Thank you, all, for joining us, and special thanks to our Champion Supporters—Humanitas Media, Dr. Tracy Aanenson, Tom and Andi Bernstein, Donald Donovan and Jennifer Lake—and our all-star Gala Co-Chairs, Board, and new Presidential Circle. I also would like to thank Deborah Miller and the Zabel family, as we honor the extraordinary legacy of our beloved Board Chair Emeritus, William D. Zabel. We are deeply grateful to Deborah for everything she and Bill have done to harness the rule of law as the most powerful instrument to advance human dignity and equality, at home and abroad.
A child of Russian and Romanian refugees who settled in America's heartland, Bill's human rights calling came to him early in life, at the height of segregation and violence directed against African Americans and civil rights activists. As a Princeton undergrad, his outrage over the swift acquittal of Emmett Till's murderers led him to lead a petition drive urging the Department of Justice to re-open the case. His efforts prompted threats from gun-wielding classmates in makeshift KKK robes, but Bill remained steadfast.
In the summer of 1964, he faced ever-present KKK violence as he defended African-American voting rights in the Deep South. Bill never wavered in defending clients jailed for simply trying to vote, even after three fellow Freedom Summer civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi.
Bill went on to draft a seminal ACLU brief in the landmark Supreme Court civil rights case, Loving v. Virginia, which struck down hateful U.S. bans on interracial marriage. As the mother of two biracial children living in Virginia, I thank you with all my heart, Bill.
Bill's civil rights leadership expanded into outsize global human rights impact in his four decades on our Board. In high-stakes missions to the USSR, Chile, China and the Philippines, he shined a light of truth on the disappeared, elevated the voices of besieged activists to global decision makers, and spoke truth to power. After meeting with lawyers, rights activists, and officials in Moscow in 1988, Bill wrote a prescient Wall Street Journal op-ed that identified absence of legal reform in Perestroika as a fatal flaw that could bring back repressive rule and roll back basic rights. Imagine what a different world we might be living in today—for Russians, Ukrainians, and all of us—had policymakers heeded his advice.
Bill Zabel has been and always will be a North Star for all of us at Human Rights First. He reminds us that standing up to injustice takes courage, rigor, and resolve—but when we stand together, we can deliver lasting change. Bill's ethos guides our inter-connected work to defend refugees and immigrants, protect U.S. democracy, and advance human rights internationally against strong headwinds.
That's why we're standing up to the injustice of an unprecedented U.S. detention and deportation machine through platforms like our award-winning ICE Flight Monitor and Third Country Deportation Watch, a joint project with Refugees International. These initiatives shine a light of transparency on abusive policies that have torn apart families and sent more than 25,000 people to third countries where they have no rights or recourse. Our research helped Congress uncover that more than $40 million in taxpayer money, meant to protect refugees, was being used to abuse them.
Together, we're also working in lockstep with activists and advocates across the world—including tonight's Global Accountability Guardian honoree Tutu Alicante. In addition to founding Equatorial Guinea's leading anti-corruption organization, he is bravely challenging their third country deportation agreement with the United States before the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights.
Lasting change comes in the form of families reunited, like two sisters whom we helped win asylum and reunite with their U.S.-based brother, after bravely escaping forced child marriage and FGM in their home country. Lasting change came last December for our Iranian Jewish client Yagoub, who celebrated his first Hanukkah in freedom after we won him a judge's asylum grant that ended his nine-month ordeal in ICE detention. Pro bono partners like tonight's honorees, Quinn Emanuel and O'Melveny, make these life-changing individual outcomes possible.
Lasting change also can come from our litigation, informed by our refugee representation leadership and powered by partnerships with ally organizations. Together, our lawyers have thrown a wrench in escalating third country transfers, a U.S. policy struck down unanimously by the First Circuit Court of Appeals. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has allowed the removals to temporarily continue, but it will hear arguments on the merits December 9. We invite all of you to join us and allies on the Supreme Court steps that morning to stand up for due process for all.
As we defend refugee rights, we're standing up to a broader assault on American democracy and constitutional protections for Americans, immigrants, and nonprofits alike. We're representing two young New Yorkers subjected to transnational repression by the government of Egypt for exercising their right to peaceful assembly. We filed an amicus brief in a case brought by U.S. civil society organizations whose First Amendment-protected work has been unlawfully restricted by unprecedented U.S. sanctions targeting the International Criminal Court.
While these cases are ongoing, change is on the way in others. Our legal prowess helped a young Columbia student and green card holder stay out of jail, avoid deportation, and begin post-graduate study after this administration targeted her for peacefully attending a sit-in. Since 2025, we defeated six of seven SLAPP suits against a longtime U.S. non-profit targeted for fiscal sponsorship of Palestinian rights organizations.
Standing up to injustice also means standing alongside human rights defenders, just as Bill did at the domestic and international levels. We're proud to ally with the remarkable Minnesota organizations accepting this year's William D. Zabel Human Rights Award—COPAL and the Advocates for Human Rights. They are accepting this honor on behalf of the people of Minnesota, who showed extraordinary courage showing up for their neighbors and American democracy in the face of an unrelenting and violent federal crackdown this year. With HRF support, they and some 70 other Minnesota-based groups briefed the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in a first-ever session that brought international human rights norms home to help redress our domestic democracy crisis.
Constant collaboration with international human rights defenders and civil society and legal partners also elevates our work to hold global rights abusers and kleptocrats accountable and uphold international rule of law. Together, we've shined a light on dubious U.S. delistings of sanctioned foreign officials, from a notoriously corrupt crony of Viktor Orbán to the son of Equatorial Guinea's longtime dictator. We're also partnering to end impunity for rights abusing officials at the highest levels, from presidents to princes, while rallying over 300 organizations to urge governments to stand by human rights treaty commitments. So far more than 55 governments reaffirmed support for the Refugee Convention marking its 75th anniversary this year, as U.S. global human rights leadership recedes, and, in the worst cases, targets refugees, judges, and rights defenders themselves.
You can read about the courage and impact of human rights defenders in tonight's Gala gift to all of you, the new book, Defiant, by our Senior Advisor Brian Dooley. Congratulations to Brian and Humanitas Media President and Board Member Tracy Aanenson on its publication. Thank you for reminding us that anyone can be an activist—a Ukrainian concert violinist, a Turkish scientist, or a small-town son of refugees from Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Finally, as we look ahead to our 50th anniversary in 2028, we will follow Bill's North Star as an impetus to drive bold change. We must do more than stop bad things from happening or simply document them. We must overcome injustice and inequities that fuel recurrence of rights abuses and democratic regression. We will offer affirmative alternatives that bring more into the human rights fight, strengthen the laws and institutions that protect them, and engage those with whom we disagree.
Bold change means visioning and pursuing immigration reform rooted in human dignity, the law, and greater effectiveness. It means driving tech innovations that tackle the intractable—like our new DetentionHelp habeas generator that offers relief to overburdened attorneys and legal empowerment to millions who can't afford a lawyer. It means recovering human rights as a core element of U.S. foreign policy but rebuilding it in a way that does not repeat the shortcomings of the past.
To quote Bill's personal hero Winston Churchill, 'A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.' Bill was the ultimate optimist. Through these difficult times, may his optimism and tonight's honorees remind us what is possible when we stand up to injustice and that lasting change is in reach. Thank you, all.
