GLAAD has documented Donald Trump record on LGBTQ issues, including his policies, rhetoric and proposals on immigration. Trump’s full record is available on GLAAD’s Trump Accountability Tracker.
LGBTQ people seek protection and asylum in the U.S. to escape persecution and violence from countries around the world. Persecution due to sexual orientation is grounds to apply for asylum in the U.S.
Trump’s immigration record includes:
- False claims during a news conference on August 8, 2024, that 20 million people had crossed the U.S. border illegally under the Biden administration. NBC News reported that border crossings fell to their lowest monthly number of Biden’s presidency in June, with just over 84,000 migrants apprehended.
- False claims and fearmongering that migrants are committing crimes once in the U.S. Research shows immigrants actually commit fewer crimes than non-immigrants.
- Promising mass deportations, including threats of raids and use of camps to detain people.
- Falsely and baselessly describing migrants from Mexico at his first campaign announcement: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
- Vowing to build a wall along Mexico and having Mexico pay for it. Only part of a wall was built and Mexico did not pay for it.
- Creating Migrant “Protection” Protocols requiring asylum seekers at the U.S. southern border to be returned to Mexico, including LGBTQ and HIV-positive people who endured human rights abuses in Mexico.
- Ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protected an estimated 800,000 young undocumented immigrants, including an estimated 39,000 LGBTQ DREAMers, from detention and deportation.
- Signing an executive order promising to withhold federal money from sanctuary cities in an attempt to increase deportations.
- Ending a humanitarian program that allowed Haitian immigrants to live and work in the United States following a catastrophic earthquake.
- Grossly characterizing immigrants and their home countries, including Haiti and countries in Africa: “Why do we want all these people from ‘shithole countries’ coming here?”
- Signing an executive order in 2018 initiating family separations. Thousands of migrants, including young children, were taken away from their families.
- Shutting down the federal government for 35 days, the longest government shutdown in American history, after lawmakers refused to fund more than $5 billion for the border wall along the United States and Mexico.
- Declaring a national emergency to get money for the border wall after the 35-day shutdown failed to produce funding results.
- Signed Executive Order 13769, the “Muslim Ban,” which came from a campaign promise to implement a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”
Project 2025, a blueprint for authoritarian takeover of the government created by anti-LGBTQ Heritage Foundation and 140 others connected to the first Trump administration, calls for:
- Legalizing mass deportation and raids of immigrant communities, as well as separating families and ending birthright citizenship. Same-sex couples and LGBTQ couples with children would be subject to these extreme and inhumane measures.
- Blocking financial aid for college students if their state permits immigrants, including DACA recipients, to access in-state tuition.
- Requiring public schools to charge tuition to unaccompanied migrant children and children with undocumented parents.
- Terminating the legal status of 500,000 Dreamers by eliminating staff time for reviewing and processing renewal applications.
- Suspending updates to the annual eligible country lists for H-2A and H-2B temporary worker visas and excluding areas from filling gaps in the agricultural, construction, hospitality, and forestry workforce.
- Barring U.S. citizens from qualifying for federal housing subsidies if they live with anyone who is not a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident.
- Forcing states to share driver’s licenses and taxpayer identification information with federal authorities or risk critical funding.