Trump’s UN No-Show and ICC Arrest Warrant Push: The Real Bill Comes Due

The United States is due to face its Universal Periodic Review (UPR)—the United Nations’ peer review of every member state’s human rights record—in Geneva on November 10, but the Trump administration announced in 2025 that Washington would not take part, and the U.S. already failed to show up in November 2025, forcing a reschedule [1]. Ahead of the review, U.S. and international rights groups including Human Rights Watch filed 192 submissions documenting a sharply worsened rights record, citing the dismantling of civil rights enforcement, violations of the ban on non-refoulement through the sending of Venezuelan men to torture in El Salvador’s prisons, retaliation against opponents, restrictions on transgender people, removal of climate-warming pollutant regulations, and escalated sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a whole [1]. State laws and targeted federal funding cuts have sharply reduced access to safe abortion and reproductive health care, authorities have separated breastfeeding and other parents from their children during the immigration crackdown, and pregnant women have been detained despite longstanding government policy to avoid this except in limited cases, while the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has raised concerns about deaths in immigration detention and sanctions against the ICC and Palestinian rights groups [1].

Separately, a human rights delegation plans to submit evidence to the ICC urging prosecutors to seek arrest warrants for former U.S. President Donald Trump and other U.S. officials, alleging complicity in genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity [2]. The ICC is a permanent international court that prosecutes individuals for the gravest crimes and can issue arrest warrants if judges find reasonable grounds to believe a suspect committed a crime within its jurisdiction, but the delegation’s submission does not automatically trigger action—prosecutors review evidence independently before deciding whether to open an investigation or request warrants [2].

The new U.S. Congress, with Democrats holding majorities in both the House and Senate after the November 3, 2026 midterm elections, is being pressed by Human Rights Watch to use its oversight powers against the administration, including on abuses in immigration enforcement by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its agencies, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), and to restore gutted oversight bodies to full force [3]. The group also flagged alleged violations of the laws of war in Iran, continued lethal strikes on boats in the Pacific and Caribbean resulting in over 240 extrajudicial killings, approval of a bill allowing the government to claw back about $9 billion in previously approved aid including support for human rights, and the removal of tens of thousands of third-country nationals to countries where they faced human rights violations [3]. Amnesty International has separately called on newly elected U.S. representatives to protect human rights, equality, and the rule of law following the election [4].