After All The Persecution Abroad LGBTQ Look for Safety in The U.S.
{Lea Sarnof and Kiara Alfonseca/ABC News}
For some queer migrants, the U.S. is seen as a safe haven – despite a wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and hate alongside an increasingly intensified spotlight on migration policies.
"There's a harsh reality, for folks who are seeking protection in the United States that, sure, they may not be in imminent danger once they're able to enter the country but the dangers of being a queer person, or being a trans person or being a gay person, don't disappear," Derek Loh, an attorney for the Acacia Center For Justice, told ABC News.
Loh said the "bureaucracy of the immigration process" can be grueling, especially for those arguing for asylum on the basis of discrimination for being queer.
Individuals seeking asylum in the U.S. must demonstrate a "well-founded fear of persecution" citing one of five factors: race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group, according to Immigration Equality, which notes that being a part of the LGBTQ+ community is classified as a particular social group.
Examples of corroborating evidence to submit an asylum claim include: proving your sexual orientation, proving you are transgender or non-binary, proving persecution in your native country, proving the conditions of intolerance in your native country or providing HIV status, if applicable, according to LGBT Immigration Law.
While there is no official public data on how many migrants seek asylum under LGBTQ+ related social groups, a 2021 study from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found that 1.3 million adult immigrants in the U.S. identify as LGBTQ+ – including 289,700 who are undocumented and 984,800 who are documented.
Loh said detailing asylum claims can be incredibly vulnerable for individuals who have spent their whole lives hiding their identities for safety.
"The immigration system is asking them to share all those very intimate details, oftentimes in settings that are not confidential or private," Loh said, adding that these discussions are often in communal, ICE detention centers. "So the danger levels and the fears are all heightened," Loh continued.
"It's about finding the time and space to help folks tell their stories in ways that are clear and fit this relatively narrow definition of what asylum is under U.S. immigration law," Loh said.
Seeking asylum in the U.S. could take years due to the backlog of applications and limited staffing in the immigration courts and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), according to Emem Maurus, an attorney with the Transgender Law Center.
"You're not climbing one mountain, you're climbing like six," Maurus told ABC News of asylum-seeking, adding that the militarization of the process acts as a "deterrence policy."
"We have definitely had a number of people give up," Maurus said.
President Joe Biden recently signed an executive order to turn away migrants seeking asylum along the southern border if the encounters there have exceeded 2,500 daily encounters for seven consecutive days.
"The administration is taking decisive action designed to strengthen the security of our southern border and reduce unlawful migration by suspending the entry of individuals across the southern border," a Biden administration official said earlier this month.
The migrant's country of origin doesn't matter, officials said, and individuals will be removed to their country of origin in a matter of "days, if not hours," under the new executive rule.
"I thank God that I already passed through that process, and that I'm already saved, but I'm just thinking about people that are just trying to get to the U.S. just to survive," said Nelson GarcĂa, an asylum grantee from Venezuela. "They're just asking for help. And when you see all these barriers and walls built to not allow them to request a safe haven here, it's really concerning."
GarcĂa waited seven years after fleeing his country due to persecution for his sexual orientation.
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"Uncertainty, doubt, frustration, sadness – that was part of my day-by-day throughout those seven years," GarcĂa, who now works as an immigration paralegal manager, told ABC News.
GarcĂa, a gay man, said discrimination came from "everywhere."
"Not only from the government but also from my classmates, from my professors, even from my own family," he said. "It was more like a psychological abuse that I endured, at some point it got physical, but that was when I was exiting the country that I got apprehended by the police once and I was beaten."
When he came to the U.S. at 21 years old, he said he still felt lost and alone.
"I was coming from a very traumatizing experience that I was enduring for almost my entire life there," GarcĂa said. "I was literally struggling to survive day-to-day," until he found help from Immigration Equality, a nonprofit organization that advocates for LGBTQ+ people in the immigration system.
"I feel complete," he told ABC News. "I made peace with myself and say: 'You see, there was nothing that you needed to change. because you are gay, ... there's nothing that you have to be worried about who you are and what you are right now.'"
During Pride Month 2024, Maurus reflected on a quote attributed to Marsha P. Johnson, a transgender pioneer and key figure in the 1969 Stonewall riots, "no pride for some of us without liberation for all of us."
"Pride is a month to remind ourselves of how far we've come," Maurus said, "but until LGBTQ+ people are not in detention centers and being unnecessarily harmed during an arduous migration process, we still have a ways to go towards the liberation of all of us."
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