By Nora Estrada | Impulso News
Above: Troy Masters (L) moderated the event at the Heart WeHo nightclub in West Hollywood. (Image via LA Blade)
Over 150 people gathered recently in Los Angeles for an event highlighting rising fears within the LGBTQ+ community around anti-immigrant legislation in states across the country, reports Spanish-language Impulso News.
Held at Heart WeHo nightclub in West Hollywood, the event was moderated by Troy Masters, reporter with LA Blade, and Edwin Millán, president of The Latino Outreach and Understanding Division (LOUD) and president of the Board of Directors of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
“Immigrant stories need to be told, particularly for LGBTQ+ people,” said Blade, adding that recent anti-immigrant measures in Texas and Florida now threaten to take root in other states.
“Things are going to get really ridiculous,” Blade stressed. “This strategy of how to turn undocumented people into criminals is going to have an incredible impact.”
Last year, Florida passed a raft of laws targeting immigrant communities across a range of issues, including prohibiting Chinese and other foreign nationals from buying property. Both the ACLU and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) are now challenging that law in court, arguing it violates the Constitution and the Fair Housing Act.
Florida Governor and GOP presidential contender Ron DeSantis also signed into law a measure that criminalizes transporting undocumented immigrants into the state and bars non-citizens from using valid out-of-state drivers licenses.
Texas, meanwhile, is poised to pass a measure that criminalizes the act of crossing the Texas-Mexico border illegally between ports of entry. Critics contend the measure could lead to racial profiling and unjust targeting of immigrants in the state.
According to Masters, such measures will fall especially hard on LGBTQ+ immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers like Gretta Soto Moreno, who came to the US from Mexico in 2003.
Soto Moreno shared her story at the LA event, where she described her experience with the asylum process as a transgender woman. “As a Mexican, requesting asylum has been really scary,” she said. “And as a transgender woman, it is even more difficult.”
Soto Moreno was eventually granted asylum after her case was moved from Arizona to California, where she said judges were more understanding of her circumstances.
Another speaker who identified himself as Paizano shared his growing concerns over the slow pace of the asylum process and the prospects of second Trump term.
“I have a lot of anxiety because I don’t know how long the process will take,” he said, noting that it has already been two years since he submitted his application, during which time he’s made a number of court appearances to present evidence for his claim while encountering several delays, all of which he says are taking a toll on his mental health.
Paizano said that as a gay man returning to his native Venezuela is not an option, given economic and political conditions there and an environment hostile to the LGBTQ+ community. He spoke of friends and acquaintances who were victims of anti-gay violence, some of whom took their own lives or simply disappeared.
He added that a Trump presidency could upend the entire legal landscape around immigration and asylum, jeopardizing his status in the country.
“It’s scary to live in the uncertainty of what is going to happen to us.”
