US President Donald Trump and other US political leaders have been accused of using “racist hate speech” targeting migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in the US.

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) said the “growing racist hate speech”, coupled with intensified immigration crackdowns, amounted to “grave human rights violations”.

The committee pointed to the use of “derogatory and dehumanising language” and harmful stereotypes targeting the refugees and asylum seekers.

It said in a recent report that these groups had been portrayed “as criminals or as a burden, by politicians and influential public figures at the highest level of the state party, particularly its president”.

This “fosters intolerance and may incite racial discrimination and hate crimes”, the CERD report said.

The committee also voiced concern over the “systematic use of racial profiling” by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other officers deployed in Trump’s immigration crackdown.

The targeting of “persons of Hispanic/Latino, African or Asian origin and arbitrary identity checks… have reportedly resulted in the widespread arrest of refugees, asylum seekers, migrants and persons perceived as such”, it said.

At least 675,000 people had been deported since January 2025, when Trump returned to power, it noted.

The CERD is composed of 18 independent experts tasked with monitoring how countries implement an international convention on eliminating racism.

The committee also denounced the “excessive use of force during immigration enforcement operations”, the committee noted that at least eight people had died since January during ICE operations or while in ICE custody.

The CERD report follows a submission from the American Civil Liberties Union in February calling for an investigation into rights violations during the Trump administration’s dramatic immigration crackdown in Minnesota and elsewhere.

Thousands of federal ICE agents carried out weeks of sweeping raids and arrests in Minnesota earlier this year in what the Trump administration claimed were missions targeting criminals.

The operation ended after outrage over the killings of two US citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and the arrest of a five-year-old child.

The committee’s report condemned the “drastic increase” in the number of detainees held at immigration detention facilities.

The numbers reportedly rose from 40,000 in late 2024 to around 73,000 at the start of 2026.

The report cited “inhuman conditions and inadequate medical care” in immigration facilities, saying that at least 29 migrants had died in detention in 2025, and six iso far this year.

The committee also slammed the Trump administration’s axing of longstanding guidelines and policies limiting immigration enforcement operations and arrests near schools, hospitals and faith-based facilities.

In the report’s recommendations, the US is urged to suspend all immigration enforcement operations and conduct a rights-based review of its new immigration laws.

It also called on Washington to publicly condemn racial discrimination and racist hate speech.