Trans Immigrants Disproportionately Subject to Deportation and Detention, Suffer Special Gender-Related Harms in these Processes

Barriers to Getting any Legal Immigration Status:

• employment-based immigration not available because of job discrimination
• family-based immigration not available because trans people’s family members often reject them, trans marriages not seen as valid, chosen and extended family not recognized
• asylum and other claims often not available because of lack of access to trans-friendly legal help, less connections with immigrant communities to get information combined with strict timelines, bias and harassment from immigration officers

Criminalization of Trans People:

• most convictions and some arrests can make people deportable, even if they have status
• trans people falsely arrested for lack of proper identity documents or for using bathroom
• police profiling of trans people as violent, prostitutes
• committing survival crimes because lack access to legal employment or education (sex work, drugs, theft, etc)

Trans immigrants likely to be detained and/or deported:

• trans people disproportionately HIV positive, if from country where no access to HIV meds, deportation is death sentence. also, deportation can lead to serious transphobic violence, persecution, and imprisonment in home country.
• in detention trans people often isolated and/or targeted for rape, harassment abusive searches and other violence by staff and other detainees. gender misclassified based on genitals in sex segregated system
• can’t access hormones and other medical treatments while detained. forced to change gendered characteristics of appearance (cut hair, give up prosthetics, etc.). results in mental anguish and increased violence because appearance may conform even less to gender identity. 

infograph via the Sylvia Rivera Law Project www.srlp.org info@srlp.org 212.337.8550

pdf version of above chart available here: http://srlp.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/disprop-deportation.pdf