Trump DOJ Strips Terrorist-Tied UNRWA of Immunity in US Courts in Reversal of Biden-Era Policy

Biden admin offered immunity even as UN agency faced accusations of aiding and abetting terrorists

The Trump administration has stripped the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) of its immunity in U.S. courts, overturning a Biden-era policy and opening the door to a lawsuit from families of Hamas victims.

The Department of Justice said late Thursday that it has “reevaluated” the Biden administration’s stance and “now concludes UNRWA is not immune from” a lawsuit filed by survivors and families of more than 100 victims of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel. The plaintiffs are seeking $1 billion in damages from UNRWA, accusing the U.N. agency of aiding the attackers and funding Hamas through a money-laundering scheme.

The DOJ decision marks a major escalation in the lawsuit, which was filed last June in the Southern District of New York. The Biden administration in September sided with UNRWA, claiming that the agency could not be prosecuted in U.S. courts because it possesses diplomatic immunity.

The lawsuit alleges that UNRWA, which oversees nearly all humanitarian aid into Gaza, has aided and abetted terrorists by allowing Hamas militants to store weapons in its facilities and build tunnels and command centers beneath its sites, according to the Times of Israel.

UNRWA has long faced scrutiny over its ties to terrorism. A Wall Street Journal report last year, citing Israeli intelligence, found that roughly 1,200 UNRWA staffers—about 10 percent of the agency’s workforce—were linked to terrorist groups and that 49 percent of the employees had close relatives with official ties to terrorism.

The Justice Department on Thursday also raised doubts about whether the United Nations’ establishment of UNRWA was even legal.

“It is highly doubtful that the U.N. Charter even authorizes the General Assembly to create a subsidiary organ such as UNRWA, because its functions are not the type of functions performed by the General Assembly,” the DOJ said.