National
New hope for bi-national gay couples
ICE closes proceedings against gay Venezuelan national

LGBT advocates working on immigration issues are hoping the cancelled deportation this week of a gay foreign national living in the United States could be promising news for bi-national same-sex couples in danger of separation.
On Wednesday, Henry Velandia, a gay Venezuelan national, and his spouse, Josh Vandiver, a U.S. citizen, received formal notification from U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement saying the agency would no longer pursue deportation proceedings against Velandia.
After coming to the United States in 2002 legally on a visitor’s visa, Velandia faced potential deportation after he remained in the United States after his visa expired in six months.
To allow him to remain in the United States, Vandiver sought to obtain a green card for his spouse, whom he legally married Connecticut, through a marriage-based application. However, ICE had informed the couple the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits federal recognition of same-sex marriage, prevented the agency from issuing Velandia a green card.
On May 6, Velandia faced a hearing before an immigration judge, who could have ordered deportation, separating him from Vandiver for at least 10 years. However, Riefkohl halted deportation proceedings against Velandia because of a recent order that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder issued on the previous day to vacate similar deportation proceedings in the case for another New York same-sex bi-national couple.
The notification that the couple received on Wednesday closes the deportation proceedings and marks the first time ICE has administratively closed the such proceedings against the spouse of a gay U.S. citizen.
In a statement provided to the Washington Blade, Vandiver said the notification of the decision on Wednesday was “the second happiest day of my life, second only to the day Henry became my husband.”
“On Wednesday, Henry and I learned that the government was no longer trying to tear us apart and destroy our marriage,” Vandiver said. “Now we can start building our future together. This is the fruit of a hard-fought struggle over the past year to bring recognition to the terrible harm DOMA is causing same-sex binational couples.”
“Wednesday’s decision closing Henry’s deportation case is the first sign of hope that these deportations are finally ending and it’s our deepest hope that it has a positive impact across the country for all couples like us,” Vandiver added.
The new development has LGBT rights supporters working on immigration issues looking to the Velandia case and Vandiver to have an impact to help other deportation proceedings facing bi-national same-sex couples living in the United States.
Steve Ralls, spokesperson for Immigration Equality, also said his organization intends to press the administration to make sure other couples that are facing similar separation under immigration law are treated the same as Velandia and Vandiver.
“We have married bi-national couples in places like Vermont, New York and California that are facing separation before the end of this summer,” Ralls said. “We expect that ICE’s message in Henry and Josh’s case is they are no longer prioritizing the deportation of gay spouses and we expect other couples to receive the same treatment.”
Lavi Soloway, a New York-based immigration lawyer who handled Velandia’s case, said the decision to close proceedings in this situation shows the administration has leeway to stop deportations in similar cases.
Soloway, founder of Stop the Deportations, said he plans to draw on the Velandia decision when he appears in a San Francisco immigration court on July 13 to stop the potential deportation of another foreign national, Alex Benshimol, who married his partner Douglas Gentry.
“It demonstrates the ability of ICE to use its prosecutorial guidelines to protect bi-national couples from being torn apart by deportation,” Soloway said. “The circumstances are very similar.”
But whether this case will have an impact on others remains to be seen. Gillian Anderson, an ICE spokesperson, confirmed that her agency filed a motion to close proceedings in the Velandia case, but maintained her agency continues to enforce the law.
“There has been no change in policy with regards to deportation cases affected by the Defense of Marriage Act,” she said. “Pursuant to the Attorney General’s guidance, the Defense of Marriage Act remains in effect and the executive branch, including [the Department of Homeland Security], will continue to enforce it unless and until Congress repeals it or there is a final judicial determination that it is unconstitutional.”
Observers say the decision to close proceedings in the Velandia case could be related to a memo ICE issued on June 17 listing situations in which enforcement agents may decide to exercise prosecutorial authority and dropped proceedings against undocumented immigrants living in the United States.
While the memo doesn’t explicitly offer protections to gay couples, it states undocumented immigrants with “family relationships” in the United States, or individuals with a “U.S. citizen or permanent resident spouse” may be considered for discretion.
Ralls said the similar timing of the distribution of the memo and the decision to terminate proceedings against Velandia was noteworthy and said it could mark an “unofficial” change in administration policy.
“I believe we’re beginning to see some dots being connected that can lead us to the assumption that there is now an unofficial policy that the White House does not want to see these couples torn apart,” Ralls said. “I certainly hope that’s the case, and more and more, I think we’re seeing a gradual evolution leading in that direction.”
But Soloway said the new guidelines are similar to memos that were already in place even before the Obama administration emphasizing the deportation of criminals and others who would endanger the safety of Americans should be a priority as opposed to law-abiding immigrants or immigrants that have family relationships in the United States.
“So the June 17 memo is a clarification that really gives much more detailed guidance than we had previously, but there’s no departure in the June 17 memo from the existing guidelines,” Soloway said. “It just offers more examples and a little bit more guidance than what previously existed.”
Even with ICE agents allowed to exercise prosecutorial authority to discontinue deportation proceedings against gay foreign nationals in relationships with U.S. citizens, LGBT immigration groups are still seeking a blanket moratorium on these proceedings to ensure they stay together in the United States.
Ralls said the Obama administration has already set a precedent to suspend deportations of undocumented immigrants in relationships with U.S. citizens. In 2009, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano granted deferred action to undocumented immigrant widows who were married to U.S. citizens for fewer than two years before to their spouse’s death.
“They should receive explicit direction from the White House to [issue a moratorium], and we’re not going to step back from that call until we have an assurance that none of the families in this situation will be torn apart,” Ralls said.
Soloway said the memos on exercising prosecutorial authority are helpful and offers the U.S. government “the opportunity to do the right thing on a case-by-case basis,” but still isn’t the more clearly articulated moratorium that LGBT advocates are seeking.
“Nobody’s fate should be subject to the discretion of a specific ICE officer or agent,” Soloway said. “There should be a policy coming the administration that specifies that these deportations should be halted.”
The fight to obtain this moratorium could be an uphill battle. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has indicated that President Obama believes legislative action on immigration issues is needed — as opposed to a moratorium — and “he can’t just wave a wand and change the law.”
Federal Government
Treasury Department has a gay secretary but LGBTQ staff are under siege
Agency reverses course on LGBTQ inclusion under out Secretary Scott Bessent

A former Treasury Department employee who led the agency’s LGBTQ employee resource group says the removal of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) from its discrimination complaint forms was merely a formalization of existing policy shifts that had already taken hold following the second inauguration of President Donald Trump and his appointment of Scott Bessent — who is gay — to lead the agency.
Christen Boas Hayes, who served on the policy team at Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) from 2020 until March of this year, told the Washington Blade during a phone interview last week that the agency had already stopped processing internal Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) complaints on the basis of anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
“So the way that the forms are changing is a procedural recognition of something that’s already happening,” said Hayes. “Internally, from speaking to two EEO staff members, the changes are already taking place from an EEO perspective on what kind of cases will be found to have the basis for a complaint.”
The move, they said, comes amid the deterioration of support structures for LGBTQ workers at the agency since the administration’s early rollout of anti-LGBTQ executive orders, which led to “a trickle down effect of how each agency implements those and on what timeline,” decisions “typically made by the assistant secretary of management’s office and then implemented by the appropriate offices.”
At the end of June, a group of U.S. House Democrats including several out LGBTQ members raised alarms after a Federal Register notice disclosed Treasury’s plans to revise its complaint procedures. Through the agency’s Office of Civil Rights and EEO, the agency would eliminate SOGI as protected categories on the forms used by employees to initiate claims of workplace discrimination.
But Hayes’s account reveals that the paperwork change followed months of internal practice, pursuant to a wave of layoffs targeting DEI personnel and a chilling effect on LGBTQ organizing, including through ERGs.
Hayes joined Treasury’s FinCEN in 2020 as the agency transitioned into the Biden-Harris administration, working primarily on cryptocurrency regulation and emerging technologies until they accepted a “deferred resignation” offer, which was extended to civil servants this year amid drastic staffing cuts.
“It was two things,” Hayes said. “One was the fact that the policy work that I was very excited about doing was going to change in nature significantly. The second part was that the environment for LGBTQ staff members was increasingly negative after the release of the executive orders,” especially for trans and nonbinary or gender diverse employees.
“At the same time,” Hayes added, “having been on the job for four years, I also knew this year was the year that I would leave Treasury. I was a good candidate for [deferred resignation], because I was already planning on leaving, but the pressures that emerged following the change in administration really pushed me to accelerate that timeline.”
Some ERGs die by formal edict, others by a thousand cuts
Hayes became involved with the Treasury LGBTQ ERG shortly after joining the agency in 2020, when they reached out to the group’s then-president — “who also recently took the deferred resignation.”
“She said that because of the pressure that ERGs had faced under the first Trump administration, the group was rebuilding, and I became the president of the group pretty quickly,” Hayes said. “Those pressures have increased in the second Trump administration.”
One of the previous ERG board members had left the agency after encountering what Hayes described as “explicitly transphobic” treatment from supervisors during his gender transition. “His supervisors denied him a promotion,” and, “importantly, he did not have faith in the EEO complaint process” to see the issues with discrimination resolved, Hayes said. “And so he decided to just leave, which was, of course, such a loss for Treasury and our Employee Resource Group and all of our employees at Treasury.”
The umbrella LGBTQ ERG that Hayes led included hundreds of members across the agency, they said, and was complemented by smaller ERGs at sub-agencies like the IRS and FinCEN — several of which, Hayes said, were explicitly told to cease operations under the new administration.
Hayes did not receive any formal directive to shutter Treasury’s ERG, but described an “implicit” messaging campaign meant to shut down the group’s activities without issuing anything in writing.
“The suggestion was to stop emailing about anything related to the employee resource group, to have meetings outside of work hours, to meet off of Treasury’s campus, and things like that,” they said. “So obviously that contributes to essentially not existing functionally. Because whereas we could have previously emailed our members comfortably to announce a happy hour or a training or something like that, now they have to text each other personally to gather, which essentially makes it a defunct group.”
Internal directories scrubbed, gender-neutral restrooms removed
Hayes said the dismantling of DEI staff began almost immediately after the executive orders. Employees whose position descriptions included the terms “diversity, equity, and inclusion” were “on the chopping block,” they said. “That may differ from more statutorily mandated positions in the OMWI office or the EEO office.”
With those staff gone, so went the infrastructure that enabled ERG programming and community-building. “The people that made our employee resource group events possible were DEI staff that were fired. And so, it created an immediate chilling effect on our employee resource group, and it also, of course, put fear into a lot of our members’ hearts over whether or not we would be able to continue gathering as a community or supporting employees in a more practical way going forward. And it was just, really — it was really sad.”
Hayes described efforts to erase the ERGs from internal communication channels and databases. “They also took our information off internal websites so nobody could find us as lawyers went through the agency’s internal systems to scrub DEI language and programs,” they said.
Within a week, Hayes said, the administration had removed gender-neutral restrooms from Main Treasury, removed third-gender markers from internal databases and forms, and made it more difficult for employees with nonbinary IDs to access government buildings.
“[They] made it challenging for people with X gender markers on identification documents to access Treasury or the White House by not recognizing their gender marker on the TWAVES and WAVES forms.”
LGBTQ staff lack support and work amid a climate of isolation
The changes have left many LGBTQ staff feeling vulnerable — not only because of diminished workplace inclusion, but due to concerns about job security amid the administration’s reductions in force (RIFs).
“Plenty of people are feeling very stressed, not only about retaining their jobs because of the layoffs and pending questions around RIFs, but then also wondering if they will be included in RIF lists because they’re being penalized somehow for being out at work,” Hayes said. “People wonder if their name will be given, not because they’re in a tranche of billets being laid off, but because of their gender identity or sexual orientation.”
In the absence of functional ERGs, Hayes said, LGBTQ employees have been cut off from even informal networks of support.
“Employees [are] feeling like it’s harder to find members of their own community because there’s no email anymore to ask when the next event is or to ask about navigating healthcare or other questions,” they said. “If there is no ERG to go to to ask for support for their specific issue, that contributes to isolation, which contributes to a worse work environment.”
Hayes said they had not interacted directly with Secretary Bessent, but they and others observed a shift from the previous administration. “It is stark to see that our first ‘out’ secretary did not host a Pride event this year,” they said. “For the last three years we’ve flown the rainbow Pride flag above Treasury during Pride. And it was such a celebration among staff and Secretary Yellen and the executive secretary’s office were super supportive.”
“Employees notice changes like that,” they added. “Things like the fact that the Secretary’s official bio says ‘spouse’ instead of ‘husband.’ It makes employees wonder if they too should be fearful of being their full selves at work.”
The Blade contacted the Treasury Department with a request for comment outlining Hayes’s allegations, including the removal of inclusive infrastructure, the discouragement of ERG activity, the pre-formalization of EEO policy changes, and the targeting of DEI personnel. As of publication, the agency has not responded.
U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court to consider bans on trans athletes in school sports
27 states have passed laws limiting participation in athletics programs

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear two cases involving transgender youth challenging bans prohibiting them from participating in school sports.
In Little v. Hecox, plaintiffs represented by the ACLU, Legal Voice, and the law firm Cooley are challenging Idaho’s 2020 ban, which requires sex testing to adjudicate questions of an athlete’s eligibility.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals described the process in a 2023 decision halting the policy’s enforcement pending an outcome in the litigation. The “sex dispute verification process, whereby any individual can ‘dispute’ the sex of any female student athlete in the state of Idaho,” the court wrote, would “require her to undergo intrusive medical procedures to verify her sex, including gynecological exams.”
In West Virginia v. B.P.J., Lambda Legal, the ACLU, the ACLU of West Virginia, and Cooley are representing a trans middle school student challenging the Mountain State’s 2021 ban on trans athletes.
The plaintiff was participating in cross country when the law was passed, taking puberty blockers that would have significantly reduced the chances that she could have a physiological advantage over cisgender peers.
“Like any other educational program, school athletic programs should be accessible for everyone regardless of their sex or transgender status,” said Joshua Block, senior counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ and HIV Project. “Trans kids play sports for the same reasons their peers do — to learn perseverance, dedication, teamwork, and to simply have fun with their friends,” Block said.
He added, “Categorically excluding kids from school sports just because they are transgender will only make our schools less safe and more hurtful places for all youth. We believe the lower courts were right to block these discriminatory laws, and we will continue to defend the freedom of all kids to play.”
“Our client just wants to play sports with her friends and peers,” said Lambda Legal Senior Counsel Tara Borelli. “Everyone understands the value of participating in team athletics, for fitness, leadership, socialization, and myriad other benefits.”
Borelli continued, “The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit last April issued a thoughtful and thorough ruling allowing B.P.J. to continue participating in track events. That well-reasoned decision should stand the test of time, and we stand ready to defend it.”
Shortly after taking control of both legislative chambers, Republican members of Congress tried — unsuccessfully — to pass a national ban like those now enforced in 27 states since 2020.
Federal Government
UPenn erases Lia Thomas’s records as part of settlement with White House
University agreed to ban trans women from women’s sports teams

In a settlement with the Trump-Vance administration announced on Tuesday, the University of Pennsylvania will ban transgender athletes from competing and erase swimming records set by transgender former student Lia Thomas.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights found the university in violation of Title IX, the federal rights law barring sex based discrimination in educational institutions, by “permitting males to compete in women’s intercollegiate athletics and to occupy women-only intimate facilities.”
The statement issued by University of Pennsylvania President J. Larry Jameson highlighted how the law’s interpretation was changed substantially under President Donald Trump’s second term.
“The Department of Education OCR investigated the participation of one transgender athlete on the women’s swimming team three years ago, during the 2021-2022 swim season,” he wrote. “At that time, Penn was in compliance with NCAA eligibility rules and Title IX as then interpreted.”
Jameson continued, “Penn has always followed — and continues to follow — Title IX and the applicable policy of the NCAA regarding transgender athletes. NCAA eligibility rules changed in February 2025 with Executive Orders 14168 and 14201 and Penn will continue to adhere to these new rules.”
Writing that “we acknowledge that some student-athletes were disadvantaged by these rules” in place while Thomas was allowed to compete, the university president added, “We recognize this and will apologize to those who experienced a competitive disadvantage or experienced anxiety because of the policies in effect at the time.”
“Today’s resolution agreement with UPenn is yet another example of the Trump effect in action,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “Thanks to the leadership of President Trump, UPenn has agreed both to apologize for its past Title IX violations and to ensure that women’s sports are protected at the university for future generations of female athletes.”
Under former President Joe Biden, the department’s Office of Civil Rights sought to protect against anti-LGBTQ discrimination in education, bringing investigations and enforcement actions in cases where school officials might, for example, require trans students to use restrooms and facilities consistent with their birth sex or fail to respond to peer harassment over their gender identity.
Much of the legal reasoning behind the Biden-Harris administration’s positions extended from the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court case Bostock v. Clayton County, which found that sex-based discrimination includes that which is based on sexual orientation or gender identity under Title VII rules covering employment practices.
The Trump-Vance administration last week put the state of California on notice that its trans athlete policies were, or once were, in violation of Title IX, which comes amid the ongoing battle with Maine over the same issue.
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