhD @austinkocher.com · 26/09/2026
More than 50,000 people are on ICE ankle monitors. Anthony Enriquez of @kennedyhrc.bsky.social spoke about the long fight against them at my September 24 conversation on the monitors. austinkocher.substack.com/p/this-is-re...
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
1/ In 2012, our President @kerrykennedy.bsky.social traveled to Western Sahara to meet with members of the Sahrawi people, the Indigenous population of the territory, many of whom had been targeted by Moroccan authorities for peacefully advocating for their rights and self-determination.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
1/ ICE has placed more than 50,000 people on 24/7 surveillance since it secretly adopted a new policy in June 2025. The new rule abandons decades of ICE policies requiring an individualized assessment to determine appropriate conditions of release. That's why we sued ICE in June 2026.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
“We want to make sure that we bequeath to our descendants a better & safer world than the one in which we live today—a world in which people will be free from the terrors of war & oppression, free from the handicaps of ignorance & poverty, free to fulfill their own destiny.” -Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
A judge had already found it was more likely than not that Mohamed Hassan Jeylani, a 39-year-old Somali refugee, would face persecution if returned to Somalia. Yet ICE arrested him on Christmas Eve and detained him for nearly seven months anyway. 🔗 More about the case: rekhrc.org/4xGdKmd
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
"The free way of life proposes ends, but it does not prescribe means. It believes that the best ideas come, not from edict & ideology, but from free inquiry & free experiment; & it regards dissent, not as treason to the state, but as the tested mechanism of social progress." -Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
1/ In defiance of its own policy, ICE has detained a record number of pregnant, postpartum and nursing people and has failed to monitor their health, leading to life-threatening complications, including a record number of miscarriages.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
1/ In 2019, Venezuelan forces opened fire on unarmed members of the Pemón Indigenous community of Kumarakapay near the Venezuela-Brazil border, killing civilians and violently repressing communities resisting the government’s blockade of humanitarian aid.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
“A change of façade is not a change of regime.” Our Sr. Staff Attorney for Latin America, Isabel Carlota Roby, makes clear in her letter to the editor in the @miamiherald.com that removing Maduro has not dismantled the structures responsible for years of human rights abuses in Venezuela. Full LTE ⬇️.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
1/ “If you’re gonna walk the streets of St. Tammany Parish w/ dreadlocks & chee wee hairstyles... you can expect a visit from a sheriff’s deputy.” - St. Tammany Parish Sheriff, 2010. The parish has a long history of biased policing, including stopping & searching Black people w/out justification.
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Kerry Kennedy @kerrykennedy.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
1/ The photo you’re seeing below is the so-called “calming area” used by guards at Alligator Alcatraz, where people were held for up to two hours at a time. Imagine trying to sleep in here or even trying to stretch your legs.
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Kerry Kennedy @kerrykennedy.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
2/ A new report from the DHS’ internal watchdog found that people were held in these cages if they “failed to comply with a lawful command.” But in a setting with virtually no oversight, who decides what a “lawful” command is? This is outrageous!
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Kerry Kennedy @kerrykennedy.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
3/ Alligator Alcatraz may have closed, but we likely know only a fraction of the abuses people endured there. How many more horrors will it take before there is accountability? More information ⬇️.
nytimes.com
‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Used Small Cages to Confine Migrants, DHS Watchdog Report Says
The Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog provided new details about conditions at the now-shuttered Florida detention center.
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Kerry Kennedy @kerrykennedy.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Reflecting on my father’s Day of Affirmation Address at @harvardkennedy.bsky.social. As we approach the 60th anniversary of that speech next June, I hope every one of us can take this opportunity to reflect on its legacy and what it asks of us today.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
(1/2) 54,000 people are now under constant surveillance by ICE through its expanded ankle-monitoring program. Meanwhile, the private prison giant GEO Group is cashing in on this taxpayer-funded abuse, with its subsidiary, B.I. Incorporated, winning a $1 billion contract in 2025.
scrippsnews.com
The big and growing business of ICE ankle monitors
A Scripps News investigation reveals how ICE's shift from a low-cost smartphone app to GPS ankle monitors is generating significant revenue for the largest private operator of ICE detention centers.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
“The road toward equality of freedom is not easy, and great cost and danger march alongside all of us… Still, even in the turbulence of protest and struggle is greater hope for the future.” - Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
"For it is not enough to allow dissent. We must demand it. We dissent from the fact that millions are trapped in poverty while the nation grows rich. We dissent from the conditions & hatreds which deny a full life to our fellow citizens because of the color of their skin." - Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
1/ ICE has dramatically expanded its use of 24-hr GPS monitoring, subjecting nearly 50K people to constant electronic surveillance. Our clients report burns, shocks & bruises, losing jobs because of the stigma of ankle monitors, & living in constant fear that a malfunction could lead to detention. 🧵
nytimes.com
Opinion | ICE’s ‘Arbitrary, Cruel and Costly’ Treatment of Haitians
Readers react to the crackdown on Haitians in Ohio, who are being forced to wear G.P. S. ankle monitors. Also: Democrats rebranding; Trump’s Lake Ontario effect.
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Kerry Kennedy @kerrykennedy.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
I'm in Belém do Pará, Brazil, in the Amazon region with @kennedyhrc.bsky.social for an extraordinary event organized by the Vladimir Herzog Institute. We’re here in dialogue with media workers covering the Amazon region on environmental issues, including threats from the illegal logging industry.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
(1/3) The South Louisiana ICE Processing Center is known for its abysmal conditions, including rotten food, non-potable drinking water, widespread abuse, and medical neglect. An ICE spokesperson, however, claimed that “being in detention is a choice.”
katc.com
Detained at Basile: Family, advocates concerned about conditions at South Louisiana ICE Processing Center
An Office of Professional Responsibility report shows the detention center was inspected in March. It notes that some detainees expressed dissatisfaction with the facility’s medical services and food....
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
"If freedom is to be meaningful, independence must be accompanied by the desire to forge a nation patterned upon the people's desires. Otherwise, freedom can be meaningless in its motives and futile in its operation." - Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
(1/3) Nine years ago, the Myanmar military and authorities launched a brutal genocidal campaign against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar’s Rakhine State.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
The U.S. government has a legal obligation to keep records and report statistics on how many pregnant, postpartum, and nursing women are jailed in ICE detention. But the government isn’t following the law. 🔗 Read the horrifying accounts we heard from some of these women: rekhrc.org/3SKglx8
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
ICE is jailing pregnant women, shackling them, placing them in solitary confinement, and denying them adequate medical care, all in violation of its own policy. 🔗 Read the full collection of testimonies in a letter we submitted to ICE leadership: rekhrc.org/3SKglx8
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Kerry Kennedy @kerrykennedy.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
(1/3) Nearly 18 years ago, just before midnight on November 8, 2008, Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorian immigrant who had lived in the U.S. for 16 years, was murdered in Long Island, New York, by a group of teenagers while on his way home from work.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
(1/2) Anti-Latino hate crimes in the U.S. have surged 239% from 2015-2025, more than tripling over the past decade, fueled by U.S. government rhetoric and policies. In 2007, Latino residents were the target of 61% of all reported hate crimes in Suffolk County.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
(1/3) “To find out that my brother was killed because he looks like me… I’m a citizen of this country, but I don’t feel safe, in 2008 or now in 2026.” - Joselo Lucero during his testimony before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
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Kerry Kennedy @kerrykennedy.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
(1/4) Watching this video, I am filled with overwhelming anger and shame. Shame that in this country, “the land of the free,” people can be stripped of their dignity and treated with such profound cruelty at the stroke of a pen. 🧵
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Kerry Kennedy @kerrykennedy.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
(2/4) The Trump admin stripped some 300,000 Haitians of their legal status overnight. Many of these people have spent decades building their lives in the U.S., and now they’re being branded with a tracking device that restricts their movement. It is humiliating. It is dehumanizing. And it is cruel.
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Kerry Kennedy @kerrykennedy.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
(3/4) This past June, @kennedyhrc.bsky.social, alongside the Amica Center and Zuckerman Spaeder LLP, filed a lawsuit to end ICE’s expanded use of ankle monitors, which forced nearly 50,000 people into a system of arbitrary electronic surveillance.
rekhrc.org
M.O. v. Helland: Fighting 24/7 GPS surveillance by ICE - Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center
This case before the Third Circuit challenges the constitutionality of prolonged detention without a bond hearing under a statute the government claims gives it the power to indefinitely detain anyone...
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Kerry Kennedy @kerrykennedy.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
(4/4) The State Department’s own July advisory places Haiti at Level 4, warning Americans not to travel there due to widespread violent crime, kidnapping, and collapsed law enforcement capacity. The hypocrisy at the heart of this policy is as staggering as its cruelty.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
"All of us are most concerned about the kind of America we want to pass on to our children... A world in which people will be free from the terrors of war and oppression, free from the handicaps of ignorance and poverty... free to fulfill their own destiny." - Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
(1/4) “They’re poisoning the blood of our country.” “They’re not humans, they’re animals.” - President Trump describing immigrant communities in the U.S. In 2008, that same dehumanizing language preceded the murder of Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorian immigrant killed in a hate crime on Long Island.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
(1/5) 24. That’s how many lives ICE has claimed this year alone after the death of Edwin Lopez-Cornejo, a 41-year-old man from El Salvador, at the Delaney Hall Detention Facility on August 1.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
(1/3) #Bangladesh: We join 7 human rights organizations in calling on PM Tarique Rahman to address years of unchecked expansion of surveillance and interception capabilities across state institutions through comprehensive reforms.
rekhrc.org
Joint Statement on Surveillance and Interception in Bangladesh - Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center
Tags Share The below joint statement, sent to the Prime Minister of Bangladesh Tarique Rahman on July 28, calls on the Government of Bangladesh to reform its surveillance and interception laws and pra...
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Kerry Kennedy @kerrykennedy.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
(1/3) Government contracts aren’t a blank check for abuse. Last year, airline companies CSI Aviation and GlobalX worked alongside the Trump administration to illegally fly hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador - even as a federal judge ordered them to turn the planes around.
theguardian.com
Venezuelan men sue aviation firms who flew them to notorious Salvadorian jail
Exclusive: CSI Aviation and GlobalX accused of violating civil rights as part of Trump immigration crackdown
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Kerry Kennedy @kerrykennedy.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
(2/3) Now, we’re taking CSI and GlobalX to court. Earlier this month, @kennedyhrc.bsky.social, Farra & Wang, Hausfeld LLP, and @bergermontague.bsky.social filed a federal class action lawsuit challenging the airlines’ role in transporting over 230 Venezuelan men to El Salvador on March 15, 2025.
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Kerry Kennedy @kerrykennedy.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
(3/3) Private companies that knowingly enable unlawful acts have no excuse. They had a choice, and we intend to hold them accountable for the one they made.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
"Throughout the history of mankind, man has had to struggle to create a system of law and of government in which fundamental freedoms would be linked with the enforcement of justice... And we know that if one man's rights are denied, the rights of all are endangered." - Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
(1/2) You’ve heard from Joselo Lucero in parts 1 and 2 of this series. Now hear from his legal counsel, Rafaela Uribe, as explain why this case is a landmark effort to seek justice for Joselo's brother (Marcelo Lucero) and challenge the climate of discrimination and violence that enabled his murder.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
(1/3) Our Sr. Staff Attorney for Latin America, Isabel Carlota Roby, pressed members of Congress on what authority the United States has to call for the dismantling of an international institution recognized by 125 sovereign states.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
"We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of all... We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge." - Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
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Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center @kennedyhrc.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
After years of escalating anti-Latino rhetoric in his community, Marcelo Lucero was killed in a racially motivated attack. But the conditions that foregrounded his murder never disappeared. On Aug. 6, we tell the IACHR the U.S. bears responsibility. Help us pack the room: rekhrc.org/44Utiao
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