Lesbian Asylum Seeker Now Free To Leave Church Protecting Her From Deportation To Anti-Gay Country

The First Unitarian Universalist Church provided sanctuary to LGBT activist, Sulma Franco, after she was scheduled for deportation to Guatemala, a place known to be responsible for the extrajudicial killings of LGBT individuals. After living in a Texas church for over two months, Franco is now free to leave.

Sulma Franco fears persecution and violence due to her sexual orientation if she’s deported back to her home country of Guatemala where she was an LGBT activist prior to fleeing to the United States back in 2009. Franco had to take refuge at Austin’s First Unitarian Universalist Church in early June after her asylum application took a turn for the worst, and she was scheduled for deportation. Now, after living in the protection of the church for over two months, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have released Franco under an order of supervision, and she is free to return to her partner and their food truck business.

According to John Wright at Towleroad, 30-40 LGBT and immigration activists accompanied Franco as she traveled to the ICE office in San Antonio on Tuesday to apply for a stay of deportation.

“This is a victory, but it’s by no means a permanent victory,” Stephanie Taylor, one of Franco’s pro bono attorneys, told Towleroad. “It’s a small victory in a long battle that we have. Now she’s able to move forward with her underlying case without the fear of being arrested or deported.”

The request for a stay of deportation is now being processed, and according to Taylor, Franco will be required to check in with ICE in one year. She expects the request will be granted since the agency released Franco under an order of supervision.

“ICE now knows that the community is watching, that these aren’t people that they can just arrest, deport, whisk away to detention centers, and not have the community stand up and hold them accountable for it,” Taylor said. “There are a lot of Sulmas out there, and I think it’s amazing what she’s been able to do in terms of shedding light on her situation.”

According to the Texas Tribune, a 2012 study conducted by the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and the George Washington University Law School International Human Rights Clinic concluded that Guatemala is one of the main offenders when it comes to violence against the LGBT community.

The Center for American Progress conducted a study and found that there were 267,000 LGBT undocumented immigrants in the US in 2013. It’s important to note that this was prior to the Supreme Court overturning the Defense of Marriage Act, a law that, among other things, prohibited U.S. citizens or legal residents from sponsoring their same-sex partners for family-based visas.

International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Committee created a list of human rights violations in Guatemala. It can be found here: Human Rights Violations of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) People in Guatemala.

 

Image by ULI via Twitter