When people hear our name, the Center for Victims of Torture, they have a variety of responses: some react with dread or fear, some with concern about victims, some want to learn how they can help, some don’t want to hear about it at all. One thing that people repeatedly tell us is that it is hard to imagine that authorities still use torture against people. We are here to say that they do.
Since 1985, we’ve been extending care to clients in our Minnesota office and then expanding to many more clinics around the world. Over these 40 years, we have seen clients from more than 80 countries. 80 different countries that took people and subjected them to the unthinkable because of, perhaps, something they said, something about their identity, their profession, or something they stood up and spoke against. Or perhaps for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
As a psychotherapist provider and member of the policy team at the Center for Victims of Torture in Minnesota for more than two decades, I have heard many stories of significant trauma. Our clients here have not only survived the most dangerous regimes in the world, but they were lucky enough to escape. They found a way to get to the United States, make their case for asylum and begin building a new life.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is very specific about the right to live without torture as well as the right to seek asylum, especially if torture has been perpetrated. From the first days of the United Nations, in the dark aftermath of World War II, the declaration enshrined these two rights that are foundational to our work at the Center for Victims of Torture:
Article 5: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 14: Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
We know from our work with survivors that torture and the ability to apply for asylum are inextricably linked. When a regime begins to torture people, people will run for their lives.
When a regime begins to torture people, people will run for their lives.”
-Alison Beckman, senior clinician for external relations
Today, more than 117 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes globally. Torture is nowhere near eradication.
Our Minnesota clients, all of whom are survivors of torture and violent conflict, are experiencing again many of the same circumstances that they witnessed in their home countries before fleeing: masked and heavily armed men snatching people into unmarked vehicles, smashing car windows violently and tackling people in the snow, and even executions in the streets. As soon as federal ICE agents began their accelerated surge into Minneapolis at the end of 2025, our clients immediately recognized exactly what was happening. Once again, they were being targeted for something in their identity, this time as immigrants seeking asylum, and once again they have been forced into hiding.
As soon as federal ICE agents began their accelerated surge into Minneapolis at the end of 2025, our clients immediately recognized exactly what was happening.”
Just like the authorities in those 80 different countries, Operation Metro Surge has created a climate of terror in the United States. One of our psychotherapists said to me last week, “It feels like we are in a war zone. In a state of terror.”
At this time, six of our Minnesota-based clients have been taken by ICE and detained in Texas. All are asylum seekers, lawfully present in the United States. As of February 25, only three of them have been released.
But these outrageous actions by the government didn’t begin with the Minnesota surge. When the Trump administration first took over in January 2025, they ended the refugee resettlement program. They stopped asylum processes at the Southern border. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has halted all asylum decisions by asylum officers. President Trump created a 20-country travel ban which was expanded to ban 39 countries, and now 75 countries have at least a partial ban. This means that individuals from those countries can no longer come to the United States, and anybody here who is from those countries is being shut out of the process they started.
Clients’ current immigration processes are halted; when a client goes for an asylum interview, the authorities will no longer make a decision on the case. In addition, people who are in the United States with refugee status, all of whom were already vetted and may have been here for up to four years, are now facing a new barrier: The Trump administration has decided to re-interview and re-vet them all under the Post-Admission Refugee Reverification and Integrity Strengthening (PARRIS) operation.
They decided to pilot these re-vettings first in Minnesota by detaining refugees and taking them to a detention facility in Texas. Luckily this practice has been temporarily stopped due to a lawsuit brought forth by the International Refugee Assistance Project and Minnesota’s own Advocates for Human Rights. But a new Department of Homeland Security memo is now asserting refugees without green cards can be detained for an unspecified amount of time until the re-vetting process is complete.
It’s like there is this never-ending siege of tactics to deny New Americans due process and to violate human rights.
It’s like there is this never-ending siege of tactics to deny New Americans due process and to violate human rights.”
The ICE surge in Minnesota brought two things to light: the first is that the tactics being used were unprecedented, unnecessary, arbitrary and in many cases unlawful: Detaining people because of their race or their accent, using battering rams to enter houses without a judicial warrant, excessive use of force and shootings of three people, two fatally.
The second thing is how deeply unpopular these tactics are both in Minnesota and nationally. As the Department of Homeland Security ramped up immigration enforcement throughout 2025, Minnesota organizations were paying attention and organizing. Multiple groups began offering training to citizens to be legal observers, a role separate from protesters and one that made national headlines when Renee Good and Alex Pretti were shot and killed by ICE agents while observing.
Legal witnesses are there to observe, take notes, record what is happening during ICE interactions. People are instructed in these trainings not to interfere, to step back if asked, and to ask targeted people for their names when they’re taken so there is someone to contact on their behalf. Legal observers are also trained in what to tell targeted people about their basic legal rights, but honestly those rights seem to have been discarded. Just like the right to seek asylum.
Minnesotans have shown up by the thousands, patrolling neighborhoods to watch for signs of ICE agents and loudly alerting neighbors of their presence with whistles and car horns, and recording all activity on their phones. The scale of citizen push-back to ICE aggression and to the deadly shootings led to a shift in ICE leadership and tactics locally. Everyday Minnesotans have been hailed as heroes around the country and internationally.
Operation Metro Surge is by no means over. We don’t know when clients will be able to come to the clinic for care in person again. We don’t know when they will be able to be together to share in our community activities. We don’t know when they will be able to go to the grocery store or back to their jobs.
The assault is not over and no one is going to be safe until is ended.”
One client said to reporter that he is living in a prison of fear here in Minnesota. “This is not the freedom I sought.”
What’s happening is a wholesale assault on human rights. In the face of promises that this operation is scaling down, it’s important to remember that. The assault is not over and no one is going to be safe until is ended.
About The Author
Alison Beckman
