Asylum Justice for Torture Survivors Campaign
The Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition (TASSC) was founded in 1998 by Sister Dianna Ortiz, a Roman Catholic nun who was brutally tortured by the Guatemalan military in 1989. TASSC provides legal aid and counseling to torture survivors in the Washington OC metropolitan area, mostly from Africa, and advocacy training to survivors nationwide.
June 26 has been designated by the UN as International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, which is why TASSC survivors visited congressional offices the last week of June. TASSC believes that the right to be free from torture is among the most fundamental and basic human rights and that its prohibition should be absolute. Our mission is also to empower survivors to speak out against abuses in their own countries, and the refusal of USCIS, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, to interview torture survivors and other asylum applicants waiting over five years for an asylum interview.
TASSC survivors come from all walks of life – they are doctors, nurses, lawyers, journalists, elite athletes, teachers, accountants, IT professionals, university professors and business owners. They were tortured and raped for "daring" to participate in a peaceful political demonstration, refusing to join the ruling party, criticizing the government in the press, exposing government corruption, being the son or daughter of a political activist, or because of their religion or sexual orientation.
Survivors are continuing to visit House offices in July to share how much they have suffered waiting 5, 6, 7 or even 8 years for an asylum interview. USCIS has prioritized asylum interviews for other populations, while those who entered the U.S. legally with visas, including torture survivors, are considered the last priority. It is not humane or fair for USCIS to focus virtually all its attention on the southern border while abandoning survivors who followed all the rules.
TASSC torture survivors have a "well-founded fear of future persecution" because of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or because they belong to a particular social group, like the LGBT
community. The torture survivors we work with did not come to America to seek a "better life" – they came to save their lives. But USCIS has put them at the back of the line. Survivors who have medical emergencies or family members back home in danger of being murdered may get what is called an "expedited interview" – otherwise they will never be granted an interview. No interview, no asylum.
According to USCIS, over 180,000 asylum applications filed prior to October 1, 2017 are still pending. Many torture survivors from TASSC and other torture treatment centers filed as far back as 2014. Whenever they ask about the status of their application, they are told their application is pending, always pending.
Please call on USCIS to schedule asylum interviews for torture survivors by signing on the letter addressed to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and USCIS Director Ur Jaddou led by representatives Mark Pocan (Wisconsin), Jerry Nadler (New York), Pramila Jayapal (Washington), and Ritchie Torres (New York). The letter asks USCIS to move all asylum applications pending more than five years to the front of the line for interviews, and to designate asylum officers to interview them.
For more information about TASSC, please contact Andrea Barron at Andrea@tassc.org.
TASSC Statement on Asylum Crisis- July 3, 2023
