In 2016, Andrés García fled anti-LGBQT+ violence in his native El Salvador. Until a few years ago, he lived in Virginia without papers. Then, he got flagged by the police over a minor infraction and transferred to the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He spent a year in ICE detention. In July 2023, García won his asylum case. Now, he fears the outcome of the US presidential election could make him vulnerable to deportation—and danger back home.
I fled my country because I was escaping. I’m a gay man and back in my country it’s kind of hard to be yourself. You can be incarcerated. You can be killed. We don’t have legislation so that we can say: “You know what, I’m gonna be whatever I want to be and the law is going to protect me.” You don’t have freedom as much as you have here.
So, I came here eight years ago looking for safety and a better life for me and my family. I’ve been living in Virginia since I came to the United States and with my sister for the past couple of years. I did go to school to learn English. I’m the type of person who always tries to contribute and to be better each and every day.
If I get deported to my country, it will be the end of me. It scares me to my core just even thinking about it.
Everything was okay. But then, two or three years ago, I was detained by ICE. I was in detention for over a year and was released in 2023. That just made me feel differently because I saw the injustice in the system. In Virginia, you don’t have the right to legal representation if you’re an immigrant in court. You don’t have anyone to tell you what you can apply for or what your rights are. Not knowing the law, not knowing the language, not knowing anything.
I thought I was going back to my country. I thought I was getting deported. But one day, I was like, you know what? I’m just going to fight. And I saw this poster on the phones. It was about CAIR Coalition [now the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights]. I called them hoping they would take my case. A couple of weeks later, they told me they had good news and had accepted my case. They helped me through the whole process. They gave me not just legal representation, but they helped me establish communication with my family back in my country. They saved my life, pretty much.
In the past, I was scared. I was afraid to make my voice heard because of my [lack of] papers. When we won our asylum case, I thought: “I need to give something back to the community.”
I’ve been attending rallies. [My boyfriend and I] went knocking on doors this past weekend. Now, I’m going back to school on November 16. I’ve always been into interior design and that’s what I want to do.
I’m in a safer place now, but I’m still on the immigration system. I will never get off of the system until I become a citizen. What if Trump’s policies become reality where they are going to deport everybody who has a record? If I get deported, my country is in a state of emergency where you don’t have any civil rights. The army is on the streets and they can just detain you and put you in jail without reason. If you have tattoos, they are putting you in jail for a year just to be investigated. The jails are full of gang members and they have zero tolerance to people from the LGBTQ+ community. If I get deported to my country, it will be the end of me. It scares me to my core just even thinking about it.
I’m nervous because it’s not just about me. I have friends, I have family, I have neighbors who are not rightfully here. I have so many gay friends who don’t have papers. They don’t even have a record and they can be deported anytime. It affects everybody.
I heard that Trump also has in mind to pass this law so that companies will be actually forced to just hire people with [legal] papers. I would say 80 percent of my friends are hardworking people, they are loving people, they have no record. Everybody in my community is scared.
It’s frustrating because most of the people, including myself, can’t vote. The people who are actually going to suffer cannot vote so we’re in everybody else’s hands.
Hopefully Trump winning is not going to happen. But we need to be ready for anything, right? I don’t even want to say it because it just breaks my heart knowing that that’s a possibility. I don’t think America can afford four more years of Trump’s era.
