Credit: Marco Di Gianvito, ZUMA Press Wire, Shutterstock / Protester at a ‘No tyrants’ rally, 2025

IRCT member, Center for Victims of Torture (CVT), has announced that four Minnesota-based clients, who survived torture in their home countries and were receiving therapeutic care from CVT, have been arrested by ICE agents in recent days. The individuals were in the United States legally; each was in the asylum-seeking process when they were taken by ICE and then flown out of state by the next day.

“Our clients are survivors of torture who fled violence under some of the most dangerous regimes in the world. They are in the United States in a legal process, have done nothing wrong and came here seeking safety and asylum,” said Sara Nelson, CVT Programme Manager.

Alison Beckman, CVT Senior Clinician for External Relations said,

Credit: John Doukas, Shutterstock / ICE officers in California, 2025.

“These actions are reprehensible. The authorities keep claiming that ICE’s work is to arrest violent criminals, but they are actively taking law-abiding asylum seekers. CVT’s clients fled violence and oppression in their home countries. The U.S. was once seen as a safe haven. Not anymore.”

According to CVT the new immigration restrictions further an “agenda of cruelty.” Senior Policy Analyst, Yumna Rizvi from CVT said that “President Trump has found yet another way not only to limit people seeking to come to the United States, but also to create misperceptions about the very real economic benefits that immigrant populations have long brought to the United States.”

Over four decades, CVT has worked with survivors of torture from 88 different countries. In a statement CVT wrote following the shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis that

“This type of militarized enforcement is among the exact kinds of oppressive environments our clients have fled.”

Credit: Erman Gunes, Shutterstock / Protest sign honoring Renee Nicole Good during demonstration. Toronto, Canada, 2026.

The United States foreign funding freeze is damaging rehabilitation services to thousands of torture survivors.

The IRCT is now aware of 22 rehabilitation programmes negatively impacted across 18 countries in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. Four of those programmes have been forced to stop entirely, leaving torture survivors who were in the middle of receiving essential physical and mental health support with nowhere to turn. Another 18 programmes are facing significant and acute funding shortages due to the freeze, which poses a significant and immediate threat to their provision of rehabilitation services.

IRCT member, TASCC, a US based NGO has presented a model on how they coach survivors to advocate for human right issues before congressional aides in Washington DC.

The Advocacy Programme of Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International (TASSC) engages torture survivors in educating policymakers and the broader public about torture and other human rights abuses, and about the changes needed in US asylum policy.

TASSC has achieved excellent results and the survivors involved in engaging with political stakeholders regularly report high levels of satisfaction with their engagement, highlighting how important it is for them to contribute in this way to their own rehabilitation.

Credit: TASSC

Natasha Nzazi, a survivor of torture of Congolese origin, now working on Survivor Empowerment at Freedom From Torture, UK, on speaking at a US State Department event to promote funding for the UN Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture.

“I always feel empowered every time I participate in survivor engagement activities. It’s safe to say that my voice was heard. I felt that the audience understood and recognised the importance of the fund in helping survivors rebuild their lives. ”

Natasha Nzazi advocating for survivor empowerment at the US State department