California will partner with the Trevor Project to provide suicide prevention support to LGBTQ+ youth, state officials announced Wednesday. The announcement comes weeks after the Trump administration said it will no longer provide national suicide and crisis hotline services to LGBTQ+ youth.
“While the Trump administration continues its attacks on LGBTQ kids, California has a message to the gay community: we see you and we’re here for you,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “We’re proud to work with the Trevor Project to ensure that every person in our state can get the support they need to live a happy, healthy life.”
California said Wednesday the Trevor Project will train the state’s 988 crisis counselors on how to support LGBTQ youth. The state said 12 national call centers are currently staffed across California with counselors trained to respond to callers needing support during suicide and behavioral health crises.
Read the full article. Democrats help, Republicans hurt.
“I hated my body,” the nonbinary 16-year-old said. “I hated looking at it.”
When therapy didn’t help, Pitchenik, who uses the pronoun they, started going to the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, the country’s biggest public provider of gender-affirming care for children and teens. It changed their life.
But in response to the Trump administration’s threat to cut federal funds to places that offer gender-affirming care to minors, the center will be closing its doors July 22. Pitchenik has been among the scores of protesters who have demonstrated regularly outside the hospital to keep it open.
Sage Sol Pitchenik in Santa Clarita, Calif., on Monday.Jae C. Hong / AP
“Trans kids are done being quiet. Trans kids are done being polite, and trans kids are done begging for the bare minimum, begging for the chance to grow up, to have a future, to be loved by others when sometimes we can’t even love ourselves,” Pitchenik said, prompting cheers from dozens of protesters during a recent demonstration.
They went to the center for six years.
“There’s a lot of bigotry and just hate all around, and having somebody who is trained specifically to speak with you, because there’s not a lot of people that know what it’s like, it meant the world,” they told The Associated Press.
The center’s legacy
In operation for three decades, the facility is among the longest-running trans youth centers in the country and has served thousands of young people on public insurance.
Patients who haven’t gone through puberty yet receive counseling, which continues throughout the care process. For some patients, the next step is puberty blockers; for others, it’s also hormone replacement therapy. Surgeries are rarely offered to minors.
“I’m one of the lucky ones,” said Pitchenik, who received hormone blockers after a lengthy process. “I learned how to not only survive but how to thrive in my own body because of the lifesaving health care provided to me right here at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.”
Many families are now scrambling to find care among a patchwork of private and public providers that are already stretched thin. It’s not just patient care, but research development that’s ending.
“It is a disappointment to see this abrupt closure disrupting the care that trans youth receive. But it’s also a stain on their legacy,” said Maria Do, community mobilization manager at the Los Angeles LGBT Center. “I think it showcases that they’re quick to abandon our most vulnerable members.”
Maria Do, community mobilization manager at the Los Angeles LGBT Center, outside Children’s Hospital Los Angeles on Thursday.Jae C. Hong / AP
The closure comes weeks after the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, amid other efforts by the federal government to regulate the lives of transgender people.
The hospital initially backed off its plans to close after it announced them in February, spurring demonstrations, but later doubled back.
The center said in a statement that “despite this deeply held commitment to supporting LA’s gender-diverse community, the hospital has been left with no viable path forward” to stay open.
“Center team members were heartbroken to learn of the decision from hospital leaders, who emphasized that it was not made lightly, but followed a thorough legal and financial assessment of the increasingly severe impacts of recent administrative actions and proposed policies,” the statement said.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta has warned that by closing the center, the hospital is violating state antidiscrimination laws, but his office hasn’t taken any further actions. Bonta and attorney generals from 22 other states sued the Trump administration over the executive order in February.
“The Trump administration’s relentless assault on transgender adolescents is nothing short of an all-out war to strip away LGBTQ+ rights,” Bonta told the AP in an email. “The Administration’s harmful attacks are hurting California’s transgender community by seeking to scare doctors and hospitals from providing nondiscriminatory healthcare. The bottom line is: This care remains legal in California.”
LGBTQ protesters and health care workers offer visibility
Still wearing scrubs, Jack Brenner, joined protesters after a long shift as a nurse in the hospital’s emergency room, addressing the crowd with a megaphone while choking back tears.
“Our visibility is so important for our youth,” Brenner said, looking out at a cluster of protesters raising signs and waving trans pride flags. “To see that there is a future, and that there is a way to grow up and to be your authentic self.”
Jack Brenner, an emergency room nurse at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, on Thursday.Jae C. Hong / AP
Brenner, who uses the pronoun they, didn’t see people who looked like them growing up or come to understand what being trans meant until their mid-20s.
“It’s something I definitely didn’t have a language for when I was a kid, and I didn’t know what the source of my pain and suffering was, and now looking back, so many things are sliding into place,” Brenner said. “I’m realizing how much gender dysphoria was a source of my pain.”
Trans children and teens are at increased risk of death by suicide, according to a 2024 study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Brenner described encountering young patients in the emergency room who are trans or otherwise on the gender-nonconforming spectrum and “at the peak of a mental health crisis.” Brenner wears a lanyard teeming with colorful pins emblazoned with the words “they/them” to signal their gender identity.
Jack Brenner shows their lanyard decorated with pronoun pins and buttons.Jae C. Hong / AP
“I see the change in kids’ eyes, little glints of recognition, that I am a trans adult and that there is a future,” Brenner said. “I’ve seen kids light up when they recognize something of themselves in me. And that is so meaningful that I can provide that.”
Beth Hossfeld, a marriage and family therapist, and a grandmother to an 11- and 13-year-old who received care at the center, called the closure “patient abandonment.”
“It’s a political decision, not a medical one, and that’s disturbing to me,” she said.
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon gave the state 10 days, beginning June 27, to sign on to an agreement “to rescind any trans-inclusionary guidelines and send cisgender female athletes who lost to a trans opponent personalized apologies,” The Sacramento Bee reports. The U.S. Department of Education’sOffice for Civil Rights had determined that California had violated federal nondiscrimination law by letting trans girls and women compete against cis females. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 bans sex discrimination in educational programs that receive federal funds. Democratic administrations have interpreted it as preventing anti-trans discrimination, while Trump’s administration is using it to enable anti-trans discrimination.
But California will not go along. “The [California Department of Education] respectfully disagrees with OCR’s analysis, and it will not sign the proposed Resolution Agreement,” CDE General Counsel Len Garfinkle wrote Monday to OCR Regional Director Bradley Burke, according to the Bee.
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s staff termed the proposed agreement a “political document” and said it had no legal validity. It would also make the state violate its own trans-inclusive nondiscrimination laws, Newsom’s aides said. California passed a law in 2013 allowing students to play on sports teams consistent with their gender identity.
The Trump administration has threatened loss of federal funds to K-12 schools, colleges, and universities with trans-inclusive sports policies, and some have agreed to ban trans athletes, such as, recently, the University of Pennsylvania.
Newsom, usually a strong LGBTQ+ ally, received criticism this year for questioning the fairness of letting trans girls compete with cis girls. Now, with his state standing up for trans girls, he’s catching fire from McMahon.
“California has just REJECTED our resolution agreement to follow federal law and keep men out of women’s sports,” she wrote on X. “Turns out Gov. Newsom’s acknowledgment that ‘it’s an issue of fairness’ was empty political grandstanding.” She said he would hear from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.
California is already suing the federal government over the demand to change the state’s trans-inclusive policy. Changing that would violate state antidiscrimination law and the U.S. Constitution, according to California Attorney General Rob Bonta.
And just two weeks ago, a spokesman for Newsom downplayed McMahon’s threat of withholding federal funds. “It wouldn’t be a day ending in ‘Y’ without the Trump administration threatening to defund California,” Newsom’s director of communications, Izzy Gardon, told The Advocate at the time. “Now Secretary McMahon is confusing government with her WrestleMania days — dramatic, fake, and completely divorced from reality. This won’t stick.”
California has made one concession. In May, the California Interscholastic Federation quietly changed the rules for competing in the girls’ state track championships, with a pilot program allowing cis girls who narrowly missed qualifying — allegedly due to the inclusion of a trans competitor — a chance to compete. But a trans girl targeted by Trump, Jurupa Valley High School junior AB Hernandez, was still allowed to participate as well. Hernandez won two gold medals and one silver at the state finals, and her fellow athletes offered no objections.
Maine has already stood up to Trump’s attacks on trans athletes. Democratic Gov. Janet Mills said the state would not change its trans-inclusive policies and that she would see Trump in court. After a federal court intervened in the administration’s attempt to withhold school meal funding from Maine, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it would restore the funds.
Shannon Minter, legal director at the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, praised California’s latest action. “This administration is targeting California in an attempt to intimidate it into backing away from its strong anti-discrimination laws,” he told the Bee. “I’m encouraged to see the California Department of Education is standing up to that.”
After the U.S. House joined the Senate in passing an extremist and deeply harmful reconciliation bill, Equality California—the nation’s largest statewide LGBTQ+ civil rights organization—issued the following statement from Executive Director Tony Hoang:
“Today, Congress passed one of the most cruel and dangerous bills in modern history at the direction of Donald Trump and on the backs of the most vulnerable Americans.
Congressional Republicans gutted Medicaid, slashed food assistance, and defunded Planned Parenthood. They imposed extreme new restrictions on programs that LGBTQ+ people—especially transgender people, immigrants, low-income families, people living with HIV, and LGBTQ+ people of color—rely on to survive.
In the dead of night, Republicans slashed healthcare access for an estimated 18 million Americans by gutting Medicaid and sabotaging the Affordable Care Act—leaving millions without coverage in the name of tax cuts for the rich.
Let’s be crystal clear—This bill is a coordinated, multi-pronged attack on LGBTQ+ people and all Americans, cutting off access to care, food, safety, and economic security:
Strips life-saving healthcare from LGBTQ+ people by gutting Medicaid — a program that 1.8 million LGBTQ+ adults, including over 185,000 transgender people, rely on as their primary source of health insurance.
Slashes food assistance by cutting SNAP benefits and imposing harsh new work requirements, putting more than 2 million LGBTQ+ adults at risk of deeper food insecurity, including nearly 1 in 5 transgender people.
Defunds Planned Parenthood, threatening access to gender-affirming care, HIV prevention, STI testing, contraception, and reproductive health services that LGBTQ+ people—especially youth and people of color—depend on.
Escalates attacks on LGBTQ+ immigrants, with $80 billion in new funding for ICE and CBP — putting asylum seekers and undocumented LGBTQ+ people in even greater danger of detention, deportation, and violence.
Cuts incomes for the poorest Americans, who are disproportionately LGBTQ+, while handing tax breaks to billionaires — a direct hit to the most marginalized in our community.
In California, the consequences will be catastrophic. One in three Californians rely on Medi-Cal, and over 5 million use CalFresh to feed their families. This bill will leave people sicker and hungrier—just to fund tax cuts for the wealthy.
Shame on every lawmaker who voted for this bill and against the wellbeing of their constituents—especially Reps. Calvert, Kim, Kiley and Valadao. We will remember. And we will make sure voters do, too.
The gloves are off, and we urge every American to join our fight and hold their representatives accountable for the harm they’ve inflicted and the lives they’ve put at risk.”
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Equality California is the nation’s largest statewide LGBTQ civil rights organization. We bring the voices of LGBTQ people and allies to institutions of power in California and across the United States, striving to create a world that is healthy, just, and fully equal for all LGBTQ people. We advance civil rights and social justice by inspiring, advocating and mobilizing through an inclusive movement that works tirelessly on behalf of those we serve. www.eqca.org
Stanford Medicine will no longer provide gender-affirming surgeries to patients under the age of 19 after facing threats from the Trump Administration.
“After careful review of the latest actions and directives from the federal government and following consultations with clinical leadership, including our multidisciplinary LGBTQ+ program and its providers, Stanford Medicine paused providing gender-related surgical procedures as part of our comprehensive range of medical services for LGBTQ+ patients under the age of 19, effective June 2,” Stanford Medicine told The Los Angeles Times.
“We took this step to protect both our providers and patients. This was not a decision we made lightly, especially knowing how deeply this impacts the individuals and families who depend on our essential care and support,” it continued.
Gender-affirming surgeries among minors are incredibly rare. There is no evidence of surgeries being performed on trans youth under the age of 12, according to a recent study in JAMA, and only 2.1 out of every 100,000 trans youth ages 15 to 17 received surgery — the vast majority being chest surgeries. Out of 151 breast reductions performed on American minors in 2019, 146 (97 percent) were performed on cisgender males.
Gender-affirming care for prepubescent youth primarily focuses on socially transitioning — changing their hair, clothing, or potentially going by a new name and pronouns. Only after many months being evaluated in talk therapy could a pubescent child demonstrating gender dysphoria be prescribed puberty blockers. When the patient is old enough, usually ages 16 to 17 per Planned Parenthood, they can then be prescribed hormones to replace those produced by their body.
Not only is gender-affirming care legal for minors in California, but the state became a sanctuary for the treatment following Gov. Gavin Newsom‘s signing of SB 107 in 2022. The law prohibits states that have banned the life-saving care from punishing those who travel to California to receive it through preventing the release of information or the arrest and extradition of someone based on another state’s court orders.
A coalition of local educators and LGBTQ+ organizations in California are unveiling 10 new LGBTQ+ history lessons for the state’s K-12 public school classrooms under the theme “Pride, Resistance, Joy: Teaching Intersectional LGBTQ+ Stories of California and Beyond.”
While the lessons will be unveiled on Thursday, they’ll align with the state’s 2011 Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful (FAIR) Education Act, a law that requires public schools to include the historical contributions of LGBTQ+ Americans in history lessons and classroom textbooks.
Lesson plan materials provided by the aforementioned organizations show that one kindergarten lesson will explore, “What are some ways we can show how to be a strong community member?” An 8th-grade U.S. History lesson plan will ask, “To what extent did historical figures agree or disagree with ‘all men are created equal’ during their activism?”
A 9th-grade Ethnic Studies lesson plan will ask, “What role did community organizations play in supporting queer AAPI [Asian-American and Pacific Islander] people in the 1980s and 1990s?” A 12th-grade U.S. Government lesson plan will ask, “How did LGBTQ+ immigrants push for more inclusive immigration policies in the 1970s and 1980s?”
The currently available lesson plans for high schoolers include ones about queer activist and poet Audre Lorde, AIDS & HIV activism, gay racial civil rights organizer Bayard Rustin, queerness in 1920s and 1930s Hollywood, trailblazing San Francisco politcian Harvey Milk, the removal of homosexuality as a classified mental disorder, transgender-inclusive German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, how urbanization affected alternative family structures, and other topics.
In a statement, Trevor Ladner, Director of Education Programs at One Institute said, “The FAIR Education Act affirms students’ right to study the pride, resistance, and joy of LGBTQ+ history and culture. These lesson plans equip K-12 teachers with standards-aligned resources and effective practices to teach intersectional LGBTQ+ histories,”
Peta Lindsay, Associate Director of the UCLA History-Geography Project said, “LGBTQ+ students, teachers, and families are essential members of our communities, and LGBTQ+ history is an essential part of our shared history. Every student deserves access to empowering LGBTQ+ history in schools.”
The development of LGBTQ+ inclusive-curriculum under California’s FAIR Act
The landmark legislation, the first of its kind in the nation, was introduced by then-State Sen. Mark Leno (D), and signed into law by then-Gov. Jerry Brown(D).
Historian Don Romesburg, the lead scholar who worked with advocacy organizations to pass the act, served as director of a committee to develop the act’s original curriculum framework.
Romesburg and his committee of 20 scholars — all who specialize in different areas of LGBTQ+, U.S. and world history — went line-by-line through the state’s curriculum and suggested ways to incorporate LGBTQ+ material based on current research and age-appropriateness. Their framework didn’t just include famous LGBT historical figures but also encouraged students to think critically about family structures, gender roles, and institutional oppressions throughout time.
The current framework has students in the 2nd grade social studies classes learning how LGBTQ+ families exist alongside families with adoptive parents, step-parents, and parents who are immigrants. In 4th-grade California history, students learn about famous 19th-century stagecoach driver Charley Parkhurst, a western pioneer who lived and dressed as a man but was discovered after death to have been assigned a female gender at birth
“This is great time for critical thinking,” Romesburg said, “to get people to think about birth-assigned gender and why someone would dress like [a man] in the Gold Rush era of the West.”
In 5th grade Early American history classes, some lessons emphasize how two-spirit shamans and multi-parent families in indigenous American tribes changed as a result of colonization. In 8th grade, students of 19th-century U.S. history discuss how Black people and women forged their own families in response to slavery and industrialization.
Social science electives for 9th graders include mentions of famous lesbian and bisexual women in, and ethnic studies classes mention famous queer people of color. Modern world history classes for 10th graders cover the persecution of gay people during the Holocaust.
The 11th grade modern U.S. history classes look at the evolution of modern LGBTQ+ communities throughout history (like during the Harlem Renaissance, WWII, and the sexual liberation movement of the 1970s). They also cover the persecution of sexual and gender minorities by the medical community, the U.S. military, the U.S. government, the religious right, and throughout the AIDS epidemic and current LGBTQ+ court cases.
Over the years, the state train educators about how to incorporate LGBTQ+ material into their classes and to advocate for textbook and educational material providers to create LGBTQ+-inclusive materials. California is a huge text book market and has a huge influence on the rest of the country’s textbook materials, so textbook producers have a strong financial incentive to create textbooks in line with California’s new standards, standards that will likely affect the textbooks of smaller states around the U.S..
As for claims of “sexual brainwashing”, Romesburg said, “It’s a contemporary reality that there’s an modern LGBT rights movement and that LGBT people exist. You don’t have to take a political view on whether you approve of that to know that it has a history and that history is something that all students should have access to.”
He added, “One of the things that’s most exciting is there are many educators in California that have been eager to include LGBT content in their teaching, but they haven’t know how. And this gives them a roadmap in a substantial way to do this in elementary, middle and high school. It’s utterly transformative and truly history-making.”
The Los Angeles Chapter of NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists, an organization that advocates for fair and accurate coverage of the LGBTQ+ community in the Southland while striving to foster community among LA’s queer and trans journalists, news media professionals and creatives, has announced the nominees for three inaugural journalism awards for Southern California journalists and newsrooms who championed LGBTQ+ stories in 2024. The awards will be presented at the 2025 Press Pride Prom, a benefit and awards ceremony presented by ABC7 and hosted by award-winning journalist Tracy Gilchrist.
NLGJA Los Angeles’ Awards Committee has selected three nominees for three new awards. The Troy Masters Legacy Award for Visionaries in Media, presented in collaboration with the Los Angeles Blade, honors a journalist or news media professional whose work reflects a dedication to the craft of journalism and a commitment to setting the stage for the next generation of LGBTQ+ industry leaders. The award is named in honor of Troy Masters, veteran queer journalist and former publisher of the Los Angeles Blade, who passed away last year. The nominees include Mariah Castañeda, co-founder of LA Public Press; veteran journalist LZ Granderson, who currently serves as an OpEd columnist for the Los Angeles Times and an ABC News contributor; and John Griffiths, founder of GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics and Dorian Awards.
“We are honored to present an award this year in honor of beloved Los Angeles publisher and journalist Troy Masters,” said NLGJA LA co-president Hansen Bursic, “These nominees embody Masters’ dedication to LGBTQ+ journalism and his passion for community building in Southern California and beyond.”
The Excellence in LGBTQ+ Reporting Newsroom Award honors a news outlet whose coverage of the queer and trans community is well-informed, complex, varied and intersectional, with a track record of promoting The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists’ mission to advance fair and accurate coverage of LGBTQ+ communities and issues. The nominees include LAist, Los Angeles Blade, andVariety.
“These nominees represent the diverse and passionate spirit of Southern California’s LGBTQ+ journalism community,” added NLGJA LA co-president Katie Karl. “At a time when queer and trans stories and journalists are under attack, we are proud to uplift a few of the incredibly talented journalists who are speaking truth to power and helping tell our community’s stories.”
The award winners will be announced at Press Pride Prom, a benefit for the NLGJA LA Chapter and awards ceremony held on July 26 from 6 to 9 p.m. in Glendale at the historic Grand Central Air Terminal. The event, which offers LGBTQ+ and other attendees the opportunity to relive their high school prom as their authentic selves, will feature food, drinks and a live DJ. The event will be hosted by veteran LA-based journalist Tracy Gilchrist, recently made internet famous with her “Wicked” “holding space” interview with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. The event is presented by ABC7.
Early bird tickets are on sale now until June 20. Tables and regular tickets will also be available to purchase through July 18. You can learn more and get tickets here.
On Tuesday afternoon, police apprehended a man caught in the act of vandalizing the Pink Triangle, San Francisco’s annual and iconic Pride Month commemoration atop Twin Peaks.
The nearly acre-wide art installation overlooking the Castro District was defaced with black spray paint. 19-year-old Lester Bamacajeronimo of San Francisco was apprehended at around 12:30 p.m. shortly after police arrived on the scene and gave chase.
“Officers pursued the male suspect on foot and detained him,” SFPD said in a statement. “Evidence of vandalism tools were located and seized. Charges are pending.”
A motive in the crime has yet to be determined.
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie condemned the vandalism as “hateful.”
“This Pride Month, we commemorated the 30th anniversary of the Pink Triangle, a powerful installation that celebrates the resilience of our LGBTQ+ community. This hateful act of vandalism does not reflect San Francisco’s values and will not be tolerated,” Lurie said in a statement.
Founder of the Triangle Project, Patrick Carney, described the damage as foot-wide zigzagging lines that run back and forth across the installation.
Twenty-six of the 175 tarps that comprise the massive triangle were damaged, he told KRON News.
Pink paint will likely be used to restore the damaged tarps, Carney said. “However, that’s a temporary fix, and we’ll still have to throw those tarps away.”
Carney said anti-transgender stickers had been popping up near the triangle prior to yesterday’s vandalism. He and other community members have responded by covering them up with tape or scratching them out.
The Pink Triangle has been subject to violence before, with several of the pink canvas tarps set ablaze during Pride Month in 2009. The triangle has been graffitied at least twice in the past, Carney said.
The Pink Triangle first appeared as a rogue art installation high above the city in 1995, reclaiming the symbol gay people were identified with by the Nazi regime in Germany in the 1930s and ’40s.
Hundreds of volunteers gather annually to put the triangle together at the beginning of June.
California state Sen. Scott Wiener (D) called the vandalism a “horrific attack on the LGBTQ community.”
“The Pink Triangle is a symbol of our community’s resilience in the face of hatred and violence,” Wiener said in a statement. “We’re not going anywhere, and no amount of vandalism or violence will change that.”
The triangle will remain atop Twin Peaks until after San Francisco’s Pride parade and festival on June 29.
There are approximately 49,000 LGBTQ+ adult immigrants living in Los Angeles County who do not have U.S. citizenship, according to a new report from the Williams Institute, including 26,000 who hold lawful residency and 23,000 who are undocumented. Of these groups, 5,200 are transgender or nonbinary, just under 1,000 of whom are undocumented.
Over 1.25 million LGBTQ+ adult immigrants live in the U.S., with an estimated 10 percent — 122,000 people — living in Los Angeles County. About 60 percent of LGBTQ+ non-citizens in the county have origins in Latin America.
Immigration enforcement could most severely impact Los Angeles County Supervisorial Districts 1 and 2, which contain several historically Black, Latine, Asian, and Pacific Islander neighborhoods. These districts are home to nearly 29,000 LGBTQ+ non-citizens — nearly 60 percent of all LGBTQ+ non-citizens in the county — who are at heightened risk as the president deploys more law enforcement in response to ongoing anti-ICE protests.
At least 118 immigrants were arrested in Los Angeles between Friday and Saturday last week, ICE said in a Saturday post on X, sparking massive protests outside several government buildings in the city’s downtown area. Donald Trumpthen usurped California’s sovereignty by deploying the National Guard without Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom‘s request — the first time since 1965 that a president has bypassed a governor’s authority to deploy the troops.
“LA’s LGBT undocumented immigrants face the most immediate risks of detention and deportation, but LGBT people who hold legal status and even naturalized citizens may face collateral consequences of the increased immigration enforcement,” lead author Laurel Sprague, Research Director at the Williams Institute, said in a statement. “These policies and practices erode trust in community institutions, increase fear and psychological distress, and lead to poorer economic opportunities and overall health outcomes, especially among those who know someone who was detained or deported.”
One high-profile case of an LGBTQ+ immigrant wrongly being detained by ICE in California is Andry Hernández Romero, a 32-year-old gay Venezuelan makeup artist who was secretly deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador’s CECOT prison earlier this year.
Hernández Romero had been awaiting an asylum hearing at Otay Mesa Detention Center when he was deported without warning in March, his attorney Lindsay Toczylowski told The Advocate in April. His lawyers located him only after identifying him in footage posted by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, showing shackled Venezuelan men being marched off a U.S.military plane. A Time photographer said he cried out, “I’m gay! I’m a stylist!” before being taken away.
Hernández Romero is presumed to be inside CECOT, a supermax prison described as a modern-day gulag, where inmates are held often without charges and are denied communication with the outside world. His legal team has received no confirmation of his condition or whereabouts.
Two 13-year-old boys are suspected of assault and a hate crime after they allegedly threw fireworks and shouted homophobic remarks at a crowd gathered Wednesday night for a Pride event in downtown Redwood City.
Police said one of two victims of the assault suffered minor injuries, and that part of the attack was captured on video surveillance.
Officers responded shortly before 6 p.m. to Courthouse Square at 2200 Broadway, where the event was being held. The suspects fled before police arrived, but later that evening one of them was located. On Thursday, the second was found, police said. Both were taken to the San Mateo County Youth Services Center.
