The long-standing terror of ICE against LGBTQIA+ immigrants
From Obama to Trump, detention and deportation have endangered queer and trans asylum seekers — especially trans women — and the violence is structural, not partisan.
The Trump administration’s violent use of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is an escalation of the agency’s cruelty, but it is not divorced from its past weaponization — including under Democratic leadership. Immigrants have long been subjected to ICE’s violence, including LGBTQIA+ people, many of whom came to the United States seeking asylum from hostile, anti-LGBTQIA+ countries. For queer and trans migrants, the U.S. was supposed to be a refuge. Instead, it has often been another site of punishment; many have died while facing brutal violence in detention centers.
ICE has consistently terrorized and targeted LGBTQIA+ people, particularly trans women. Inside detention centers, trans women have faced harassment, prolonged solitary confinement under the guise of “protection,” medical neglect, sexual violence, and death. These abuses are not isolated incidents. They are symptoms of a detention system designed to cage people first and ask questions later. It is a system that treats migration as criminality and survival as fraud.
