The Trump Administration Quietly Deleted A Key Resource For LGBTQ+ Asylum-Seekers

The new reports undermine the U.S.’s credibility on human rights issues and leave asylum-seekers without key evidence that they’re fleeing persecution, former State Department officials said.

The State Department released its long-awaited reports on international human rights on Tuesday, eliminating entire sections on discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, women and racial and ethnic minorities in countries with long track records of human rights abuses.

Former State Department employees who oversaw the reports, which cover human rights for the 2024 year, said on Tuesday they were deeply disturbed by these omissions. The exclusion of LGBTQ+ rights in particular could make it more challenging for LGBTQ+ asylum-seekers around the world to prove their experiences of abuse before immigration courts domestically and abroad.

Jessica Stern, the former U.S. special envoy to advance the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons under the Biden administration, told reporters at a press briefing that she was “horrified” and “couldn’t believe how systematically LGBTQ+ people were deleted.”

Stern is the second person to hold the special envoy for LGBTQ+ rights role, which remains vacant under the Trump administration. She is also one of the co-founders of the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice, a new initiative of former ambassadors and special envoys within the State Department who are fighting Trump’s cuts to foreign assistance.

In the Trump administration’s report for Uganda, there is no reference to LGBTQ+ people or the country’s anti-homosexuality law, which penalizes same-sex conduct between adults with the death penalty and life imprisonment. Instead, there is one mention of Ugandan government officials committing “acts of sexual violence,” including forcing people to undergo “anal examinations following their arrests.”