A lunchtime panel this week aims to illuminate specific challenges and barriers LGBTQ immigrants face.
The panel, sponsored by Prairie Pride Coalition, is connected to Welcoming Week, a nationwide initiative advocating for inclusive communities, and features representatives from The Immigration Project, Illinois State University’s Queer Coalition and Rainbow Railroad, a global nonprofit which helps LGBTQ people escape persecution based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
The session takes place from 12-1 p.m. Friday at the Bloomington Public Library.
Recent Immigration Project panels in Bloomington-Normal have focused on rapidly-changing policies and procedures amid the Trump administration’s efforts to ramp up deportations. Immigration attorney James Brickson, who will speak at Friday’s Lunch and Learn, said conversations about LGBTQ identities in the context of immigration is crucial.
“There have been some harsh judicial decisions that have come down that have limited LGBTQIA asylum,” Brickson said.
A gay, lesbian or transgender person entering the United States from a country where homosexuality or transgender identities are criminalized can claim asylum if remaining in their home country poses a credible threat to their safety.
Zubayer Khaled knows what that’s like. He immigrated from Bangladesh to study at ISU and now works for the university as the awards manager for research and programs. Khaled will represent ISU’s Queer Coalition on Friday’s panel.
Khaled said much of the anti-LGBTQ sentiment in Bangladesh stems from religious beliefs in the majority Muslim country. But an article of the penal code that has remained from British colonial rule criminalizes "carnal intercourse against the order of nature.”
Khaled said government leaders essentially took a “don’t ask don’t tell” approach, and globalization led to queer Bangladeshi people being more open. A string of hate crimes in 2016 pushed them back into the closet. Xulhaz Mannan, the editor of Bangladesh’s only LGBTQ magazine, and several others were murdered; a subsidiary group of al-Qaida claimed responsibility for Mannan’s killing.
“I came here as a student,” Khaled said. “I had no idea that you could come here on the basis of being from a minority group. I was focusing more on getting out of the country… That was the main intention, to study, to be myself and do whatever I wanted to achieve in my life.”
Brickson said a goal of the panel is to ensure stories of LGBTQ persecution get told, particularly amid a push to scrub diversity and inclusion initiatives out of the government. The U.S. State Department’s most recent report on human rights practices around the world removed nearly all mention of LGBTQ identity. Asylum application forms swapped “gender” for “sex,” in some cases, requiring a transgender person to “out oneself in a way that wouldn’t have been such a big issue 10 months ago,” Brickson said.
“As the United States government delegitimizes LGBTQIA identity and makes it harder for people to get an asylum application approved based on said identity or any other related fear of return claim—which means I fear return to home country due to persecution or fear of torture—those are becoming more and more limited,” Brickson said.
Brickson isn’t aware of instances in which the United States is targeting LGBTQ immigrants for deportation because of their sexuality or gender identity. A bigger concern, they said, is the general threat of deportation stokes fear of being returned to an unsafe environment.
Brickson said those whose asylum claims aren’t approved can avoid deportation to their home country if that poses a safety risk. A client from Sudan, for example, might be deported to Honduras.
“They don’t have the same right to argue against being sent there—certainly it’s harder,” Brickson said, noting lengthy stays in detention while navigating such a case. “So not only are we seeing people who are being sent back to the place that they fear return; they were being sent to another one where they have no schema, no structure of support, on top of potentially being persecuted for who they are.”
Rainbow Railroad has developed programs aimed at filling gaps created by shifting policies the indefinite suspension of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program [USRAP]. Different from asylum, refugee resettlement cases are initiated overseas, while asylum can be claimed at a U.S. port of entry. That has left all applications in limbo, except for a specific move prioritizing white South Africans of Afrikaner heritage.
“Right now, one in every 67 people globally is forcibly displaced, yet fewer than 5% of those in need of resettlement received it last year,” said Rainbow Railroad communications director Timothy Chan. “Among the most at risk are queer and trans individuals who face state-sponsored homophobia and transphobia in over 60 countries.”
A 'roller coaster' of confusion and anxiety
Even immigrants who are free to stay in the United States and have little reason to fear deportation may deal with trauma and anxiety. Khaled describes his experience as a “roller coaster.” The Queer Coalition has been a support system, but he said he’s the only immigrant currently navigating the system. And many American Muslims, like his home country, are not supportive of the queer community. He said it’s like living two parallel lives, neither of which fully understands him.
“I think about it all the time,” he said about the fear of deportation. “I consider myself a queer person and I have not had my immigration case processed yet. It’s on file. Records would show I am a queer person, and if that is the case that they’re picking up people based on sexual orientation, that is a threat for me.”
Khaled said most of his stress comes from not knowing the status of his case. In previous interviews and immigration panels, Immigration Project executive director Charlotte Alvarez has said confusion and chaos are the point of the Trump administration’s fast-moving policy shifts, which government officials have said encourage self-deportation and curb unlawful entry into the United States.
“I have had so many people ask me, ‘What’s the point of this?’” Brickson said. “It’s really hard to keep up with all of it. I am fortunate to work with people who are all in this for the same reasons I am. My job as an attorney is to try and disseminate all this information. To look at it and break it down—because it’s all going to be confusing.”
Brickson said “the logic is cruelty.”
“[They're] doing this, as Charlotte said, to strike fear into people to try and convince them to leave of their own accord and/or to give use the reasoning to round them up.”
