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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 

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