Law Student Volunteer, Academic Year, Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section

The mission of the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section is to enforce federal laws relating to: (1) complex immigration and border crimes; (2) international human rights violations; and (3) certain federal crimes of violence committed outside the United States.

Where U.S. federal jurisdiction exists, HRSP seeks to prosecute human rights violators under the federal criminal statutes proscribing torture, war crimes, genocide, female genital mutilation, and recruitment or use of child soldiers. The Section also prosecutes human rights violators under other statutes as appropriate, including U.S. criminal and civil immigration and naturalization laws in order to revoke U.S. citizenship or other legal status and obtain criminal penalties as appropriate. HRSP is home to the War Crimes Accountability Team, created by the Attorney General in 2022 to centralize and strengthen the Justice Department’s ongoing work to hold accountable those who have committed war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine and provide wide-ranging technical assistance, including operational assistance and advice regarding criminal prosecutions, evidence collection, forensics, and relevant legal analysis. The teamalso plays an integral role in the Department’s ongoing investigations of potential war crimes over which the U.S. possesses jurisdiction.

In addition, HRSP prosecutes certain other cases of crimes of violence committed abroad, particularly crimes that fall under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA). In its MEJA enforcement work, HRSP coordinates and participates in investigations and prosecutions of individuals employed by or supporting United States military forces overseas who commit murder, sex crimes, and other federal felony offenses. Similarly, HRSP investigates and prosecutes cases involving violent crimes that fall under the Special Maritime and Territorial Jurisdiction of the United States.

HRSP investigates and prosecutes complex immigration offenses that undermine the integrity of our nation’s borders, endangering national security as well as the lives of smuggled persons themselves. HRSP targets international criminal networks involved in smuggling of persons and trafficking fraudulent travel and identification documents. HRSP places particular emphasis on dismantling those international networks that terrorists and other criminals could exploit to enter the United States without detection, and those that pose serious humanitarian concerns. The office helps lead Joint Task Force Alpha (JTFA), an inter-agency partnership between DOJ and DHS that combines dedicated prosecutors, agents, and analysts with specialized expertise from across the country to build criminal cases against leaders, organizers, and facilitators of human smuggling and trafficking crimes. JTFA targets criminal networks operating south of the U.S. border that abuse, exploit, or endanger migrants being smuggled, pose national security threats, or have links to transnational organized crime.