“CVT, we’re experts in this. We are experts in this kind of like militarized violence against people. And now it’s happening here in our backyard. Masked people grabbing people, throwing them in overcrowded conditions, not telling them what’s happening, not giving them access to attorneys and other people. These are the exact same things that our clients talk to us about. Our clients from repressive regimes.
Melissa: This episode hits close to home.
Minnesota—especially Minneapolis—has long been known as a place of welcoming. It’s also where The Center for Victims of Torture—our parent organization—was founded, grounded in the belief that survivors who have fled war and trauma deserve healing and justice.
For refugees and asylum seekers across the state, fear and uncertainty are growing due to Operation Metro Surge—which has brought 2,000 immigration enforcement agents to the Twin Cities.
You’re listening to the Human Rights Chat podcast by New Tactics in Human Rights, and I’m your host, Melissa McNeilly. Together with our guests, we explore the successful tactics and strategies that are driving real human rights change—both globally and here at home.
For this episode, I sat down with two experts from the Center for Victims of Torture (CVT):
Alison Beckman, or Ally, is a Senior Clinician at CVT. She brings a trauma-informed perspective shaped by years of clinical work with survivors of torture.
I’m also joined by Yumna Rizvi, Senior Policy Analyst with CVT’s Policy Advocacy team. Based in Washington, D.C., Yumna focuses on human rights, national security, and refugee and asylum protections.
In this conversation, we explore what CVT is seeing on the ground in Minneapolis, how this climate of fear is affecting clients’ mental health, how immigration policy and misinformation are shaping this moment, and where community care is offering real hope.
If you’ve been wanting to understand what’s happening with ICE in Minnesota and around the country, how it violates human rights, and what you can do about it—keep listening…
Melissa: So, CVT works closely with refugees and asylum seekers who are survivors of torture in Minneapolis. Ally, I know you’re there. Can you describe what you’re seeing right now in the communities you serve?
Ally: Yeah, so ICE has been here for a number of weeks now. The kinds of things that we have seen are kind of roving bands of ICE vehicles, not usually unmarked cars, out-of-state license plates. That’s how we’ve been able to sort of identify them. Arriving at different workplaces, outside of apartment buildings, outside of grocery stores, outside of restaurants, and taking people, a lot of times harming them in the process, throwing them in the car, and then bringing them to what’s called the Whipple Building, which is not far from the airport here in Minneapolis, and holding people for a long time. They are taking people who are citizens. They are taking people who are refugees, asylum seekers, and I can talk a little bit more about that in a minute, but asylum seekers with work permits, undocumented folks, the whole range.
As lots of people know, two people have been killed. Two protesters have been killed, and the thing that’s been happening recently is that folks that have been taken have been put on airplanes pretty quickly, some within 90 minutes, and sent to these sort of holding open-air, I haven’t been, but I understand they’re sort of like these holding detention facilities in Texas, where conditions are quite bad. We have had six clients for whom this has happened, all asylum seekers with work authorization here in the U.S.
We understand that the conditions there include that our clients have been denied needed medication. We hear the food is really bad. It’s either like frozen or stale. You only get fed once a day, and that folks are only allowed, this is what we’re hearing anyway, one two-minute phone call once a week. The conditions here in Minnesota, those sort of holding area at Whipple, before they send folks out, what I’ve heard there is it’s overcrowding. People can’t lay down to sleep at night. Folks are being shackled. It’s pretty horrible.
And it’s happening to our clients, and it’s also happening, I live in a first-ring suburb that has a significant Latino population, and so this is happening in my neighborhood. There was a video a few weeks ago at a Target, which is a popular store here in Minnesota, where two young workers were taken. They were 18 years old, citizens. One of them, Chris, went to school with my kids. Another one of my kids’ friends’ dad has been taken, denied his diabetes medication, lots and lots of kids are not showing up at school. My husband’s a teacher, and one of his fellow teachers was taken as an observer and held for 10 hours and shackled. So it’s all around us right now.
Melissa: And you mentioned the asylum seekers that you guys work with, and there’s like this interesting circularity, right, of these are people who have survived repressive conditions already in the world, and now they are living through this in the U.S. Can you speak to how that is affecting your clients, how that is re-traumatizing or opening kind of old wounds?
Ally: Yeah, so when we talk about like masked people pulling up in cars and grabbing people and then throwing them in overcrowded conditions, not charging people, not telling them what’s happening, putting them on airplanes, not giving them access to attorneys and other people. These are the exact same things that our clients talk to us about. Our clients from repressive regimes, right, this is what they’re experiencing.
And so they have come here, and they’ve applied for asylum, and just a little caveat here, like the U.S. immigration system is super complicated, right? And so we throw around a lot of these terms, and I think a lot of people don’t know what they mean, and I don’t blame them because it’s super complicated. But a refugee is somebody who was, you know, fled their country, and then was vetted, and interviewed, and screened, and usually spent years and years and years in a refugee camp before coming here, so went through all of these processes, and once here, wait a year, and then can apply for a green card and add on to citizenship.
Well, an asylum seeker is different because they get here first, and then ask for protection, and the thing is, literally the only way to apply for asylum is to get here first somehow, and then ask. So this notion that, like, people were crossing the border illegally and all these sort of things, like, that literally is the only way to do it. You have to get to the border first, and then ask for asylum, and then you’re put into this whole system that, at least in Minnesota, takes years and years and years and years to process, but while you’re here, you get a little certificate from the system that’s from the federal government that says, you know, we’ve received your asylum application and you are allowed to stay in the country while we process your claim. And then you can get work authorization and whatever else.
Melissa: And Minnesota, Minneapolis in particular, has long been known as a place that welcomes refugees. I, in many human rights circles, have heard Minnesota referred to as the human rights capital of the U.S., right? And I actually just saw that the city of Minneapolis has been nominated for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize.
And so I want to hear from you, you know, what has been the response from the community? What are the actions that you’re seeing that are giving you hope in these times?
Ally: So this is the thing that’s amazing. Minnesotans are awesome. I keep hearing from my colleagues across the country, like, thanking Minnesota for what we’re doing, saying things like… So Minnesota is, like, situated in the middle of the country, right borders on Canada. People have jokingly called Minnesota flyover country, which is basically like, if you come to the U.S., you go to the coast, right? You go to New York, you go to California, you just zip right over the Midwest. But now I’m hearing from folks, they’re like, when this all is over, we are coming to Minnesota, spending our tourist dollars there. You all are amazing. So, and to be fair, we learned from other places, right? Because these ICE surges happened first in Portland and in L.A. and in Chicago. And folks there organized, figured it out, and we learned from them.
There’s been a number of organizations who have offered legal observer training in Minnesota, which some of the tactics include, they alert us when ICE has been spotted and verified. Folks come, they film, they blow whistles. The intent is different than a protest. It’s to be an observer, to witness and to document and to, you know, shout out to folks like, do you want us to call somebody, et cetera, et cetera. I was just in a meeting the other day where they were talking about these trainings. They’re taking them all across the state now on the road. And people can’t even get into them because there are like thousands of people. They have something like 30,000 people waiting or something amazing.
So Minnesotans are signing up and showing up. The other thing that we’re doing is we’re organizing. So we have a lot of clients who won’t leave their house because of the fear. So we have staff and volunteers at CVT who are doing grocery drops, bringing stuff to folks. That’s also happening in my community, going grocery shopping, getting food to folks, figuring out rent for folks, both in community and at CVT. When anyone has an immigration appointment, folks are going with them, all with this guise of like witnessing and whatnot. So I think my community is pretty awesome.
Melissa: You guys are. I cannot help but feel a massive sense of pride when I see everything that’s happening. And yeah, just seeing the level of true community care that’s happening there on the ground is really inspiring.
So I’d like to move into kind of setting the context for this moment and looking at immigration policy itself. So Yumna, there’s been a shift in the last year plus of the direction of U.S. immigration policy. Can you describe that for us?
Yumna: Yeah. So since January 2025, when the administration took office, they started cutting key programs and dismantling protections for migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees. So what you saw was they enacted a sweeping set of, like a flurry of executive orders came out on the first couple of days that had restrictive and punitive measures. And the rhetoric around it was that migration is an invasion and the government needed to prioritize an America First agenda over humanitarian obligations and international human rights standards. So a lot of this was the suspension of the U.S. refugee admissions program, increased security vetting requirements, focusing more on deportation and detention, halting asylum, and reinstating things like the migration protection protocols, but also then using wartime authorities like the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The last time I think it was used was during World War II to start, you know, pushing this agenda of America First and getting immigrants out of the country.
Melissa: And I was going to ask you, it also seems that there has been a huge kind of revocation of the temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of folks who have, I think there’s a misunderstanding, right, about who is being detained. Many of these folks did enter the country through legal processes, the quote unquote right way.
Yumna: Right. And we’re still having that, right? The canceling of TPS, humanitarian parole, you know, suspension of green card processing. Again, people who’ve come here through quote unquote legal, legal pathways. And I think, you know, Scott said it recently in an interview that no one, no one is safe. Yeah.
Melissa: And CVT has used pretty strong language to describe these changes, calling these policies inhumane, discriminatory, arbitrary, and really speaking strongly on the real, the real harm from a human rights perspective that results from denying entry only to those folks who come from typically conflict affected countries, right?
Yumna: Right. Like the travel bans that came out. Travel ban one, and then two, you know, adding to the list of countries, sending people back to conflict areas, you know. It really has been a targeting of black and brown, largely Muslim populations.
Melissa: And then there’s also this element of supporters of these policies that are justifying them with economic or security claims saying we’re getting criminals off the streets. These are people that are taking advantage of Medicaid or health care in this country. Now too, apparently they’re voting like there’s this thread of kind of misinformation about immigrants that’s shaping, obviously shaping public understanding. Do you also think that plays a part in what’s allowing these harmful policies to move forward? Or is it just straight up cruelty?
Yumna: I think it’s just straight up cruelty, right? You need a scapegoat, but I will let Ally expand on that because I know she has a great answer for this one.
Ally: Well, I mean, I think to your point about like sharing all this misinformation, it’s been several years now where we feel like, I feel like we’re in a society where like truth doesn’t matter. Undocumented immigrants have never been eligible for federal Medicare or Medicaid. That’s not a thing. If you go to the emergency room, yes, you will get care. But like this idea that throngs of undocumented immigrants are on federal benefits? Again, it’s not a thing. I can’t remember some of the other things that you.
Melissa: Criminalization.
Ally: Oh, yeah. I mean, the statistics people keep coming out with. I mean, the other day they presented Kristi Noem, you know, like they asked her about the number of people who were criminals and she gave some statistic. It was like 75 percent or 80, whatever. And then they’re like, well, actually, it’s 40, which is probably at the high end. And they’re like, no, that’s just wrong. And she was like, that’s from your own department. So like it doesn’t even matter. And I can tell you, our six clients who were detained were all people who, exactly what you said, Melissa, like came here the right way, the legal way, get here, ask for asylum, have regular check ins with immigration. Some of them for years are waiting for their hearing, working, doing all of the things. And like none of them have committed any crime. And that’s what we’re hearing nationwide. Like the number of folks who have committed crimes is percentage wise is very low.
And so I think what, you know, was referring to is that part of this whole deal is that we have this and have had a terrible immigration system for years and years and years. So like people make this comment all the time, like “I’m all for immigration as long as people come, like you said, the right way, as long as people follow the rules.” And the problem is, is that for most people, there’s no line to stand in. There’s no like list to put yourself on.
When I think when people are talking about this, particularly people of white European backgrounds, they’re thinking of their ancestors who in 1800s got on a boat, got here, put their name on a docket and then like arrived. And then two years later, as long as you were like a good moral character, you became a citizen. That was it. You just came. And you can’t do that anymore. It’s like very few, like you can get a worker visa that usually reserved for very high end kind of jobs. You can come through family, which takes years and years and years. You can come for humanitarian reasons, which is a tiny, tiny portion of the worldwide folks who have fled. But as Yumna said, that’s largely been cut off. They’ve paused refugee resettlement. The border is closed. And schools, school is, another way that you can sometimes come and adjust.
Anyway, what we don’t have is a system for people who are coming here for all sorts of reasons. Same reasons those people who came in the 1800s, right? Like fleeing religious persecution, freeing like economic challenges, whatever. We don’t have a system for those folks to adjust. And yet our U.S. economy depends on the folks who are here working without a pathway. And so we’ve sort of like just not attended to it in a way that has created space for someone to come in and say, oh, these people are illegals and all these other things. It’s a really it’s a huge systematic problem that I think has been preyed upon by the current administration.
Melissa: Right.
Yumna: The only people who are safe are the white South Afrikaners who are coming, right? They’re being counted in as like, these are the refugees, you know, we’ll let in, but not anyone else.
Melissa: That’s exactly what I was thinking. It seems like all of this is a function of the white supremacist system that all of this was built upon.
So Ally, you talked about the kind of erosion of truth that we’re seeing. And Yumna, I wanted to ask you from a human rights perspective, alongside immigration policy shifts, we’re seeing shifts in human rights reporting by this administration, like State Department reports, withdrawing from, you know, the UN Human Rights Council, not funding UNRWA, not attending the periodic review of the U.S.’s human rights record. Can you speak to, you know, how these things have changed and why this matters for global accountability?
Yumna: Yeah, I mean, it matters greatly, right? And so this goes back to the initial when they first came in, this administration and like the series of executive orders that came out were about this. Was about withdrawing from treaties, withdrawing from multilateral institutions and organizations, really dismantling sort of the entire human rights, international human rights apparatus that the U.S. built after World War II. Right, you created the system and now you’re now you’re withdrawing yourself from it and crumbling it to the point that now the UN is in a fiscal crisis. They are pushing back meetings. They are canceling reviews of other countries. They are having systematic problems because the lack of funding.
This is part and parcel of the cuts to foreign aid freezes, you know, cuts to USAID that happened and State Department programs. A part of that was the human rights report, the State Department’s annual human rights reports that come out that are congressionally mandated reports were completely shifted this time around. They were late, but also they cut out really important, you know, parts. So they didn’t talk about marginalized populations, fair and free elections, universal and equal suffrage. There wasn’t anything about restrictions on freedom of assembly or government corruption. And they, you know, wrote really nice things about people that they like. Right. You know, so El Salvador had a really nicely written report because they were sending people to CECOT. And how are you going to say, well, there’s a bunch of abuses happening there while you are actively sending people there? That’s a violation of international law. That’s a violation of domestic law.
So now we’re in a situation where there’s blatant defiances and the administration doesn’t care. And they’re happy to do it. You know, and so this is what we’ve been seeing. It’s really important for global accountability because these are the reports that other human rights activists in other countries rely on. These are reports that, you know, UN systems also look at. Domestically, these are reports that immigration judges look at with respect to asylum cases that… Are there credible, you know, forms of abuses that are happening in X country from which this person is seeking asylum, you know, and seeking refuge in the U.S.?
So when that is not there, you have this vacuum. And the U.S. still has like a stronger civil society. Right. We still have our freedoms. And for now, where people are being able to speak out against things. In other countries, you don’t have that. So they do rely on these reports that says, that are stamped by the U.S. government. It means a lot to activists in other countries.
When I was working in Pakistan, you know, on the death penalty and torture. These are things that we looked at. These are things that we use in our submissions to UN mechanisms. Because they do have a certain amount of credibility. And when you don’t have that, how are you holding other governments now accountable for their human rights abuses? And unfortunately, the U.S. has enormous power and sets precedents, you know.
I want to go back for a second because, you know, when we talk about all of this and currently it makes it seem as if like this is the first time it’s happening. And “oh, my God.” And like,
“we can’t imagine this” and, you know, all these things. And my mom, you know, my lovely immigrant asylum seeker parents also talk about this. And, you know, I’m always kind of like, no, well, you see what’s happening now. You know, like 60 years ago, you know, or like in the 1960s, this was happening, you know. With the civil rights movement, there were similar things happening. But even more recently, in the post, you know, 9-11 era, you saw this. The U.S. starting to chip away at its international human rights obligations, its domestic obligations. What you saw with Guantánamo, renditions, you saw torture. Abu Ghraib, Bagram, you know, in Afghanistan. All of these things happened, use of force outside of active, you know, areas of hostilities, drone strikes abound. And because of the lack of, like, reckoning and accountability for that, you’ve seen what is currently taking place, allowed to take place, right? This is not just Trump came in and decided to do this. This is like a slow erosion over time of, you know, the U.S. turning back on its responsibilities and its obligations that we’ve now come to this place where it’s OK to do this. And a lot of the rhetoric and the narrative is the same.
You saw what happened in, you know, the Caribbean and the Pacific, you know, the boat strikes that are happening. Look at that rhetoric of, this is Al-Qaeda in the Western Hemisphere, you know, we got to like get these boats out. The tactics are the same and it’s because this was allowed to take place before. There was no meaningful accountability for it. I think this was bound to happen at some point.
You know, I think there’s a lot of like introspection that needs to happen in US politics if we’re ever going to move forward from where we are today.
Melissa: Thank you for that context. And I know CVT and you have a long track record of advocating on these issues like closing Guantánamo. Under many different presidential administrations, it hasn’t necessarily been a partisan thing, although we are seeing an escalation in these tactics recently.
I want to go back to you mentioned in the very early days of the Trump administration. And I think this is something that affected us and our colleagues personally, those stop work orders on humanitarian and aid programs. Can you talk specifically about like the day that those orders came down, CVT essentially had to pause its programming in many countries across the world. Many of our colleagues were immediately furloughed and subsequently lost their life’s work, you know. And this is not just a CVT, but across the field. And there’s research now out of Harvard and UCLA saying that the dismantling of these programs has caused hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths in the last year. Can you speak to, I guess, how those stop work orders affected the work of the organization?
Yumna: Yeah, I mean, I can speak to just my experience and what I was hearing and seeing. Because I wasn’t part of the programs that were impacting. But I just remember a flurry of stop work orders coming, everyone trying to make sense of what is happening, right? There was a panic, there was a frenzy because, and I think this was orchestrated by this administration, like as such, right? Like create so much chaos in such a limited amount of time that everyone’s just running around, getting exhausted. We’re looking at the executive orders that are coming out while dealing with the stop work orders that are coming out.
I mean, I remember we went from, what was it, a global team of over 500 people to a little over 100, like we lost 75% of our colleagues. And I can’t even imagine what it was like for clients who were probably in the middle of treatment and meetings.
When my parents first came to the U.S., we went to the Bellevue Survivors of Torture Program. My mom still to this day remembers Dr. Allen, who really helped my parents. And she’s like, this is what helped her get through. And I can’t imagine that in the middle of meeting with your clinician or getting support from CVT, to have that immediately be cut off. And why? Because Trump says we can’t.
Melissa: You’re right. It goes far beyond, I think to date CVT has lost 435 or 450 colleagues. But that doesn’t even take into account the clients whose services were just abruptly cut. And these are folks around the world who are survivors of torture and conflict-related trauma. And that has a massive impact on.
Yumna: Their lifeline. It’s an absolute lifeline for people.
Melissa: Their mental and physical health. It is a life-sustaining service.
Ally: Yeah, when I think about our clients here in Minnesota, they were really unique in a way, like really, really, frankly, lucky to get out of their torture situation and then somehow figure out how to get here to the United States. They’re like a drop in the bucket to the hundreds and thousands of people who are not ever able to do that. So CVT’s work outside of the U.S. was meant to kind of expand the pool of people that we could serve or all of those people who may never, ever be able to leave the areas that they’re in. And yes, now that’s completely severed.
Melissa: And Ally, you spoke on this a little bit, but the international community is now seeing growing concerns about the detention facilities and transfer practices that are happening in the U.S. What do you know from the experience of clients about these detention facilities that are kind of raising the alarm?
Ally: Yeah, so we haven’t been able to gather a lot of information, which I also think is kind of purposeful. Like I said before, folks are allowed one two-minute phone call once a week. And they’ve been calling us with that. I mean, you imagine like your family and your friends and you’re calling your social worker hoping they are there and able to pick up in that two-minute time span.
But we understand from them that some of the big issues are being denied needed medical attention and medications, despite having doctors’ letters that we’ve written and submitted. Here in Minnesota, the overcrowding has been problematic. The lack of access to food. I think the bigger thing is just the not knowing what’s happening, not knowing what’s going to happen next.
I said before, we’re trying to go with all of our clients to any kind of immigration appointment they have. And there’s many. You go for fingerprints. You go for an ICE check in. You go for… there’s this program called ISAP, which is an alternative to detention, where most of the time people are fitted with ankle monitors. They started that way. Then they moved away from it because there’s all this other technology, right? Like there’s apps and there’s phones and there’s trackers and whatever. So they kind of moved away from it. But still, our clients who are in it have to go check in. Sometimes they have home visits, whatever.
I went with a woman a week or so ago just to sit and be a witness to it all. Per our protocol, we invite clients to hand us their car keys as they go into this, because we can’t go back into the meeting. We wait in the lobby. And the idea being, because this has happened, you go back and maybe ICE is behind the building and takes somebody and then your car is left there.
So to ask this woman who I’ve never met before, like, hey, do you want to give me your keys? And her handing them to me and then walking off, not knowing if she’s going to come back in two minutes or if she’s not going to come back at all. This is the kind of stuff that really messes with people. You know, when we talk about our treatment with clients, a lot of our clients are physically very harmed. And also, our clients are deeply, deeply psychologically impacted by all of this stuff, by not being in control of what’s happening. You know, our clients would talk about like mock executions, being lined up, not knowing if you’re going to be shot or not. All of this kind of stuff is like the stuff that really is hard once you get to the other side of it.
And it really makes it very challenging to trust other human beings and kind of go back to normal. And it’s actually one of our big concerns right now in Minnesota is like, how is everybody doing that have been detained by ICE and then released? We know our clients are doing poorly. And I’m guessing there’s now thousands of Minnesotans who are doing really poorly. And how do we address that? So we’re starting to have internal conversations of like, you know, CVT, we’re experts in this. We are experts in this kind of like militarized violence against people. And now it’s happening here in our backyard. To Yumna’s point, like I think there are a lot of people who are like, what? This has never happened before. What’s happening? And she’s totally right. Like the path has been set for this for many, many years now and in lots of places. And it’s finally starting to impact folks that have been sort of untouched by it. And they’re shocked.
But yeah, I mean, it’s… I don’t know. People ask me how I’m doing. And I’m like, I don’t know. Bad. It’s bad.
Melissa: Yeah. And it’s it should be so evident how egregiously wrong these things are. And yet there are people who are supporting it.
I also wonder, Yumna, from a policy perspective, how the conditions in detention centers… are these things an actual violation of U.S. and international law? The things like inadequate access to food and water, inadequate temperature control. We hear about the lights being on all the time and there’s no access to the outdoors. I saw one sandwich a day in some of the articles that came out. Can you speak to if and how those things are violations?
Yumna: Yeah. I mean, I think Amnesty has written about Alligator Alcatraz, the conditions there, in some cases amounting to torture. We’ve obviously written a lot on Guantánamo. But a couple of years ago, when the UN Special Rapporteur was able to go to Guantánamo, she also said that conditions there were amounting to cruel inhuman degrading treatment, could also meet the threshold for torture. We know that about CECOT as well. So, yeah, all types of violations of the ICCPR, UDHR, CAT are taking place, various Articles. But again, the problem then becomes, what can we do about it? Right? So we’re speaking out about it. The U.S., like you said earlier, was up for its universal periodic review. At the UN, they didn’t show up. Right?
And one big problem of international law is that there’s no enforcing mechanism. Right? So I’m going to go back to quickly, like my experience in Pakistan, where countries like that had to show up to UN mechanisms because of things like the EU’s GSP+ scheme, which is like an economic trade scheme, but linked to Pakistan’s compliance with its human rights obligations, which includes treaty reviews. Right. So if you don’t go, it affects your GSP, you know, status, which may lead to a revocation in Pakistan that has to pay, you know, or gets like, you know, tariffs on exports.
But the U.S. doesn’t have to do that. Again, we are all powerful. And the U.S. isn’t relying on anyone to hold them to account. And so and so what happens, again, like in this space? We’re looking at courts domestically. You know, we’ve had some wins, some losses. But again, I think domestically and internationally, the biggest problem is going to come down to enforcing these things. We can scream and shout all about all the violations that are taking place, all of these things that are happening. Enforcement is a big problem.
But what you’re seeing now, you know, sort of like shift to this. Congress is looking at, you know, funding the government again. Right? We just passed a couple of bills yesterday. DHS is still waiting for theirs. I think all of this that’s coming out is creating some sort of pressure from lawmakers. Right? You now see some people very openly saying abolish ICE. Others are saying, no, well, like, you know, these things need to be in place, like the masks, body cams, et cetera. So Congress has the power of the purse here. Negotiate, you know, put those things in, use it. Like if you have the leverage and you don’t use it, what is the point of you having that leverage? What is the point of you saying all these things are wrong if you’re not going to do anything about it ultimately?
And yeah, I mean, but just going back to, you know, the international law stuff, it really saddens me at times. You know, when I first came back to the U.S. to work at CVT, you know, I came from like robust UN advocacy and experience and, you know, in places like in Pakistan where it counts a lot. And everyone here told me, oh, no, like we don’t care about the UN here. Like, oh, like, that’s great that you have that experience. But, you know, the U.S. really doesn’t care that much. And, you know, you’re seeing it play out now.
The U.S. doesn’t care enough about the fact that they’ve crumbled this entire institution. You know, and I know, you know, for advocates and activists globally, that matters a lot because the only institution that they do have is the UN, you know, in places where you have, you know, very repressive governments. That is the only place that you can look to. Or again, like the State Department’s UN human rights report. So when you don’t even have that, you know, it’s a dark, dark place to be when those systems aren’t functioning.
Melissa: Right. And you mentioned lack of enforcement. It seems like there’s also been a lack of enforcement with this administration around transferring. It seems like this administration thinks that they can take non-citizens and just transfer them anywhere. How does international law address transfer of individuals back to places where they might be at risk of torture or serious harm?
Yumna: Yeah, it’s a huge violation. It’s embedded in multiple international treaties. It’s in the Refugee Convention. It’s in the Convention Against Torture. Transferring individuals to places where they are, you know, in fear of danger or persecution is illegal. It’s also in U.S. domestic law that this is illegal. It’s in the Foreign Affairs and Reforms Restructuring Act that says that “it is the policy of the U.S. not to expel, extradite or otherwise affect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subject to torture, regardless of whether the person is physically present in the U.S.”
But again, we are doing this.
Ally: The principle that Yumin is talking about here is non-refoulement, and it’s part of the Convention Against Torture in the Refugee Convention Act of 1951. So this has been a thing for a long time.
Melissa: It’s a lot to take in. I know we’re all overwhelmed by all of this. I think our listeners may be feeling overwhelmed. Our international listeners that have been asking, you know, is it really as bad as what we’re seeing on our phones? Hopefully we’re able to give a little bit of context today. Is there anything that we didn’t get to that you all would like to add?
Yumna: I want Allie to end with a couple of words of hope that she would give to clients. What would you say to a client right now?
Ally: Yeah, that’s interesting. So, you know, I think the things that I would say to clients would be not to overpromise. I don’t think I would say to clients “everything is going to be okay.” But what I would say to clients is that CVT is here and we continue to be here and we will continue to listen and witness and note and take action and do that which is in our power to help you be as safe as you can be.
Melissa: Thank you for that. And then what can everyone do right now if they want to take action or stand in solidarity, support the work of CVT directly? Give us the information or where listeners can find how to support CVT and the communities you serve.
Ally: Yeah, I mean, I think one way that people could support CBT is to donate. I mean, that’s the obvious and the sort of easiest way. We, like I said before, we are now buying and bringing groceries to clients. This is not a service that we’ve ever provided. It’s becoming quite an expensive service. Not only that people are afraid to go to the grocery store, they’re afraid to go to work. So they’re not earning that money that they desperately need to eat.
And then, of course, supporting just the work of CVT in general as we continue to try to fight all of these fights. As you’ve described earlier, our organization was decimated last January. We lost a huge, huge chunk of our funding. So we’re still in the process of trying to figure out like how do we keep going and how do we keep doing all of these things? So it’s been one sort of crisis after another, which, again, I think is sort of the point.
But donating to CVT is one way. If you’re in the United States or in Minnesota, becoming a legal observer and just sort of Google legal observer training wherever you are. They’re offering them all over the place now. Supporting local food shelves if you’re in the United States or Minnesota, there’s all sorts of ways to support. And contact those legislators!
Melissa: Yes. Call your reps.
Yumna: Yeah, call your reps.
Ally: Especially right now. I mean, this is like one of the first times where I think there’s been a lot of activation around what’s happening with DHS and ICE. I mean, it got split off, right, this bill, and now they’re going to take two weeks to figure out what to do next. And some of the recommendations like wear body cams, like that’s fine, but that’s just like, it’s not… What we need is actually systematic reform. What we need is to dismantle ICE, right? That is what needs to happen. I think body cameras, again, it’s like if you’re going to film something, but then there’s no accountability, then what?
Melissa: Exactly.
Yumna: That is like the minimum. Like that is, we should be there already. I don’t know why it’s not there, but call your senators, call your reps.
Ally: Yeah, literally now is the time. You know, Bernie Sanders put in a proposal to claw back the money that was allocated to DHS for ICE and actually put it into healthcare. And there’s interest in that. Like this is the time. Like I think Americans are fed up, honestly.
Melissa: Yeah, no, it’s cool to see. I live in North Carolina where it seems like for the first time our senators are maybe listening a little bit. And so just seeing that incremental progress towards the change that we want to see has been inspiring.
So I will link how to donate to CVT in the show notes. Also, we’ll link a roundup of other wonderful organizations, partners and friends on the ground who are doing great work, rent and utility support and all of that kind of stuff as well. And I’m just so grateful to you both for lending your expertise today to the conversation.
Ally: Thanks for having us.
Melissa: Thank you for listening to this episode of Human Rights Chat by New Tactics in Human Rights.
This conversation reminds us that immigration enforcement is not just a policy issue—it’s a human rights issue with real consequences for people’s safety and mental health, and ability to heal.
My deep gratitude to our guests, Ally Beckman and Yumna Rizvi, for sharing their expertise and for the work they do every single day in support of survivors.
This episode is dedicated to the CVT clients who lost access to care and the more than 400 colleagues who lost their jobs due to humanitarian aid cuts. Their commitment and skill continue to shape this work, and their absence is felt every day.
If this conversation resonated with you, I encourage you to share this episode and look for ways to support refugee and asylum-seeking communities where you live, including at the links in the show notes.
Thank you for listening to Human Rights Chat, where we inspire and equip activists to change the world.
