Venezuela is experiencing a national crisis that has left its citizens starving and hospitals bare of even the most basic of supplies. Drug shortages mean the sick have been forced to look to the black market to try and stay alive, while the many with little to no resources are dying.
Ricardo Querales, an HIV-positive man facing deportation from the United States following a non-violent drug charge from nearly a decade ago, says there’s no way he’ll survive there without access to antiretroviral drugs. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is set on deporting him anyway:
Afflicted with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, the gay Venezuelan man showed up in mid-January at the headquarters of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Miramar to comply with a routine supervision order in place for several years as part of deportation proceedings. Hundreds go through this process regularly.
But on this visit, Querales got dreaded news. He was ordered to return at the end of February with passport and plane ticket in hand for voluntary deportation to his homeland.
“You are sending me to my death!” Querales said he told an immigration official, according to the Miami Herald. “This is anti human rights. In Venezuela, there is no medicine and every day someone with AIDS disappears.”
The fact is that immigration is an LGBTQ issue. An estimated 36,000 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients identify as LGBTQ, and like Querales, deportation could mean a death sentence for them due to political persecution, criminalization, violence, and inadequate health care:
If LGBTQ DACA recipients lose their protected status, not only will they no longer be able to work and thrive in the United States, but they will also face deportation to countries they may not have set foot in since childhood and where their lives could be in danger. In much of the world, deportation is a death sentence for LGBTQ people. Same-sex sexual acts are criminalized in at least 72 countries; being gay is punishable by death in eight of those countries.
According to a CNN report, “Venezuela tops the list when it comes to the lack of rights for same-sex couples or members of the LGBT group”:
Querales arrived to the U.S. in 2003, ”escaping political persecution and insecurity.” A year later, an immigration judge approved his asylum request. But when Querales was diagnosed HIV-positive, he says he entered a depression and “turned to drugs as a means of escape”:
Mario Schauer, an activist and blogger in Miami who counsels gay Hispanics with HIV/AIDS in Latin America, said it is common for those diagnosed with the virus “to go through a process of self-destruction when they discover they are HIV positive because there are people who assume that it is a death sentence.”
In 2009, Querales “was charged with controlled substance possession and drug paraphernalia possession with intent to use” after police found a bag of meth in his home. But while he pled guilty and served his 30 days in jail, he subsequently lost his asylum status:
He was arrested a second time following a police raid at a house that he was visiting. No charges were filed against Querales, but he was turned over to ICE custody and spent six months in detention. It was during this time that his political asylum was revoked.
At the end of 2011, an immigration judge signed his deportation order.
Querales had been allowed to stay in the country since, so long as he met regularly with federal immigration officials to show he was working and staying out of trouble, a plan he was sticking to. "I don’t deal in drugs,” he said. “I’m sober for five years, building my new life and I pay taxes. I help other people." But following his latest check-in, he could now be deported to his possible death.