Searching for God # 147

 According to the American Immigration Council, (americanimmigrationcouncil.org) in a new report that “Details ICE’s Expanding and increasingly Unaccountable Detention System, January 23, 2026, by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick: 

When President Trump took office, U.S. Immigration and Customs enforcement (ICE) was holding toughly 40,000 people in a national network of detention centers on any given day. In just one year, this number has increased by over 75%, with a record of 73,000 people being held in detention as of mid-January....The number of people held in detention on any given day increased by over 75% in one year....The Trump administration has dramatically changed the profile of who is being arrested by increasing the use of ‘at large’ arrests in American communities by 600% leading to an unprecedented deployment of federal law enforcement. With the funding provided by the One Big Beautiful Bill, ICE has enough funding to operate upwards of 135,000 detention beds through the end of 2028. These changes in arrest practices have led to a 2,450% increase in the number of people with no criminal record being held in ICE detention on any given day. President Trump’s executive order calling for the maximum use of detention has created a ‘no release’ system where increasingly few individuals are able to seek release on bond. By the end of November 2025, discretionary releases from detention fell by 87%. With release on bond no longer an option for many people seeking relief, and deleterious conditions inside facilities, immigrants are increasingly giving up. As of November 2025, 14.3 people were deported directly from detention for every one person released from ICE detention pending a hearing. 

For a scribe untrained in the nuances of immigration, refugee, asylum-seekers and IDPs, I have what amounts to another ‘kindergarten’ type question:  

Although there is no declared civil war in the United States, and no formal terrorist cell raising hell within the nation’s borders, nevertheless, there is a concerted, highly funded and nefarious system in place that is and continues to target those, many of whom have no criminal record, for what effectively amounts to ‘internal displacement’. Are they, whether by definition, and/or by moral/ethical common sense, able to be categorized as IDPs? And if so, what would that categorization mean for those thousands in detention, as well as for the American justice system? Let's have a look at what we can learn about how IDPs are defined. 

From the UNHCR Emergency Handbook: 

The internationally endorsed definition of an internally displaced person (IDP) is found in the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, the main international framework for IDP protection 

Being an IDP is not a legal status that may be granted, refused, or ceased 

IDPs remain citizens or habitual residents of their countryThe IDP definition included in legal and policy frameworks at the national, regional, and local levels must be consistent with, and should not be narrower than, what is provided for in the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement 

The International Recommendations on IDP Statistics (IRIS) provide critical guidance on how to “translate” the IDP definition of the Guiding Principles into statistical terms 

There is no legal definition of who constitutes an “internally displaced person” in international law. According to the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are: 

 "[…] persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized state border." 

This definition is meant to be descriptive rather than normative, drawing attention to the characteristics of IDPs that make them inherently vulnerable. It does not confer a special legal status to IDPs because, being inside their country, they remain entitled to all the rights and guarantees as citizens and other habitual residents of their country. As such, national authorities have the primary responsibility to prevent arbitrary displacement, protect IDPs and support durable solutions for them. 

 

Without a formal internationally accepted and litigated definition of IDPs, and given that rather than being ‘forced to flee’ they have been quasi-militarily arrested, removed from their places of employment, from schools and hospitals, as well as from the street, they have, nevertheless been forced from their homes, families, communities. Rather than having to ‘avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized conflict,’ they are subject to obvious ‘violations of their human rights’ and are effectively the victims of a ‘human-made, trumped-up disaster.’ 

“Inherently vulnerable,’ they ‘remain entitled to all the rights and guarantees of citizens’ which, in the case of the United States, means that that entitlement to, for example, habeus corpus, bond and legal counsel have been effectively dismissed by the U.S. government. 

 

From refugeerights.org, the website of the International Refugee Assistance Project, we read: 

IRAP’s litigation department brings systematic litigation to help refugees, asylum-seekers and others in need of a safe home. Our litigation team has won numerous court victories that opened and expedited pathways to safety in the U.S. 

 

And further: 

Article 33 of the 1951 Refugee Convention prohibits the expulsion or return (reloulement) of a refugee to any territory where their life or freedom would be threatened. Known as non-reloulement, this rule is the cornerstone of international refugee law. It stops countries from forcing refugees back to a border or country where they face danger... The protection does not apply if there are reasonable grounds to see the refugee as a danger to national security. According to data from  UNHCR Global Trends report,  there are approximately 68.7 million IDPs compared to 41.6 million refugees worldwide. 

According to reporting from immigration tracking groups, human rights monitors and news outlets like The Guardian and Associated Press, the U.S. has pursued removal agreements with over 50 nations and carried out third-country deportations to at least 25-35 countries. (From AI) 

(The list of those countries includes): Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Panama, St. Lucia and St. Kitts and Nevis, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Ghana, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierre Leone, South Sudan, Uzbekistan, Moldova, Kosovo. (From AI) 

 

Under the headline, High-Risk third-Party and Destination Countries, we read (from AI): 

Central African Republic (CAR): Operating under a U.S. State Department Level 4 (Do Not Travel) advisory, CAR has received dozens of deportees from nations like Cuba, Afghanistan,  

Iran and Turkey. 

Equatorial Guinea: the U.S. has utilized agreement to send deportees to Malabo, where human rights groups and lawyers reported instances of detainees being bound, beaten and held under 24/7 armed guard. 

El Salvador: Hundreds of individuals, including non-citizens and Venezuelans, have been sent or transferred into high-security detention environments like the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) 

Other African and Global South Nations: Agreements and deportation flights have targeted nations carrying severe security of humanitarian challenges, including: Burundi, Cameroon, Rwanda, Sierra Leone. 

 

From theweek.com, in a piece entitled: The 8 ‘third countries’ where ICE deport the most people, by Justin Klawans, (published 4 weeks ago) we read: 

Mexico: About 20,000 people without Mexican heritage have been deported to Mexico during the second Trump administration. These deported people are also racing against the clock as the Mexican government ‘gives third-country citizens just 10 days to remain in the country...  

 

From theguardian.com, in a piece entitled, Banished to alien lands: Trumps secret deportation deals, by Louisa Loveluck, September 21, 2026: 

No one would tell the shackled detainees onboard the US immigration plane where they were going. The officers in charge would taunt them when they asked, they said. It was only when the back-seat video screens finally showed a map that the 18 migrants worked it out.  Their destination was Central African Republic (CAR) a country few of them had even heard of. Nika, a 32-year-old Iranian woman, recalled how the handcuffs dug into her wrists. She begged the officers to loosen them, but they did not. Other passengers had it worse, she said. Some of the men were restrained in black and yellow body wraps, as if mummified after resisting orders to get on the plane. Nika, who had fled Iran 18 months earlier after protesting against its regime, had imagined the US as a place of sanctuary. Iran was already one of the most repressive countries in the world when she left, and its horrors had only deepened since then: security forces gunned down tho9uands of other demonstrators this year, then Donald Trump’s administration launched the war there......Nika is one of more than 25,000 people deported by the Trump administration to countries that are not their own. About 20,000 people have been bussed to Mexico,....And more than 5,000 others have been put on flight to countries in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and central Asia to which they have no connection, and the often returned to the countries where the US immigrations judges had ruled their lives or liberty were at risk. Human rights lawyers describe these so-called third-country national arrangements as part of a ‘show of force’ by the US intended to discourage immigrants and asylum-seekers from entering. People from Peru and Columbia have been sent to The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). On August 20, four Cubans, a Brazilian and a Cameroonian refused to disembark in Liberia and were sent to Equatorial Guinea instead. 

  

Is is not far past time for legal beagles, international human rights professionals, perhaps even the United Nations Security Council to weigh in on the crimes against these thousands, growing daily, whose rights, conditions and futures can only be described as desperate, hopeless, homeless, stateless and, whether they are specifically classed as IDPs or not, they warrant a muscular, effective highly funded primarily international NGO response? 

Through no fault, crime, even indiscretion, of their own, except perhaps refusing to obey brutal and inhumane orders from a brutal and inhumane ICE force comprised of thousands of ill-trained, ill-equipped and likely maliciously-motivated angry young men they have been detained, and deported. Clearly, ICE is designed, funded and led by a maliciously-motivated Trump administration whose heinous acts, policies and threats know no precedent in history.  

Have they, the US administration, perhaps given new weight, numbers, and justification for a whole new class of men, women and children who warrant the appellation, Internal Displaced Persons (IDPs)? And in the process have they, the Trump administration, individually and collectively joined the ranks of terrorists, tyrants, despots and war-mongers who make millions of lives unlivable around the world?