NEW YORK, NY — Today outside Gotham Hall, where the Democratic National Committee’s LGBT Leadership Committee held one of its largest fundraising events of the year, LGBTQ and immigrant rights groups GetEQUAL, Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project, a project of United We Dream, Immigration Equality, and Make the Road New York risked arrest in order to call on President Obama and the Democratic Party to stop deportations and grant administrative relief to undocumented immigrants in the United States. President Obama was on-site as the keynote speaker. Though the protesters blocked the street in front of the fundraiser as the motorcade passed by, the New York Police Department refused to arrest them.
Barack Obama’s administration is responsible for over two million deportations — more than any other administration in U.S. history. Many of those deportations have been LGBTQ immigrants, who face extraordinary discrimination within the detention system and who are often deported to countries in which they face harassment, abuse, violence and sometimes, death due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Each year, LGBTQ donors contribute millions of dollars to the Democratic National Committee, and are sold a bill of goods that they are helping to elect pro-LGBTQ leaders. Many strides have been made in the past six years, including yesterday’s announcement about the federal contractor executive order, yet there is still much that the Obama administration can do to ensure that LGBTQ individuals — including LGBTQ immigrants — have legal protections...
GetEQUAL.
• In Their Own Words: A national survey of undocumented millennials. See also Why LGBTQ Deportations Still = Death Felipe Sousa-Rodriguez.
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