On November 3, the Democratic Party won a resounding majority in both the Senate and House of Representatives, giving it control of the 120th Congress that will convene on January 3, 2027. While Donald Trump remains the U.S. president for two more years, the dramatic shift in the balance of power gives Democrats in Congress an opportunity to conduct robust oversight of the Trump administration and shape the direction of U.S. policy, particularly by setting funding priorities, confirming nominees, and legislating.
Now is the time to curb the excesses of the past two years, while restricting and rolling back policies that have harmed communities at home and abroad and have worked to dismantle the rules-based international order that past U.S. governments spent decades helping to build.
While WOLA will issue more comprehensive analyses and proposals in the months ahead, here are four key areas that the new Congress should prioritize regarding Latin America and the Caribbean.
Conduct rigorous oversight
The Trump administration has embarked on a long list of actions and policies that range from blatantly unlawful, to potentially corrupt, to harmful to human rights, to militarily overreaching. Its pursuit of oil and minerals, its desire to stop all migration, and its wrongheaded “kinetic” approach to the very real problem of organized crime deserve far more scrutiny and public access to information, which is the first step toward real accountability and reform.
Areas of high priority for congressional oversight in the Americas include, but are not limited to:
- Ordering the U.S. military to extrajudicially execute at least 243 civilians in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, based on unproven claims of “narcoterrorism.”
- Using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to transfer, without due process, 280 people, including 252 Venezuelan migrants, to El Salvador’s CECOT megaprison where they were subject to torture and other forms of ill-treatment, for which the administration paid the Salvadoran government $4.76 million in State Department Narcotics and Law Enforcement funds.
- Failing to disclose information about billions of dollars held in the Treasury account from the sale of Venezuelan oil and a questionable legal deal to give control of several oilfields to the private company NABEP.
- Violating congressional war powers by involving U.S. personnel in hostilities—through the boat strikes, the Venezuela intervention, and possibly elsewhere under a new “joint operations” framework—without constitutionally required congressional authorization.
- Deciding that the best approach to organized crime—a threat that, unlike insurgencies, thrives on its corrupt ties to governments and licit businesses—is to relabel criminal groups as “terrorists” and pursue them militarily, even though that approach has never done more than fragment criminal groups and pave the way for successors.
Members of Congress, mainly from the minority, have sent dozens of letters to administration officials voicing opposition and requesting information about policies and actions, usually to no avail. Now, Democrats will have more power to demand the release of information and to halt unlawful behavior. They should use their majority for high-profile scrutiny, holding hearings with administration officials, the private sector, former officials, civil society organizations, and others to get a clearer view of the impact and excesses of the past two years’ policies. Refusal to comply with information requests or requirements to testify must trigger stiff consequences.
Start rethinking foreign aid
The fiscal year 2026 budget demonstrated that a Republican-led Congress was willing to assert at least some of its authority over foreign aid. However, the harm from the previous year’s abrupt slashing of foreign assistance and dismantling of USAID persists, as do administration and House Republican efforts to pursue further cuts. Likewise, even as funding has gone to accounts the administration sought to eliminate, like the Democracy Fund, media reports have indicated that most of this support has moved away from the traditional backing of human rights defenders and journalists. Funding to civil society has also been restricted for any group that subscribes to “gender ideology,” around $500 million is being spent to resettle White South Africans as refugees, and programs supporting women and girls have been reduced or cut.
As WOLA has noted, although the law requires transparency, current aid spending is opaque. Since 2025, the State Department has not provided Congress or the public with “the dollar value of all foreign assistance and grantees by category and by country” as spent in the previous year, or planned funding for the current and coming year, as the law requires. Congress should demand transparency over the aid budget to have a clear view not only of the impact of the 2025 and 2026 spending cuts, but also where funds are actually being used and for what. This transparency is especially urgent regarding security assistance, including that flowing through Defense budget channels, which appears to be growing rapidly.
Congress also has the opportunity to rethink, restore, and condition foreign aid for 2028 (and perhaps 2027, depending on what happens with budget negotiations in the coming months). This does not mean reconstructing the aid apparatus that existed before 2025: the Trump administration’s dismantling of the majority of the foreign aid infrastructure opens up the opportunity to build something more nimble, more capable of ensuring that most assistance reaches targeted communities, and more in line with long-term U.S. interests, including lasting security, accountability, and the rule of law. The new Congress can begin designing effective channels for providing robust support for civil society organizations defending universal human rights, restoring and/or increasing support for regional and international agencies, and increasing humanitarian assistance, particularly given the potentially dire consequences of the “Super El Niño” on Latin America and the Caribbean. It also means restoring human rights conditions on U.S. security assistance, including for Colombia, Mexico, and Central America, and ensuring compliance with the Leahy Law (no funding for security units that violate human rights with impunity).
Congress should ensure that the State Department’s International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement funding focuses on strengthening criminal justice institutions, protecting citizens, and combating organized crime-tied corruption, rather than an outdated “drugs and thugs” approach that focuses too heavily on militaries, lethal operations, or deportations. Grants to governments like that in El Salvador, where INL funds were used to imprison expelled migrants, deserve very heavy scrutiny and conditioning. No funding should be provided, through any budget category, for additional boat strikes.
Faced with an executive branch that has ignored congressional appropriation directives, Congress should carefully craft appropriations legislation to safeguard against deliberate circumvention of congressional intent. This means vigorously applying the Impoundment Control Act through the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) and even censuring or impeaching officials who violate Congress’s constitutional power of the purse. It also means a revival of committee chairperson authority to place “holds” on aid when Congress’s intent is not respected. These “holds” are only enforceable when there is a likelihood that ignoring them will have consequences for the administration’s priorities in the next years’ appropriations legislation; committee chairs will have to demonstrate a willingness to go this route when necessary.
Hold DHS accountable
This congressional majority was elected on a wave of outrage at the many excesses and abuses committed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) since 2025: blatant and too frequently fatal use of force violations, racial profiling, cruel and inhumane conditions in detention centers including the in-custody deaths of at least 60 people, family separations, and dangerous deportations—all, at least so far, committed with impunity. The new Congress has a mandate and a moral duty to hold DHS accountable, even if it lacks the executive-branch control and veto-proof majority needed to fundamentally remake a Department whose hasty post-September 11, 2001, creation installed deep flaws that enable today’s politicization and unprofessionalism.
One challenge is that the 119th Congress, using a special legislative rule called “reconciliation,” passed two bills granting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) about a quarter of a trillion dollars, a massive amount of money that is guaranteed through 2029 with less oversight than in the past. While the new Congress probably lacks the two-thirds majority needed to overcome a presidential veto, it must try—repeatedly if necessary—to rescind or claw back as much of this funding as possible.
It should be possible to use the appropriations process to condition future DHS funding on adherence to professional use-of-force standards; use of body-worn cameras; cooperation with local prosecutors when rights are violated; bolstering the credibility of internal investigations and the now-eviscerated agencies charged with carrying them out; ending racial profiling; vastly improving detention standards; upholding standards for pregnant and lactating women; closing family detention facilities; ending cruel third-country deportations; restoring asylum access at the border; halting expedited deportations of unaccompanied children; rescinding ICE’s arrest quotas and detention mandate; and ceasing agents’ non-return of belongings and identification documents. Conditions could also seek to rescind at least some of the most harmful border wall construction, in areas of great environmental sensitivity, Indigenous lands, and lands in private hands. The list of potential budget conditions is long because DHS’s abuses have been so severe.
Whistleblowers and witnesses will also play a crucial role in curbing abuse, ending corruption and waste, especially with DHS contractors, and beginning the larger process of reform. The new Congress must ensure that they are protected from professional, judicial, or political retaliation and must follow up on well-founded complaints.
Defend civic space and support human rights defenders, journalists, and others at risk
Civil society organizations in many Latin American countries face governments aligned with the Trump administration that are advancing military-led and punitive security strategies, restricting civic space, reducing checks over executive power, and advancing an anti-rights agenda. In Latin America, laws restricting and regulating civil society organizations exist in Cuba, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Paraguay, Venezuela, Peru, El Salvador, and Ecuador; in the latter five, they were enacted since 2024, while the Milei government in Argentina is also proposing a transparency and lobbying law that could restrict civil society organizations. There are political prisoners in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, as well as in El Salvador, a government, under Nayib Bukele, that the Trump administration considers a close ally.
Members of Congress have frequently served as a counterbalance to the executive branch, regardless of the party in office, speaking out in favor of human rights defenders and journalists at risk, demanding the release of political prisoners, calling out human rights violations by militaries even if they are U.S. allies, and defending democracy and the role of the international community in advancing common goals. Now, with a new Congress in January, WOLA calls on members to continue to uphold the principle that the promotion and protection of democracy, human rights, and fundamental freedoms are “fundamental components” of U.S. foreign policy, as enshrined in U.S. law.
The administration’s actions will likely continue to put human rights and democracy at risk at home and abroad. That makes it more important that members use their platforms and increased power to speak out against injustices and uplift the work of courageous human rights defenders, journalists, and others working to expose government wrongdoing, and to strengthen democracy and the rule of law in Latin America and across the world.
