For gay asylum seeker, immigration crackdown strikes terror
Published: Jun. 17, 2025, 6:00 a.m.
By Jaylen Green, Uncloseted Media
This month, the Trump administration has deployed thousands of troops, including the National Guard and the Marines, to crack down on protests in Los Angeles against ICE raids in the latest act of their ongoing legal and military attacks on undocumented immigrants.
Kelvin, a gay man from Zimbabwe, is one of the 100,000 people in the 2024 fiscal year who sought asylum in the U.S. because of their LGBTQ identity and one of the 1 million asylum cases pending determination.
“As an LGBTQ member, as an immigrant and as a black person … it’s like a gang team against me. So I can say ‘terrified’ is the only word I can use, but it is what it is at the end of the day,” he says, referring to the prospect of being sent back to Zimbabwe.
Kelvin, who has been living in New York City and asked to use his first name only for fear of being caught by ICE, grew up in the Pentecostal Church in Harare, Zimbabwe. Through his childhood, his family instilled in him the idea that being gay was an abomination and a sin, which forced him to hide his sexual orientation until he mustered up the courage to come out to his mom at 19 years old.
“She was cooking [when I told her],” he says.
He remembers his mother looking him in his eyes and responding in Shona — a Bantu language primarily spoken in central and southern African countries — “Mwari havazvifarire uye iwe unofanirwa kutendeuka,” or, in English, “God doesn’t like that and you need to repent.”
Later, Kelvin told his dad while they were watching TV in the living room after dinner.
“Daddy ndiri ngochani,” or “Daddy I’m gay.”
Kelvin didn’t get the response he was looking for. “You’re not my kid and to me you’re dead and I don’t wanna see you again in my life and I want to have nothing to do with you,” Kelvin remembers his father yelling, telling him “goodbye” and to “leave immediately.”
Crying and confused, Kelvin — who had no idea that that would be the last time he’d ever see his father before he passed away in 2023 — left his childhood home. He stayed with his cousin who protected him as locals came looking to stone him — a common practice in his village to show people they were unwanted.
Kelvin’s experience is not unusual for LGBTQ people in this part of the world. Zimbabwe is one of at least 67 countries that have national laws criminalizing same-sex relations between consenting adults, where the maximum sentence is a year in prison and a fine. The Zimbabwean Constitution offers no legal protections for LGBTQ individuals against discrimination, violence or harassment. As a result, LGBTQ Zimbabweans live in danger, both legally and socially.
In January 2024, four months after arriving in New York City, Kelvin sought asylum in the U.S. out of fear he’d be abused, imprisoned or killed because of his sexual orientation if he returned to his village.
During his time in the U.S., Kelvin met Kate Barnhart — the executive director of New Alternatives, an LGBTQ homeless youth resource center in New York City — who helped him find refuge at a shelter in Manhattan and is helping him secure asylum status.
“The city is closing the migrant shelters, and it’s really not entirely clear whether migrants are supposed to fold into the general homeless system or how any of that’s going to work,” Barnhart told Uncloseted Media.
Since President Donald Trump’s return to office, many organizations— including Barnhart’s — are worried about federal funding and employee cuts, which have caused many groups that help asylum seekers to lose funding, cut programs and lay off employees.
Within the first 100 days of Trump’s second term, his administration has deported 139,000 people. These deportations include multiple LGBTQ asylum seekers — including Andry Hernández Romero, a 31-year-old gay makeup artist with no criminal record who fled Venezuela a year ago after he says he was targeted for his sexual orientation and his political views — and a gay man who fled Guatemala after receiving death threats over his sexual orientation. A federal judge recently ruled that the latter individual was wrongfully deported.
In addition, Mayor Eric Adams has been cracking down on immigration in New York City, having ordered the closure of 52 migrant shelters in the past year. He’s also been aligning with the Trump administration on immigration policy, telling CBS News that he is “looking at ways that [he] can use [his] executive power to go after those dangerous, violent people.”
Barnhart says that all of this, coupled with the Trump administration’s military attacks on civilian demonstrators in Los Angeles, has created concern and fear for many LGBTQ asylum seekers, causing some of them to go underground to protect themselves.
“The mayor [being] basically beholden to Trump is really problematic from the point of view of those of us who would like to see New York City really take a strong stance as a sanctuary city,” she says.
For Kelvin, the city and the Trump administration’s hard stance on immigration is nerve-racking.
“There’s nothing I can really do to change it or control it so that’s why I refuse to really think about it,” Kelvin, 26, told Uncloseted Media about the latest escalation in immigration raids.
“Thinking about it that much … ain’t gonna change nothing,” he says. “[It] destroy[s] your inner peace.”
He says the pain of feeling misunderstood back home was so intense that he “wanted to end [his] life” and at one point tried to jump off a bridge in Harare, the nation’s capital. The only reason he survived was because a man came up to him and said that his life was worth living.
Myeshia Price, the former director of research at The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ advocacy organization that focuses on suicide prevention efforts, says that more than 1 in 3 asylum seekers and refugees experience depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder and that up to 15% of refugees have attempted suicide.
(A crisis line can be reached by dialing 988 at any time.)
In addition, the Trump administration’s 2026 Skinny Budget proposal aims to increase the Department of Homeland Security’s budget by almost 65%, which would help fund the 20,000 new officer hires the president recently ordered from the department, to stop what Trump has described as an “invasion” at the U.S. border.
“At this critical moment, we need a historic Budget—one that ends the funding of our decline, puts Americans first, and delivers unprecedented support to our military and homeland security. The President’s Budget does all of that,” said Russ Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget and co-author of Project 2025.
Kelvin, who previously lived in a shelter in the Bronx and is now working as a waiter and living in a studio apartment, has waited over a year for an interview with an officer who will decide if he should be granted asylum status. If he is denied, he will have the option to appeal to an immigration judge. According to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, only 14.4% of asylum cases filed in court were granted in 2023.
And the current political climate will likely make it significantly harder for Kelvin to be granted asylum. The Syracuse TRAC Immigration Database found that asylum approval rates in the U.S. dropped by a third in October in the lead-up to Donald Trump’s second term. The Trump campaign has threatened to increase detention of asylum seekers, introduce an application fee for asylum and end parole programs at the border. Additionally, one of the administration’s earliest actions in January was to suspend asylum entirely at the southern border.
As Kelvin grows roots in New York City, he hopes to get a degree in social work and fashion design. He finds the city offers greater freedom to connect with the gay community and to express his sexuality openly.
But with his status in limbo, he worries that if he’s sent back to Zimbabwe, he could be locked up or killed.
“That’s reality. So I just got to live with it. So, yeah. I’m okay. I’m good. I can say I’m excited because I’m safe. I’m good. So, yeah. Looking toward the future.”