LGBTQ+ asylum seekers detail harsh conditions and abuse in ICE custody

Originally published by The 19th

Editors’ note: Albert Aronov’s name has been changed in this story to protect him from potential retribution from American officials as well as Russian authorities.

In 2022, facing the prospect of murder or torture for being gay, Russian doctor Albert Aronov started a long journey that landed at the U.S. border in San Diego in 2023. 

Aronov asked for asylum. Hours later, he found himself on the floor of what looked like a basement with nothing but a toilet. A TV was playing. For six or seven days, the light never turned off.

“You can't sleep in this place because there is no bed, there is nothing, and we sleep on the floor,” Aronov told The 19th. “It was extremely cold.”

The experience stunned him. In Russia, his brother had called him a pedophile because he was gay. A close friend of his, also gay, had been tortured. The United States represented hope to him. Now that he had finally made it here, he felt he was living a different kind of nightmare.

Aronov’s experiences are hardly unique, according to a report released in July by LGBTQ+ immigration rights organizations based on interviews with 41 current and recent detainees. 

The new report, “No Human Being Should Be Held Here,” claims that nearly a third of queer detainees interviewed (18 out of 41) were sexually assaulted while in the custody of federal immigration authorities. Almost all of those interviewed (35 out of the 41) reported being harassed for being LGBTQ+ or an immigrant in custody. 

Bridget Crawford, director of law and policy at Immigration Equality, a nonprofit serving LGBTQ+ and HIV-positive people in the immigration system, said the report is the first of its kind to put numbers to what advocates have long heard anecdotally. 

“Asylum is a really critical lifeline for LGBTQ refugees who are just fleeing unimaginable violence and torture,” Crawford said. “Their experience in detention really compounds the trauma that many of these queer and trans asylum seekers faced in their home country.”

Almost all the detainees who were HIV-positive in the survey (13 out of 17) reported that they were denied HIV treatment or other medical care while in custody, while 28 out of the larger group of 41 said they got inadequate medical care. 

The report goes on to detail experiences from migrants who said they were held in open-air detention facilities, sometimes in the desert between two border walls, without food, water or restroom facilities. 

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials did not respond to requests to comment on the report. 

The detainees’ allegations align with past claims made by LGBTQ+ advocates questioning ICE’s ability to safely detain queer asylum seekers. In 2018, transgender Honduran migrant Roxana Hernández died in ICE custody from complications of pneumonia and AIDS, setting off months of protests and calls for investigations into the agency. The Daily Beast later reported that it was likely Hernández had been physically abused in custody. 

Later that year, advocates successfully lobbied for the release of gay Nigerian asylee Udoka Nweke, who reported having a severe mental health crisis at Adelanto ICE Processing Center in Southern California. Nweke’s release was soon followed by the 2019 death of another transgender detainee, Johana Medina León, who had complained of chest pains when entering custody. 

That same year, 29 trans women detained in a pod in New Mexico released a statement through the advocacy organization Trans Queer Pueblo claiming that they were languishing in dire conditions.

“Several of us are also not receiving needed medications,” the women wrote. “Some officials mistreat us daily, verbally, and psychologically assaulting us.”  

In January 2020, 45 members of Congress sent a letter to ICE demanding the release of all of its transgender detainees, claiming that the agency failed to safely house them by exposing them to sexual and physical violence. Three dozen former detainees reiterated that call in a letter to President Joe Biden the following year.

But advocates say the issue has gained little traction as former President Donald Trump takes aim at asylum-seekers and immigrants find themselves in the crosshairs of heated political debate. 

Lee VanderLinden, a supervising attorney for the National Immigrant Justice Center’s LGBT Immigrant Rights Initiative, said they have not seen any effort to address those allegations over the last three years. 

“I haven't seen improvements for medical care of HIV-positive people or of trans people generally, with access to [hormone replacement therapy for gender-affirming care] or other medical interventions,” they said. “I haven't seen a coordinated effort to improve those conditions.” 

In the meantime, the image of the United States for people like Aronov has changed fundamentally. To him, the immigration system presented another side of a country that once represented hope and safety. 

“I have a total different picture right now,” he said. “To meet a face like this, that can be homophobic and racist and everything, I don’t know. Of course, I had different expectations.” 

Immigration officials released Aronov from custody last fall as his asylum case is still pending.