Coalition Letter

No DHS Funding Without Justice, Accountability, and Protection for LGBTQ+ Immigrants

To Members of Congress,

People across the country are watching what’s unfolding in Minneapolis — and in far too many other cities and towns across the country — with growing fear and dire concern. What ICE and Border Patrol are doing is not enforcement — it is state-sanctioned violence. We urge Congress to withhold funding for immigration enforcement by the Department of Homeland Security until enforceable protections, accountability measures, and meaningful structural reforms are enacted.

The Trump Administration’s reckless, cruel and lawless actions need to end immediately. Today, the harms of this administration’s actions aren’t abstract. They are impacting real people with families in communities across the country. The LGBTQ+ community is particularly impacted by this violence and their stories should compel us to act with compassion and a sense of moral responsibility:

  • Renee Nicole Good, a lesbian whose life was taken by federal agents acting with
    cruelty and impunity.
  • Andry José Hernández Romero, a gay man illegally deported by the Trump Administration to CECOT in El Salvador — a place synonymous with torture and abuse — after fleeing persecution for who he is.
  • Two gay Iranian asylum-seekers, now facing deportation to Iran — where being LGBTQ+ is punishable by death — simply because they are gay.

Many LGBTQ+ immigrants seek refuge in the United States to escape state-sponsored violence, persecution, and criminalization, which DHS funding enables. This reality is reflected in the scale of the community itself: at least 640,000 non-citizens in the United States identify as LGBTQ+. Globally, consensual same-sex sexual activity is criminalized in 65 countries and punishable by death in 12. In many countries, authorities use vague public order, vagrancy and misdemeanor offences to harass, arrest, and prosecute transgender people. These conditions make deportation a direct and foreseeable threat to life, liberty, and personal security.

We stand with the call for justice, accountability, and meaningful, enforceable protections as conditions for any DHS funding, including:

  • Halting ICE and Border Patrol funding pending full congressional investigations into abuses and deaths;
  • Ending racial profiling and warrantless arrests;
  • Ending qualified immunity for federal officers;
  • Stopping interior enforcement operations and mission creep;
  • Protecting sensitive locations;
  • Ending detention of families and children;
  • Ending mass deportations to countries where LGBTQ+ people face imprisonment, torture, or execution; and
  • Establishing real accountability mechanisms for DHS abuses.

These demands are quite basic. They are the minimum requirements of a system that claims to respect human rights, civil rights, and the rule of law. Upholding these standards is essential to restoring justice and integrity to our immigration system.

No justice. No accountability. No reform. No funding. We call on Congress to act now and withhold DHS funding until these critical reforms are implemented.

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