Trump Admin Conspiracy to Send LGBTQ+ Immigrants to Danger

The Trump administration opened up a new front in its human trafficking crime spree — commonly referred to as “third-country deportations.” As Reuters exposed, they are sending gay, lesbian, and trans people to countries where their existence is not only illegal, but punishable by death. They had been granted protection from deportation by Immigration Judges, under U.S. law, but the government deported them anyway. Reuters documented 40 cases of people who were “granted US legal protection after being persecuted for their LGBT status [and] deported to third countries in Africa that either criminalize same-sex relations or have been described by the State Department as hostile to LGBT people.”

The Ohio Immigrant Alliance has been working with one of these men since the first Trump administration. An Immigration Judge granted him “withholding of removal” to Mauritania, because he was jailed and nearly killed there for being gay. Unable to deport him to Mauritania because of a judge’s order, DHS secretly sent him to Eswatini so he couldn’t go back into immigration court and challenge his deportation to this other country, where being gay is also illegal.

Reuters writes:

He spent a month and a half in a mosquito-infested prison with no hot water, he said in an interview.

He finally agreed to be flown back to Mauritania, then slipped over the border into Senegal, where the government recently doubled the maximum penalty for same-sex sexual acts.

Now staying with relatives ​in a remote town, he is trying to find out if any countries in Europe or Asia might accept him.

“My life just got turned upside down,” he said

Since his deportation, “Issa” has survived three dangerous events that are exactly the type of life-threatening situation the immigration court order was supposed to protect him from. Ohio Immigrant Alliance is raising funds to help him get to a new continent. He told our Executive Director, “I just want to be me,” and that’s what we want for him too. Please donate to Issa’s safety fund here. The funds we raised so far have been already spent helping him survive in Eswatini and make the journey so far.

What are third-country deportations?

“Third-country deportations” occur when an individual is deported to a country that is not his or her own. They are usually countries to which the individual has no ties, does not speak the language, and has nowhere to turn. In the cases analyzed by Reuters in this article, and most others under the Trump administration, the U.S. government is literally paying other countries millions of dollars to “accept” individuals, and doesn’t care what happens to them.

Often the receiving countries put them in jails. They are not charged with crimes and they have no way of getting out, unless they agree to be sent to their native countries — the countries to which U.S. immigration courts had already ruled they should not be deported.

An immigration judge said Issa cannot be deported to Mauritania, but he could be deported somewhere else. Before the second Trump administration, carrying out deportations of people granted “withholding of removal” to other countries. Now, the Trump administration seems to relish in sending people to places where they have no ties. A DHS spokesperson told Reuters, “When an individual is no longer in ICE custody then ICE will no longer be responsible for them.”

“But in these cases, ICE is directly responsible for putting their lives in danger,” said Lynn Tramonte, Executive Director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance. “What our government is doing to people who used to live here and still have family, homes, and lives here is sick. Dropping them off in a place they don’t know, where they don’t speak the language, with no money and no way of getting anywhere — it’s more than callous disregard for human life. It’s deliberately putting them in danger. An immigration judge granted Issa protection for a reason. That’s not easy to get. It seems like the Trump administration wants him to die, but there are people who care about Issa — family, friends, and strangers — and we won’t let them play games with his life. They won’t win.”

Resources

Learn more about third-country deportations here.

Read the Reuters story here.

Donate to Issa’s safety fund here.