As Congress debates a bipartisan border deal that critics say could be disastrous for LGBTQ+ immigrants, one organization is at the front lines opposing the legislation.
Immigration Equality, a New York City-based nonprofit, was founded in 1994 to provide pro bono legal representation for LGBTQ+ and HIV-positive immigrants and asylum seekers pursuing resettlement in the United States. The organization began in a meeting room at the New York LGBT Center and grew into a staff of 18 representing around 750 clients each year. Its advocacy on behalf of LGBTQ+ migrants has proven extraordinarily effective: Immigration Equality boasts a 98% win rate and has helped more than 1,500 queer applicants secure asylum in the U.S.
A potential obstacle to Immigration Equality’s work, however, is a long-gestating border bill that would resurrect Title 42, a 2020 policy blocking virtually all border crossings from Mexico. While former President Donald Trump’s administration claimed the rule was a necessary public health tool to stop the spread of COVID-19, Immigration Equality’s executive director, Aaron Morris, points out that the policy makes little sense.
“The United States, when Title 42 was enacted, was flush with COVID, so it wasn’t a legitimate health care policy,” he said. “It was being used to shut down the border during a time of crisis. Giving the president unfettered ability to stop people at the border also means we’re not going to process human rights cases.”
After the Biden administration ended Title 42 last year, Morris predicts that the policy’s resurrection could place the already vulnerable populations that Immigration Equality works with in extreme danger. The rule resulted in “persecution, torture, and probably unnecessary death for LGBTQ+ refugees” who were unable to claim asylum and turned away, he says. Many queer migrants, Morris added, were forced to take shelter along the Mexico border or deported to unsafe countries while they awaited an opportunity for their case to be heard—often waiting months, if not years.
The legislation is currently in limbo after being filibustered in May by Senate Republicans, who hope to use the border crisis to bolster Trump’s re-election chances. It has found support from many Congressional Democrats, as well as President Joe Biden, who recently signed an executive order temporarily blocking immigrants who travel to the U.S. through the southern border from applying for asylum.
Morris said the bipartisan support for tightening restrictions on asylum seekers relies on a misconception that he hears often—both from elected officials and members of the general public. People often wonder why immigrants can’t simply get in line and wait their turn, rather than coming to the U.S. illegally.
“I have to take a deep breath and say, ‘It’s because there is no line,’” he explained. “We’ve created a legal system that doesn’t allow for people to come with permission. There’s an assumption that they’re doing something wrong, but what’s wrong is we’ve created the wrong system. For years, we didn’t have any immigration law at all. We would welcome immigrants from wherever. We wanted people to come.”
Immigration Equality helps LGBTQ+ migrants navigate a system that Morris said is not designed to help them and actively works against them. For queer immigrants who are even able to reach the point of being housed in a detention center, he describes the conditions as indistinguishable from prison. Detainees typically receive poor health care or none at all, which can pose severe risks for trans people who take regular hormone therapy or people living with HIV. Meanwhile, a 2019 report from the Center for American Progress found that LGBTQ+ immigrants were 97 times more likely than other populations to be sexually assaulted during their detentions.
Morris began working with Immigration Equality in 2008. He remembers a meeting from early in his career, when an HIV-positive client from Colombia was so demoralized by the immigration system that he begged Morris for a hug.
“He’s shackled, and I noticed that he was shivering,” Morris recalled. “It wasn’t that cold in there, and so I asked him, ‘Are you OK?’ And he said, ‘No. I haven’t touched anybody for three months because they know I’m positive. No one in here will touch me.’”
As his attorney, the detention center would not have permitted Morris to hug his client during visitations. However, he took the man’s hand and made him a promise: When he won his case, Morris would hug him afterward. “It was a very satisfying thing when it happened,” Morris remembered.
The proposed border bill would potentially intensify the reported difficulties that LGBTQ+ migrants face by making it harder to apply for asylum. It already isn’t easy, Morris said: When he first began working at Immigration Equality, applicants seeking asylum typically received an interview within six weeks. Now, he claims that cases can take as much as six years to resolve. And even though sexual orientation and gender identity are typically winning asylum claims, many LGBTQ+ migrants aren’t aware they have that option. Migrants must file a claim within a year to be eligible for asylum, and the number-one reason Immigration Equality loses cases, Morris said, is that clients have missed the deadline.
Despite the obstacles they very frequently face from an inhumane system, Morris maintained that advocates and their clients have made some significant strides. Until 2010, people living with HIV weren’t able to immigrate to the U.S. at all, as the result of a policy dating back to the height of the AIDS epidemic. He also said that Immigration Equality is working directly with the Biden administration on a groundbreaking new program that would identify LGBTQ+ refugees in dire need of resettlement and refer them directly to the State Department.
“It is and has been a high priority for the Biden administration to resettle more LGBTQ+ refugees, as it is for us,” Morris says. “It’s very exciting. It’s still in the works. We’re trying to identify and refer as many people as possible during this term, with the plan of there being two terms of the Biden administration. We’ll see.”
For LGBTQ+ migrants who are able to successfully relocate, Morris says that coming to the U.S. is nothing short of life-changing. Many of the clients who Immigration Equality has helped resettle, he added, have since gotten married, had children, and started their own businesses. When he first began working with the organization, he and a colleague took the train to New Jersey to attend the wedding of a trans woman who was marrying her longtime partner after immigrating from Mexico. They made the trip for a pragmatic reason—the couple needed two witnesses. But attending that ceremony gave Morris the chance to celebrate both the couple’s love and his client’s opportunity to take her next steps toward citizenship.
More recently, Immigration Equality represented a different kind of case in Andrew and Elad Dvash-Banks, a gay couple who had twin boys through surrogacy in 2017. Under the Trump administration, the U.S. government only allowed one of their children, Aiden, legal citizenship, claiming the other, Ethan, was effectively born out of wedlock. The distinction was that the boys were each conceived through a different father’s sperm, and Andrew, Ethan’s biological father, is an Israeli citizen. After suing four times in various courts, the couple finally won their case in 2020.
Four years later, Morris reported that the Dvash-Bankses are “thriving,” adding that they “have gone on with their lives and are succeeding.” The same is true, he said, of LGBTQ+ refugees and so many of the other clients his nonprofit represents.
“If an asylum seeker is given the opportunity to stay in the United States without the threat of deportation, access to health care and work authorization, they do remarkable things,” he says. “This is the true story of how America became so powerful. It’s really distressing to see this drumbeat of xenophobia when we do a kind thing, because we should, and the result helps everybody.”
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