By 18MR Member Ryan S
Pride as we know it today started as a commemoration of the Stonewall Riots, a time when LGBTQ+ people took back their power from the police. This fighting spirit came from the founders of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, who strived for the liberation of all LGBTQ+ people. If they were alive today, they would fight for LGBTQ+ migrants, especially since many came to the United States believing it would offer them asylum.
In 2015, during Pride, Jennicet Gutiérrez, a founding member of the immigrant rights organization FAMILIA TQLM, interrupted President Obama during a dinner at the White House that was celebrating LGBTQ accomplishments because the event did not address the realities of transgender immigrants. When she asked for the release of transgender ICE detainees, she was shushed by the crowd, shamed by Obama, and eventually removed from the room. The larger community who disapproved with these protest tactics probably found it inconvenient to their narrative that Obama was their champion. When ICE reports to the president, who else and when else would’ve been a better opportunity to ask for the help?
During Trump’s first term, a Chinese transgender man named Chin Tsui with legal status ended up in ICE detention. Because his family rejected him, he ended up homeless and lost his documentation. Because he was unable to obtain a new social security card, he got caught up in human trafficking for years. In his attempts to escape abusers, he falsified a social security card based on his real social security number. After the criminal system made him serve time for this action, the system turned Chin over to ICE. Even though he had been in prison for illegal activities his exploiters had forced him to partake in, he was not prepared for the conditions under ICE jurisdiction. They placed him in solitary confinement for 19 months and did not provide him necessary medical treatments.
At that time, I hosted a letter writing party for Chin because it was what I could do to support him as a fellow Chinese transgender man. Fortunately, the Transgender Law Center advocated for Chin and he was able to eventually get out, but knowing his story made me deeply unsettled about any privileges I had assumed. Today, I question how much citizenship provides protection because ICE has arrested citizens and an executive order about sex designations on passports has challenged the validity of my own identity against my legal documents.
A report released in 2024 by immigration reform advocates documented how widespread abuse and threats of violence were occurring in immigration detentions. A majority of detainees experienced medical neglect. Almost all LGBTQ+ and HIV+ detainees experienced homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, or racism. Half of them were also subjected to torture of being in solitary confinement.
Marsha would’ve said that the treatment of sexual minorities in the immigration system come from the same policies in prisons or hospitals towards LGBTQ+ people during the early 1900s, where they put people in psych wards and perform medical experimentation and torture. If Marsha were alive today, she would’ve protested outside Delaney Hall like she did at Bellevue Hospital in 1970!
In 2026, immigration data and policy experts cited that ICE detention center deaths have been occurring at an average rate of every 6 days. The federal government has also multiplied the budget of ICE and the president made plans to expand detention centers. ICE agents are violently responding to protestors outside the detention centers. We must resist the violent border regime now! We can disrupt ICE operations in our neighborhoods!
On the ground in Portland, Twin Cities, St. Louis, LA, and Chicago, there are reports that ICE is renting cars to kidnap people. Community organizers estimate half of the cars they use are leased from Enterprise Holdings subsidiaries Enterprise Rent-A-Car, National Car Rental, and Alamo Rent a Car. These are acquired using a pool of millions of our taxpayer dollars. If we can disrupt ICE from renting cars, then agents can’t use these outsourced vehicles, limiting their ability to take people into detention centers. We can do this by demanding that Enterprise Drop ICE!
If Sylvia were alive in 2015 and at the White House, she would’ve re-lived her heartbreak in 1973 of being booed while on stage. Justice has already been too long delayed for Jennicet’s treatment, but we can still start being in true solidarity with transgender migrants, by fighting ICE.
Join the Enterprise Drop ICE campaign here!
ABOUT THE WRITER
Ryan S is a transgender Asian American who served on the board of NQAPIA from 2009 through 2012 and joined 18MR as a member in 2026. They like to read, have recently read Marsha’s biography written by Tourmaline and has used what they learned as inspiration to write this essay.
