Congressman: ‘Torben is persecuted by this administration’
Clay Higgins—who serves as Chairman of a key subcommittee under the House Committee on Homeland Security—publicly addressed Torben’s case and entered a formal letter into the Congressional Record.
In that statement, he concluded that Torben is being persecuted by the sitting administration, likely because he is an evangelical Christian minister.
This was not a casual remark. According to information received, Congressman Higgins’ office spent hundreds of hours investigating the case before reaching and publishing this conclusion.
As a chairman within the Homeland Security framework, Higgins holds an important oversight role in areas such as immigration and federal enforcement agencies like ICE. This gives added weight to his words, as they come from someone directly involved in overseeing the very systems connected to the case.
Speaking on the House floor, Higgins stated:
“I have a letter to be entered into the record regarding the case of Mr. Torben Søndergaard, who is a legal immigrant from Denmark. He came to our country legally and applied for asylum properly. No criminal charges. He was arrested for overstaying of his visa. He’s been incarcerated and in solitary confinement for over one year. He has been persecuted by this administration and targeted, we believe, because he’s an Evangelical Christian minister. I would like to enter this into the record.”
It is important to note that Higgins himself acknowledged that Torben entered legally and applied properly for asylum, with no criminal charges. Yet he also referenced the claim that Torben was arrested for overstaying his visa—something that, based on the documentation, did not align with the facts.
After examining the case, Higgins concluded that the explanation of “overstay” did not hold, and instead pointed to what he described as persecution—believing that Torben was targeted by the sitting administration because he is an evangelical Christian minister.
