Every year, June marks both Immigrant Heritage Month and Pride Month. This year, as the attacks against both the immigrant and the LGBTQ communities intensify, we wanted to explore what it means to be a queer immigrant. Joining us for this spotlight are Rafael Chavez, an organizer with New Labor, and Bay Nguyen, Youth Programs Director at VietLead, as well as NJAIJ’s very own Digital Organizer Yev Gelman. We asked each participant to talk about what it means to be a LGBTQ+ member of the immigrant community, and how these struggles interconnect.

Rafael Chavez: I was born in Mexico and migrated to this country at the end of 2009 as an openly gay person. I came to the United States with a vision of this country being one of freedom and opportunities, but unfortunately, there are barriers, many of which I was not told about: the abuse, the mistreatment, the discrimination in society and the labor environment, and language access. We have to identify these barriers; for me, it's because I am Latino and gay.

I started to get involved in New York City with an organization called Latinos Diferentes, which educated me on my rights as an LGBT person. But I knew I was not only LGBT. I am also a worker, an immigrant, Latino, and needed to find ways to move forward in this country. I started to get involved with organizations focused on worker justice, which is how I found New Labor.

There are challenges that one faces as an organizer in a chauvinistic society. We have to be honest about it – our communities from Latin America come with a lot of taboos. To be an LGBT person at the front of a movement that can be seen as heterosexual made me confront many things. But we are here in the fight. We are always motivating people to get involved. Especially now, in the current circumstances we are living through. Not only as LGBT minorities, but as minorities in general. The attack on trans people, Latinos, people from the Middle East, and the people living in Gaza – all of this worries me about continuing to be an organizer. It doesn’t scare me, but it worries me to think that maybe something could happen to me. That I could be a target because we are organizing immigrant communities and other minorities. 

But we will not stop fighting for something better than what we have. If we continue banding together as minorities, whether you are Black, Afro-Latino, LGBT, or any other minority, we can fight. Being unified is what will give us power. 

Bay Nguyen: As a queer child of immigrants and refugees, I have grown up in immigrant communities and have seen the impact of injustice on both communities.

Our justice is collective and intertwined, especially when our decision-makers wage war and displacement against immigrant people who seek safety and belonging. We know that it's a threat to all of us, not just our most vulnerable.

Immigrant people deserve safety and belonging, to build and thrive in their lives just as the LGBTQ+ community does. When we seek justice for one, we show our strength to demand safety for every impacted person, whether they are refugees, formerly incarcerated, on deportation lists, migrant families, queer, trans.

All people – LGBTQ+ and immigrants – deserve a future to thrive in.

Yev Gelman: This Pride Month marks 11 years since I came to the United States from Russia. As a kid, I thought the U.S. to be a beacon of human rights and equality – the polar opposite of my homeland, where I experienced profound shame and alienation as a queer child. Unfortunately, in the last few years, I’ve watched the U.S. become closer and closer to Russia in its use of political repression and state violence.

Just like it’s no accident that the elected officials targeted by the Trump Administration here in New Jersey are both powerful, Black leaders, it’s not a coincidence that the rollback of rights for trans and gender-non-confirming people is happening at the same time as immigrant communities are being stripped of status, dignity, and due process. They’re attacking those who are most vulnerable first, thinking they can easily scare us into disappearing. But that’s not going to happen.

Yes, being a trans immigrant justice activist in 2025 is scary. But both my transness and my migration are gifts – they allow me to see beyond borders and binaries, and imagine futures in which folks like me can thrive.