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the DREAM Act to provide DACA
beneficiaries with a means to obtain regular
migration status; it had not been passed into
law at the end of the year.
More than 17,000 unaccompanied children
and 26,000 people travelling as families were
apprehended after irregularly crossing the
border with Mexico between January and
August. Families were detained for months,
many without proper access to medical care
and legal counsel, while pursuing claims to
remain in the USA.
WOMEN’S RIGHTS
Attacks on the rights of women and girls were
broad and multi-faceted. President Trump’s
administration overturned policies that
required universities to investigate sexual
violence as gender discrimination and
suspended equal pay initiatives that had
helped women to identify whether they were
being paid less than male colleagues. Attacks
on women’s reproductive health and rights
were particularly virulent. There were
repeated efforts by the government and
Congress to withdraw funding from Planned
Parenthood − a health organization providing
vital reproductive and other health services,
particularly to women on low incomes. The
government issued rules exempting
employers from providing health insurance
coverage for contraception if it conflicted with
their religious or moral beliefs, putting
millions of women at risk of losing access to
contraception. Gross inequalities remained
for Indigenous women in accessing care
following rape, including access to
examinations, forensic evidence kits for use
by medical staff, and other essential health
care services. The government also
introduced the so-called “global gag rule”,
prohibiting any US financial assistance to any
hospitals or organizations that provide
information about, or access to, safe and
legal abortion care.
RIGHTS OF LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL,
TRANSGENDER AND INTERSEX PEOPLE
Murders of LGBTI people increased during
the year, against a background of continuing
discrimination against LGBTI people in state
and federal law. Further discriminatory
measures by the government against LGBTI
people increased. The USA continued to lack
federal protections banning discrimination on
the grounds of sexual orientation and gender
identity in the workplace, housing or health
care. Transgender people continued to be
particularly marginalized. President Trump’s
administration overturned guidelines that
protected transgender students in public
schools who used facilities that corresponded
with their gender identity. In August,
President Trump ordered a reversal in the
policy announced in 2016 to allow openly
transgender individuals to enlist in the
military, which had been due to take effect on
1 January 2018. On 30 October, a federal
judge issued a preliminary injunction
blocking implementation of the directive. In
December, a judge ruled that transgender
people would be allowed to enlist in the
military from 1 January 2018, as legal cases
proceeded.
COUNTER-TERROR AND SECURITY
On 28 November, a federal jury in
Washington DC convicted Libyan national
Ahmed Abu Khatallah on terrorism charges
relating to an attack on a US diplomatic
compound in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012 in
which four US nationals were killed. The jury
acquitted him of murder. In August, the
judge had ruled that any statements made by
Ahmed Abu Khatallah while held
incommunicado for nearly two weeks on
board a US naval vessel after being seized by
US forces in Libya could be admitted as
evidence. On 29 October, US forces seized
another Libyan national, Mustafa al-Imam, in
Libya. He was flown to the USA and
appeared in federal court on 3 November
after five days’ incommunicado detention. At
the end of the year he was facing trial for
terrorism offences in relation to the Benghazi
attack.
After an attack in New York on 31 October
in which eight people died and 12 were
injured, Uzbek national Sayfullo
Habibullaevic Saipov was charged and due to
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be tried in federal court, despite calls from
two senior Senators for his transfer to military
custody as an “enemy combatant” and
comments from President Trump that he
would consider sending him to Guantánamo
Bay. President Trump flouted the
presumption of innocence in a series of posts
on Twitter in which he called for the death
penalty for Sayfullo Saipov.
In January, under the administration of
President Barack Obama, 18 detainees were
transferred from Guantánamo Bay detention
centre to Oman, Saudi Arabia and United
Arab Emirates. Most of the remaining 41
Guantánamo Bay detainees were held
without charge or trial. President Trump had
made a pre-election pledge to keep the
detention facility open and increase the
numbers of detainees held there; no further
detainee transfers were made into or out of
Guantánamo Bay during the year.
Refusal in October by the Supreme Court to
consider two jurisdictional challenges allowed
military commission proceedings to continue
at Guantánamo Bay, in contravention of
international fair trial standards.
In October, Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed
Haza al-Darbi, a Saudi Arabian national, was
sentenced by military commission to 13
years’ imprisonment after pleading guilty in
2014 to conspiracy, terrorism and other
offences. He had been arrested in Azerbaijan
in June 2002 and handed over to US agents
two months later.
TORTURE AND OTHER ILL-TREATMENT
In an interview on 25 January, President
Trump expressed his support for torture while
stating that he would “rely” upon the
Secretary of Defense, the CIA Director and
others in deciding whether the USA should
use it. No action was taken to end impunity
for the systematic human rights violations,
including torture and enforced
disappearance, committed in a secret
detention programme operated by the CIA
after the attacks on 11 September 2001.
At least three people alleged to have been
involved in the secret detention programme
were nominated by President Trump for
senior government roles: Gina Haspel,
selected in February for the role of Deputy
Director of the CIA; Steven Bradbury,
nominated for General Counsel at the
Department of Transportation; and Steven
Engel, nominated to head the Office of Legal
Counsel (OLC) at the Department of Justice.
Gina Haspel was believed to have been CIA
Chief of Staff in Thailand in 2002 when the
CIA ran a so-called “black site” in which at
least two detainees were subjected to torture
and enforced disappearance. She was later
Chief of Staff to the Director of the
Counterterrorism Center, the branch of the
CIA that ran the secret detention programme.
As Acting Assistant Attorney General at the
OLC between 2005 and 2009, Steven
Bradbury authored a number of
memorandums to the CIA giving legal
approval to methods of interrogation and
conditions of detention that violated the
international prohibition of torture and other
ill-treatment. As Deputy Assistant Attorney
General at the OLC in 2007, Steven Engel
was also involved in the writing of one of
those memorandums. On 7 November, the
Senate confirmed his appointment by 51
votes to 47. On 14 November, by 50 votes to
47, the Senate confirmed the appointment of
Steven Bradbury. Gina Haspel’s appointment
did not require Senate confirmation.
A civil jury trial of James Mitchell and John
“Bruce” Jessen, two CIA-contracted
psychologists who had leading involvement in
its detention programme, was due to begin
on 5 September. However, in August an out-
of-court settlement was reached.
On 19 June, the Supreme Court ruled in a
case brought against former US officials by
individuals of Arab or South Asian descent
who were among the hundreds of foreign
nationals taken into custody in the USA in the
wake of the attacks of 11 September 2001.
Following the attacks, detainees were held for
months in harsh conditions and reported a
range of abuses. The Supreme Court stated
that if the allegations were true, then what
happened to the detainees “was tragic”, and
“nothing in this opinion should be read to
condone the treatment to which they contend