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For Immediate Release
October, 06 2008, 10:51am EDT
Contact:
Rachel Myers, (212) 549-2689 or 2666; media@aclu.org
As Declaration Of Human Rights Approaches 60, ACLU Announces New Campaign And Contest
Document Initiated Global Human Rights Movement
NEW YORK
In anticipation of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights (UDHR), the American Civil Liberties Union today announced
the launch of "Dignity Begins at Home," a new campaign to celebrate the
document that is the cornerstone of the modern human rights system.
Despite the United States' involvement in drafting the UDHR and
supposed support of the document, it has failed to honor its
commitments under the UDHR, especially within U.S. borders.
"The Universal Declaration of Human
Rights was the first document to recognize the inherent dignity and
inalienable rights of all people in the world," said Jamil Dakwar,
Director of the ACLU Human Rights Program. "If the United States wishes
to claim the high moral ground and assert leadership on the issue of
human rights, it can't just talk the talk; it must also walk the walk
and take its human rights commitments more seriously at home and
abroad."
As part of the "Dignity Begins at Home" campaign, the ACLU has launched a new website, www.udhr60.com.
The website contains information about the UDHR and a petition calling
on the U.S. government and the next president to recommit to the
Declaration.
In addition, the ACLU is holding a
video contest for youth. Contestants between the ages of 16 and 23
years old are asked to submit an original short video about an article
in the UDHR. The winner will be flown to New York City to attend the
U.N. General Assembly session celebrating the anniversary on December
10, 2008. The winning video will be featured on YouTube and www.udhr60.com.
"Our goal is to ensure that the
principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are recognized
and enforced in the United States," said Dakwar. "The struggle for
universal human rights is far from over, and the next administration
can lead by example by renewing the U.S. commitment to dignity for all
here at home."
Adopted by the United Nations on
December 10, 1948, the UDHR details the basic rights and protections
guaranteed to all people, regardless of "race, color, sex, language,
religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin,
property, birth or other status." The UDHR was drafted in the aftermath
of World War II in reaction to the mass targeting and killing of people
because of their race, religion, sexuality and opinions. Eleanor
Roosevelt chaired the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, which drafted
the declaration.
More information about the "Dignity
Begins at Home" campaign, including the ACLU's video contest and a
history of the UDHR, can be found online at: www.udhr60.org
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
(212) 549-2666LATEST NEWS
Trump State Dept. Accused of ‘Largest Fee Fraud in History’ of US Immigration System
An immigration researcher at the Cato Institute found that the Trump administration is "raking in billions of dollars in immigration fees and not providing the adjudications that applicants are entitled to."
Mar 24, 2026
The US State Department under President Donald Trump has been accused of stealing more than a billion dollars from immigrants and sponsors in what experts are calling “the largest fraud in the history of the US immigration system.”
A report published last week by the Cato Institute, written by director of immigration studies David J. Bier, found that the State Department and Department of Homeland Security were receiving millions of applications from immigrants whom Trump has made ineligible for legal status and pocketing the fees without ever processing the requests.
"The US government collected over $1 billion in immigration fees then refused to process the applications," said Austin Kocher, a fellow at Immigration Lab and a professor at Newhouse and Syracuse University in a social media post breaking down the report on Monday. "No denials. No refunds. Just silence."
The report zeroes in on a series of policies signed by Trump and enacted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) head Joseph Edlow, which have collectively barred nationals from 92 countries from immigrating to the US.
One proclamation signed by Trump in December bans legal entry and most visas for the nationals of 40 nations—including Cuba, Venezuela, Nigeria, Iran, and Haiti—based on nationality. A memo sent by Edlow extended the freeze to many USCIS immigration-benefit applications for people from targeted countries already living in the US, including work authorization and permanent residency filings
Another State Department policy bans visa applications from immigrants in 75 countries from being processed indefinitely, purportedly based on data showing that residents of those countries use welfare at disproportionately high rates.
These policies block more than 320,000 people abroad from entering the US and potentially as many as 561,000 potential permanent residents when those already living in the US are considered.
Although people from these countries are categorically denied immigrant visas and most other visa types under a series of travel bans signed by Trump, the government is still collecting fees for visas, work permits, and green cards.
The report cited evidence that the department has directed consular officers that they "should not counsel applicants or advise them" that they are subject to the bans when they come in for their interviews, because it "could be seen as pre-adjudication."
Upon revealing this directive last month, immigration attorney Curtis Morrison described it as a way that "embassies scam visa applicants subject to the travel ban out of fees."
As Bier explained:
To immigrate to the United States or to obtain authorization to work or travel internationally, noncitizens must usually pay a fee to have their applications processed. USCIS’s immigration fee revenues were nearly $7 billion, and the Consular Affairs budget was about $6 billion.
The fees stack up. For instance, to sponsor a spouse, a US citizen must pay a $675 fee to USCIS to petition for their spouse to obtain lawful permanent residence. Then, the immigrant must pay $1,440 to adjust status from temporary to permanent residence. That application takes so long that people usually pay $560 for the spouse to receive an employment authorization document, so the total fees can add up to $2,675.
Bier estimated that more than 2 million applications were affected by the bans, with fees coming primarily from work permit filings and permanent residency or immigrant visa applications.
He explained that these fees are difficult to track precisely because the government does not publish detailed statistics on them. He was also forced to rely on out-of-date fee statistics from 2023-24 because the Trump administration "has simply stopped publishing most statistics."
That said, Bier noted that the numbers are most likely to “understate reality” because they include only those who likely had their requests processed in the past year, not those whose processing was delayed by backlogs.
Of the more than $1 billion in fees the Trump administration would have collected for services it never rendered, data from previous years suggested that about $543 million came from Cuban immigrants, who filed about 935,000 applications during the period under review.
The next highest were Venezuelans, who paid an estimated $138 million in fees. Iranians, Haitians, and Afghans were also among the nationalities with the highest numbers of unprocessed applications.
The Trump administration has used high-profile instances of fraud committed by members of immigrant groups, such as Somalis in Minneapolis, to cast aspersions upon entire nationalities and target them for immigration bans and attacks by federal law enforcement.
However, as Bier explained before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, based on the findings of a Cato report, "immigrants aren't to blame" for most welfare fraud, accounting for just 5% of it, 31% less per capita than native-born US citizens.
He argued that the Department of Homeland Security "isn't anti-fraud" but instead "openly carrying out the largest fraud in the history of the US immigration system... raking in billions of dollars in immigration fees and not providing the adjudications that applicants are entitled to."
"DHS and State can deny anyone who fails to make their case. Instead, this administration is pocketing thousands of dollars from hardworking Americans and their relatives, including spouses and minor children of US citizens, and then not even looking at their applications," he said. "This is a scam. This is fraud."
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'Mind-Blowing Corruption': Traders Placed Massive Bets Minutes Before Trump Post on Iran
"Who was it? Trump? A family member? A White House staffer?" asked US Sen. Chris Murphy.
Mar 24, 2026
Just minutes before US President Donald Trump momentarily boosted the stock market—and sent oil prices tumbling—with his disputed Monday announcement of peace talks with Iran, unknown traders loaded up on positions that allowed them to profit from the resulting movement in equities and commodities.
The Financial Times reported that "roughly 6,200 Brent and West Texas Intermediate futures contracts changed hands between 6:49 am and 6:50 am New York time on Monday, just a quarter of an hour ahead of the US president’s post on Truth Social that there had in recent days been 'productive conversations' with Tehran to end the war in Iran."
FT added that the notional value of those trades was $580 million.
"Trading volumes for Brent and WTI leapt at the same time, 27 seconds before 6:50 am," the newspaper reported. "Futures tracking the S&P 500 share index jumped in price moments after the oil trade, with volumes also rising significantly during that timeframe. It was not known whether one entity or several entities were behind Monday’s trades."
An unnamed trader at a "major hedge fund" told FT that "my gut from watching markets for the last 25 years is this is really abnormal."
"It’s Monday morning, there’s no important data today, there aren’t any Fed speakers you’d want to front-run. It’s an unusually large trade for a day with no event risk," the trader said. "Somebody just got a lot richer.”
A BBC review of market data similarly found that "traders bet hundreds of millions of dollars on oil contracts just minutes before" Trump's announcement of talks with Iran. Iranian officials publicly denied that they are negotiating with the Trump administration, and Iran's top lawmaker accused the US president of peddling "fake news" in an attempt to "manipulate the financial and oil markets."
The suspiciously timed bets ahead of the US president's post heightened concerns that Trump administration insiders are illegally trading on—and profiting massively from—nonpublic knowledge.
Responding to a report that $1.5 billion worth of S&P 500 futures was purchased just five minutes before Trump's Monday announcement, US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) asked: "Who was it? Trump? A family member? A White House staffer?"
"This is corruption," the senator wrote. "Mind-blowing corruption."
Last week, Murphy joined US Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) in unveiling legislation that would ban prediction markets on "government actions, terrorism, war, assassination, and events where an individual knows or controls the outcome."
The bill came on the heels of suspiciously timed, highly profitable bets related to US military actions in Venezuela and Iran.
The Guardian reported Monday that several newly created accounts on the online prediction platform Polymarket "laid bets on a US-Iran ceasefire over the weekend that appeared to show signs of insider knowledge, according to experts."
Researcher Ben Yorke told the newspaper that the accounts—which are anonymous—"definitely" look like "someone with some degree of inside info."
The Guardian noted that "online crypto watchers and experts suggested that the bets bore the signs of insider trading—both because they bought their positions at market price, and because some of the accounts looked like they could belong to a single investor attempting to conceal their identity by splitting their bet between multiple wallets."
According to Yorke, "Typically, when you see wallet-splitting and deliberate attempts to obfuscate identity, it’s one of two scenarios: either a very large investor trying to shield their position from market impact, or insider trading."
The Trump White House insisted Monday that any suggestion of insider trading "is baseless and irresponsible reporting."
“The White House does not tolerate any administration official illegally profiteering off of insider knowledge," said White House spokesperson Kush Desai.
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'A Declaration of War Against the Working Class': Sanders Demands Bezos Testify Over AI Robot Plan
"Our job is to ensure that this new technology benefits working families and is not simply used as another tool to make the wealthiest people in the world unimaginably richer."
Mar 24, 2026
Sen. Bernie Sanders is demanding that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos testify about plans to use robots powered by artificial intelligence to replace human workers.
In a Monday announcement, Sanders (I-Vt.) cited a report published by The Wall Street Journal outlining Bezos' ambitions "to raise $100 billion for a new fund that would buy up manufacturing companies and seek to use AI technology to accelerate their path to automation."
The Journal obtained investor documents describing the new Bezos initiative as a "manufacturing transformation vehicle" that would buy up firms in key industries such as chipmaking, defense, and aerospace, and use AI to boost the efficiency of their operations.
Sanders, the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, warned that such a plan would risk putting millions of blue-collar manufacturing workers out of jobs.
Because of this, he asked Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), chairman of the HELP Committee, to demand that Bezos testify about his new project’s impact on the working class.
"We must demand that Mr. Bezos come before our committee to explain to the American people why he believes it’s a good idea to replace millions of American workers with robots,” Sanders said. "We need to understand what will happen to these workers... will they simply be thrown out on the street in order to make Mr. Bezos even richer?"
Sanders emphasized the vital role of government in ensuring that advancements in technology are not used to further impoverish workers and erode their collective bargaining power.
"Our job is to ensure that this new technology benefits working families and is not simply used as another tool to make the wealthiest people in the world unimaginably richer," Sanders said. "The American people are increasingly apprehensive about the impact that AI and robotics will have on the economy and their lives. Congress needs to act."
In a separate social media post, Sanders described Bezos' plan as "a declaration of war against the working class."
Sanders for months has been raising alarms about the impact of AI on the global working class and democracy itself.
In December, Sanders called upon the US to impose a nationwide moratorium on the construction of AI data centers, warning of a future envisioned by tech moguls such as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who has said that humans won’t be needed "for most things" thanks to advancements in AI.
"Do you believe that these guys, these multibillionaires, are staying up at night, worrying about what AI and robotics will do to working families of our country and the world?" Sanders asked. "Well, I don’t think so.”
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