In 1980, Cuban police detained Fidel Armando Toboso-Alfonso without charge, encouraged co-workers to publicly shame him, and warned he faced four years in prison unless he fled the country. His “crime” was being gay. Having previously faced 60 days in a labor camp, Toboso-Alfonso chose exile. When he reached the United States, an immigration judge made a historic ruling: He granted Toboso-Alfonso refuge. That decision became a lifeline for countless LGBTQ people.
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The United States was once considered a place where LGBTQ people could claim asylum. Today, under a harsher immigration system shaped by Trump-era judges, this image is slipping away.
In June, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued an alert reminding officers that marriages must be legally valid where celebrated to qualify for immigration benefits. For queer couples from countries that criminalize or refuse to recognize same-sex marriage, that’s an impossible standard. They must present a marriage certificate that, in their home country, they could be jailed or killed for attempting to obtain.
This is just one part of the Trump Administration’s broader rollback of protections for immigrants and LGBTQ people.
Under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, the United States resettled tens of thousands of refugees annually, including LGBTQ people fleeing persecution, arrest, torture, or death. Today, that number has been slashed to just 7,500—a fraction of its former scale and overwhelmingly skewed toward white applicants from South Africa.
The Trump Administration has also ordered federal agencies to remove recognition of transgender and nonbinary identities from official documents. Because the asylum process demands consistency across forms, nonbinary refugees now face an impossible choice: misrepresent themselves on paper or risk rejection for “inconsistency.”
These bureaucratic changes to passports, marriage certificates, and federal forms carry devastating consequences. By narrowing who counts as married or whose gender “exists” on paper, the White House has effectively barred countless queer individuals from asylum protections. Bureaucracy has become a new border wall, keeping the most vulnerable people out.
The United States does not jail or execute people for being LGBTQ. But the government is asking queer people to erase themselves to remain here—a quieter, procedural form of violence. A nation cannot call itself a refuge while demanding that those seeking safety deny who they are.
Last week, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump Administration to require that U.S. passports list only the sex assigned at birth. The decision halts lower-court efforts to block the policy, meaning the State Department may now refuse to process passports reflecting a person’s self-identified gender. The change may seem technical, but it signals something larger: When combined with other anti-LGBTQ measures, it threatens not only the rights of citizens, but also the safety of queer immigrants and refugees.
Meanwhile, some lawmakers are pushing to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court decision that recognized same-sex marriage as a constitutional right. The Court recently declined to hear one such challenge, but its mere consideration shows how precarious equality has become.
For queer asylum seekers already in the United States, the situation remains perilous. Claims based on sexual orientation or gender identity are often met with skepticism, as adjudicators demand “proof” of identity—an impossible expectation when visibility itself can be a death sentence. Instead of offering protection, the system pressures applicants to conform to stereotypes of what being “gay enough” looks like.
Worse still, immigration judges may now deny asylum applications without hearings, silencing stories that could save lives. Bureaucracy, once again, has become a weapon.
The next generation must do more than defend LGBTQ people—they must reclaim the promise of this country. A true refuge is defined not by paperwork or policy, but by the belief that every person deserves to live in truth and safety.
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