Written By Uchechukwu Onwa, QDEP’s Organizing Director-uchechukwu@qdep.org / February 16th, 2021
For centuries, Black Queer and Trans Immigrants, alongside our non-immigrant communities have been rising up and taking action to demand safety, wellbeing, dignity, liberation, and visibility of our people.
Black queer and trans migrants have been disproportionately impacted by systemic oppression through over-policing, the immigration system, and the prison system. The dehumanizing profiling and illegal detaining of immigrants, especially queer and trans migrants is one way these systems work. ICE and CBP arrest people at random on the streets, in their homes, at the airport, border, etc.
The immigrant narrative is narrowly centered around heteronormative lenses erasing queer and trans immigrants. Nor does the Black Lives Matter movement center the experiences of black queer migrants. The immigration system impacts every immigrant, but queer immigrants are oppressed and impacted at a very high level. Oppression happens in many forms; queer folks are discriminated against, killed, detained, arrested, beaten up, and tortured due to their immigration status, sexual orientation, and gender identity but heterosexual people are not being oppressed due to their sexual orientation and gender identity.
Black queer and trans immigrants are also being oppressed by the oppressed, the U.S. immigration system already dehumanizes, detain, torture put us in a box, and oppressed us by enacting policies that are very harmful and that fuel stigma and discrimination, the society also joins to oppress us for existing.
Since the foundation of this country, Black Queer and Trans immigrants have been putting their bodies on the frontline to call for an end to detention and deportation, police violence, etc. while taking care of the housing, food, bail support, mental health, and healthcare of our people.
I am heartbroken by the deaths of all the people in detention centers due to abuse and neglect. I am also heartbroken by the deaths of Black Trans Women including Black Trans and Femme immigrants murdered due to police violence. This system that was meant to protect us, violence from the street and COVID-19 deaths as a result of our failed government, I am also heartbroken by the death of every black person that has been victimized and or killed by police brutality or the immigration system.
Queer people have always existed from the beginning of creation. Black History includes us. Always have and always will.
Cis heterosexual people try to exclude and erase our presence, existence, and contributions to the world. We Exist, and I understand that someone, somewhere, right now cannot authentically be themselves or risk being killed, raped, ostracized, or tortured. Whether our relationship last until one dies or a couple of months, we, too, have a right to love, We Exist in Black History, We are in History books, We are your elders and ancestors, We are that uncle or aunt living the same “roommate” for years, We are your neighbors, We are your coworkers, We are your relatives, We are here and cannot be erased.
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