Santa Ana, CA — Trans and queer immigrant activists have formed a triangular human chain linked to a metal cage blocking the entrance of the Santa Ana Police Department to call on the city of Santa Ana to terminate its contract with ICE which imprisons trans and queer people in abusive conditions in the Santa Ana City Jail. These protestors demand President Obama stop the deportations that separate families and communities. This act of civil disobedience aims to lift up the voices of the more than 267,000 undocumented LGBTQ immigrants living in the U.S. and call for “liberation, not deportation.”
Those risking arrest include many directly impacted by deportations, including Ronnie Veliz, 29, a queer migrant of faith and public health organizer who grew up in the San Fernando Valley. He states, “Authorities might claim it is safer for our marginalized population to be locked in LGBTQ pods inside detention centers, but we know that is not the case. I am risking arrest because my family values, faith, and roots will not allow me to remain silent or delay justice, so we need to abolish the criminalization, dehumanization of LGBTQ people, the prisons, and detention systems.”
The Obama administration has deported a record number of more than 2 million people, including many LGBTQ undocumented immigrants. Despite President Obama’s continued call for immigration reform and the current DHS review underway looking to revise deportation policy, undocumented queer and trans immigrants living in the United States continue to be persecuted by inhumane immigration enforcement policies, including discriminatory practices based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
Laura Kanter, 50, a LGBTQ Rights advocate from Santa Ana, CA, says, “The disproportionate, inhumane and unjust criminalization, detention and deportation of Queer and in particular Trans* immigrants is part of a larger industrialized system of profit and power that must be abolished. We came together to fight for marriage and now are leaving our Immigrant brothers and sisters behind — and by doing so — are contributing to the same systems of power that oppress all of us. The progress of the LGBT struggle for equality, including marriage, is meaningless until every person is seen as fully human and treated with dignity and respect.”