National
N.Y. protesters see importance of LGBT economic issues
As demonstrations spread, so does gay visibility in movement
Jonathan "J.C." Lopez of Brooklyn, N.Y. has been 'camping' in Zuccotti Park with his boyfriend for nearly two weeks with the 'Occupy Wall Street' protests. (Washington Blade photo by Phil Reese)
NEW YORK — The Occupy Wall Street protests that began in New York City on Sept. 17 as an outpouring of frustration over the economy has captured the attention of the nation and spread to Washington and other cities.
Many protesters have decried government bailouts for financial institutions whose leaders escaped accountability for the recession. Others have focused on local issues and many LGBT advocates have joined the demonstrations. In New York, there is frustration among LGBT youth over cuts to programs like homeless youth shelters and HIV/AIDS care and prevention programs.
Jonathan “J.C.” Lopez of Brooklyn has, like many of these “campers,” been sleeping on the ground in Zuccotti Park in a sleeping bag with his boyfriend for nearly two weeks.
“I experienced a lot of messed up things, and a lot of good things that come along here, like how the cops were,” Lopez said about clashes with police that triggered widespread criticism. “They messed up and I’m glad that what they did is on camera.”
He hopes that the protests bring change to the New York Police Department.
“The good thing is that everybody works together for one thing and one thing only: Stand up,” Lopez said about the actions in New York’s financial district. “Everybody is tired of not speaking. The protest here is mainly for helping everybody. You know, the homeless, the justice, everything to make a change.”
Lopez sees unique economic challenges for LGBT youth and sees the protests as a catalyst to fix those problems.
“Certain people are just stranded in the street because of what they are,” he told the Blade as the sun was setting over his campsite. “Changing the whole economic system, changing people that are homeless, putting the programs back on, like the shelters and so on and so on, so people can get a job, people can get a home. I hope that will change.”
“Queer economic justice can mean several things,” Jake Goodman of New York activist group Queer Rising told the Blade. “On a very literal level, corporations — to my knowledge of which most have changed their employment policies to be favorable to at least gays and lesbian people — still donate a majority of their donations to candidates and to political parties that actively pursue policies that take away our rights or block us from our rights. So queer economic justice is to stop funding those people.”
“Also queer economic justice is to remember that gay people are not the only queer people — there are transgender people that need help with housing [and employment protections] and we need to remember our other brothers and sisters and ensure economic justice for them,” Goodman said, as a crowd gathered below the red “Joie de Vivre” statue towering over Zuccotti Park. “Economic justice for them is providing protection for [homeless queer youth] while they’re on the streets because families kick them out,” Goodman continued. “[Queer Rising is advocating] for additional $3 million per year in the budget every year, which would provide 100 additional beds per year until everybody has beds and protection.”
The Blade spent Monday and Tuesday in New York and LGBT protesters were found at every turn.
Diego Angarita of Massachusetts sees LGBT issues wrapped up with many of the other issues being addressed.
“As you saw in the declaration for Occupy Wall Street, there is still discrimination based on your sexual orientation and gender,” said Angarita, who was the sole marcher carrying a rainbow flag in a procession around the park. “Transgender people are discriminated against all the time. Imagine if there was a transgender stock trader. Are you kidding me that would never happen.”
“There are gay people who were immigrants, gay people who are undocumented, gay people who are on welfare, I mean gay people who are environmentalists, gay indigenous folks,” Angarita continued. “Being gay is so integrated into every form of identity that is out there and being the particular gay angle I guess is just discrimination for gender inequity and forms and in the sense of identity in general.”
Sunlight Foundation organizer Bridget Todd has been marching with the Occupy Washington protests in Lafayette Park since the start of the demonstrations and said the D.C. branch of the movement is only getting started.
“I don’t think that cops are going to force them to get out and they’re going to see if it peeters out on its own; but I actually don’t think it will, I think it’s only getting stronger,” Todd said of the D.C. demonstrations. “We were there just the other day on Sunday doing a teaching and trying to find ways to help them strengthen their movements and strengthen their ideas and really engage them.”
“I got laid off in April and we’re all suffering,” said Kristin Ridley, who traveled from Occupy L.A. to join the New York protest. “We’re all suffering and this is a basically becoming a plutocracy in this country, being ruled by the wealthy, and it hurts all of us.
“We need to go out and show support for a populist movement,” she continued. “And wrapped up into that are also a lot of the individual things that help people, for example, advancing equal rights based on things like sexual orientation, it just fits right into it.”
Though many members of the swelling group repeated that all were welcome, and that LGBT issues were not specifically being singled out because the economic policies being advocated would help all, some gay participants said they saw opportunities to educate passersby and others on unique LGBT economic issues. Paula Cambronero had an exchange with a man who approached her near the food trucks where interviews with protesters were being conducted.
“He was interested in what was going on … and he didn’t feel he understood what people were here for, so he started asking me a few questions,” Cambronero said. “He asked me what ‘real’ democracy meant, whether we thought we had a fake democracy now, where we were going, and he also asked me what we thought social justice meant. I said I thought it meant that everyone should have the same opportunities and the same rights, and he said that everybody already did.”
Cambronero used the inability of same-sex couples to marry as an example of inequality, which led him to proclaim all gay people can marry, as long as they marry the opposite sex.
“We had an interesting discussion where he shared his viewpoints of why he thought the law should not change, and I shared my opinion of why it should,” she told the Blade. “I hope I got him thinking.”
Rev. Magora Kennedy — whose hat was decorated with a rainbow flag — was in the Stonewall Inn the night that the police raid on the gay bar sparked three nights of unrest in New York City, leading to the dawn of the modern LGBT rights struggle.
“We were in the streets from that Friday until that Monday,” Kennedy said. “That weekend, there was very little ‘salt in the pepper.’ Most of us that were out there were people of color. The thing that happened with Stonewall, as the movement went on, it got whiter and whiter. Most of us that were involved with Stonewall, there’s not many of us that are alive today.”
Kennedy, a lesbian, was married to a gay man in the military. The two married to prevent Kennedy’s husband from being kicked out of the military. They had four sons. Kennedy now has 14 grandchildren and nine great grandchildren and calls herself the “gayest great-grandmother out of the closet.”
“I’m so sorry that he’s not alive today to know that ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ was repealed and that gay people can openly join the services now.”
Kennedy sees the LGBT rights movement and the Occupy Wall Street protests as extensions of the civil rights movement.
“This whole thing is something that we’ve all been going through from the time of the civil rights movement,” she said above a chorus of protesters and drums rising from the center of Zuccotti Park, just steps from the site of the World Trade Center. “When they were putting together Wall Street … it was very, very white; no women and no people of color.”
She continued, “today … the people of color — the blacks, the Puerto Ricans, and just people of color in general — they gave them good salaries so they’d shut up. These people are making millions of dollars and as long as they stay quiet it’s a brand of new slavery and it’s economic slavery.”
“The state is a central organized power of violence, and that’s what forces violence against queers and everything else,” Vita told the Blade. “Queers in particular face violence and pressure from the state. For example, the issue of marriage. I’m not necessarily pro-marriage, I’m for getting the government out of marriage so there’s no bias either way for straight, gay or anybody.”
A local nanny who wished to remain anonymous came to the rally on Sept. 18, initially to support “the vague sentiments being expressed at the beginning, the sense of dissatisfaction with injustice.”
She decided to stay and has taken on the role of medic for the community of occupiers because she enjoys the community developing at Zuccotti Park.
“I think that what’s being built here is a revitalization of progressive politics and the labor movement and a lot of other things that I feel really needed some new energy.”
“The energy’s definitely gone up,” she said among the clamour of a call-and answer chant making its way across the park. “When it started it was maybe a couple hundred people, and it was a pretty consistent group of people, so we all knew each other. That’s changed.”
“One of the best things about this community is that everybody here is listening all the time,” the New York nanny-turned medic said. “so when we do things like, for example, saying ‘let’s go around the circle and say our names and our preferred gender pronoun,’ and somebody says ‘why should I need to say my preferred gender pronoun,’ we can explain, ‘not everybody here is going to prefer the pronoun that you may assume based on their body.’ And they sort of listen and go ‘oh, OK. I didn’t know that, and now I do, and now I have a new way to think about gender, and a new way to think about how people present themselves,’ that they can not only take into their interactions with people here, but hopefully take back home with them into their communities.”
“One of the reason that I’ve always opposed people like the Log Cabin Republicans, its not just that I’m a progressive, but I don’t believe that a conservative outlook — even a conservative economic outlook — can be consistent with gay rights,” the anonymous medic said. “I believe that the conservative political mindset is founded on elitism, its founded on special privileges, so it will never create a society in which LGBT people can live as equals to straight people and cisgender people. So if LGBT people want a society where they can be treated as the legal and cultural equal of the majority, they need to be part of a community that is working toward change and working toward more a equal rather than less equal community.”
Kat Adams, a queer minimum wage worker from Staten Island works with the medics at Zuccotti Park. He is eager to have a family some day, but as his salary barely pays his rent, he is reticent to start his family.
“Not by a long shot,” he said about whether or not minimum wage is a living wage. “I will not bring a child into a situation where I can’t even provide shoes.”
“Most of us have full time jobs,” he said of criticism of the protesters.
“What brought me here was just medical. I came down here with no interest in the politics, very little knowledge of what was going on, and honestly I didn’t think it would work, I didn’t think it mattered, and thought it would all fall apart within a couple weeks.”
“After seeing what happened Wednesday with the police confrontations and all the chaos, I consider myself part of it now,” Adams said, recalling an ugly injury he helped treat, of a camper who was hit so hard by a police baton he required EMT attention.
“You’ll see the rainbow flag out, you’ll see a lot of people, but its such a diverse group, but everyone looks so ‘weird,’ that you’re not going to find us.”
Many protesters believe that mainstream media outlets have been resistant to fairly portraying the actions in New York’s financial district.
“You haven’t seen nearly as much coverage [of the protests] as you would think there would be of something like this big and loud and widespread, say, compared to the Tea Party where fifty people show up and it’s and it’s backed by a political party and they get a lot of attention,” said Kristin Ridley. “But when its this big, widespread, truly grassroots movement it doesn’t get nearly the same amount of attention.”
Though their goals are intentionally abstract, according to the back page of the protester’s daily newspaper, ‘The Occupied Wall Street Journal,’ many of those that spoke with the Blade feel that progress will spark from the colorful demonstrations.
Kat Adams notes that many groups from across the political and economic spectrum, from libertarian Ron Paul supporters to communists to anarchists have assembled at the park to exchange ideas and express frustration with a political process that has made them feel left behind.
“You see arguments that spring up, but I think that’s good,” Adams continued. “A lot of people talk about how aimless this is, but that really is expressive of the idea here. Its all these different groups who would never talk to each other, let alone hang out like this, have come together because they all see the same problem.”
“I think they’re actually constructive arguments, people are trying to understand one another, and help others understand them.”
“What we want to happen here is a change to the way the process works, is a change to the way society is ordered,” The anonymous medic summarized the goals of the occupation. “So that it is not the richest part of society that has all the political power, so its not the richest part of society that has all of the economic power, so that wealth is more fairly distributed, and so that things like education, food, health care, housing are recognized as basic human rights are treated as basic human rights by the government and by society.”
Ethan Lee Vita agrees that the Occupy Wall Street protests and the dozens more that have began to appear all over the nation, are a good opportunity for a wide-range of like-minded individuals to network and exchange ideas.
“I’m not entirely sure if the occupation itself will forge anything, but the bonds that are built within it, and the ideas exchanged will be very helpful down the line,” Vita concluded.
Bridget Todd supports the Wall Street group, but thinks that the Washington contingency will be even more successful at initiating change.
“I think Wall Street is important but I think K Street is arguably more important; that’s where a lot of the money goes and that’s where a lot of it happens so I think it’s very important and I’m glad to see that this is a sort of countrywide movement but especially DC and New York.”
Stonewall veteran Reverend Magora Kennedy believes uniting different movements against injustice is vital.
“We’re all in this together. Whether you’re gay or straight, white, black, blue, green, whatever; we’re all in this together because if we don’t come together and unite and do something about this we will perish.”
State Department
Report: US to withhold HIV aid to Zambia unless mineral access expanded
New York Times obtained Secretary of State Marco Rubio memo
The State Department is reportedly considering withholding assistance for Zambians with HIV unless the country’s government allows the U.S. to access more of its minerals.
The New York Times on Monday reported Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a memo to State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs staffers wrote the U.S. “will only secure our priorities by demonstrating willingness to publicly take support away from Zambia on a massive scale.” The newspaper said it obtained a copy of the letter.
Zambia is a country in southern Africa that borders Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Times notes upwards of 1.3 million Zambians receive daily HIV medications through PEPFAR. The newspaper reported Rubio in his memo said the Trump-Vance administration could “significantly cut assistance” as soon as May.
“Reports of (the) State Department withholding lifesaving HIV treatment in return for mining concessions in Zambia does not make us safer, stronger, or more prosperous,” said U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on Tuesday. “Monetizing innocent people’s lives further undermines U.S. global leadership and is just plain wrong.”
The Washington Blade has reached out to the State Department for comment.
Zambia received breakthrough HIV prevention drug through PEPFAR
Rubio on Jan. 28, 2025, issued a waiver that allowed PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during a freeze on nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending. HIV/AIDS service providers around the world with whom the Blade has spoken say PEPFAR cuts and the loss of funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which officially closed on July 1, 2025, has severely impacted their work.
The State Department last September announced PEPFAR will distribute lenacapavir in countries with high prevalence rates. Zambia two months later received the first doses of the breakthrough HIV prevention drug.
Kenya and Uganda are among the African countries have signed health agreements with the U.S. since the Trump-Vance administration took office.
The Times notes the countries that signed these agreements pledged to increase health spending. The Blade last month reported LGBTQ rights groups have questioned whether these agreements will lead to further exclusion and government-sanctioned discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
National
‘They took him!’ Gay married couple torn apart by ICE
As Allan Marrero remains in ICE custody, his husband Matt continues to fight tirelessly for his release.
For 113 days, Allan Marrero has been in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, while his husband, Matthew Marrero, has been using every available avenue to secure his release.
Since Nov. 24, 2025, Allan—originally from the Cayman Islands—has been held at multiple detention facilities across the United States. His detention began after what was meant to be a routine, good-faith marriage-based green card interview at Federal Plaza in New York City, marking two years of marriage with Matthew.
Advocates, including Rev. Amanda Hambrick Ashcraft, Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, and attorney Alexandra Rizio, have been actively involved in supporting the couple and navigating the legal challenges posed by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The case highlights the Trump-Vance administration’s aggressive use of immigration enforcement to detain and deport individuals, even in circumstances where applicants have established legal claims to remain in the U.S.
Timeline of Allan’s detainment
On Nov. 24, Allan and his husband Matt arrived at 26 Federal Plaza in New York City for what was supposed to be a routine, marriage-based green card interview. They were accompanied by Rev. Amanda Hambrick Ashcraft, a minister from Middle Church in Manhattan, where the couple attended and Matthew sang in the choir.
They arrived early for their 8 a.m. appointment, prepared and hopeful. Despite growing news coverage about increased immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump, they believed in the process and felt confident they had done everything right.
“They brought with them a three-inch binder documenting their entire life together—photos, letters, legal records, and other evidence,” Ashcraft said.
“From the moment you get to Federal Plaza, the process is extremely traumatic—and that’s by design,” she explained. “There’s nothing warm or intuitive about it. It’s dehumanizing, and parts of it feel barbaric.”
Immediately after meeting the USCIS officer, something felt off.
“We came with a three-inch binder of our entire life—photos, letters, everything,” Matt said. “We were dressed up, ready, confident we had done everything right. The first thing she said was, ‘I don’t want that. Take it all apart.’ That was the moment I knew something wasn’t right.”
The officer then asked the couple for their passports—something neither of them had on hand. That seemed to be strike two, signaling that, just as with previous steps in this process, the interview was already off course because of the woman behind the desk.
As the couple was told to move to a new room for their interview, Ashcraft was denied entry with them. This struck all three as odd; Ashcraft had attended immigration and green card interviews before to provide spiritual guidance and bolster claims of legitimacy, with no issues. Coupled with the initial hostility over the binder, it was a clear sign that the day would not go as hoped.
“There’s no real policy—it’s whoever is in front of you deciding what the rules are at that moment,” Ashcraft added. “Whatever they say goes. That’s what makes it so dangerous.”
Inside the tightly controlled interview, tensions escalated.
“I looked over at my husband when she asked how we met—just instinct. He’s the love of my life,” Matt said. “She snapped her fingers in my face and said, ‘Don’t look at him.’ We’re telling our love story, and I’m not even allowed to look at my husband.”
The officer then raised questions about a missed immigration hearing for Allan in 2022.
Allan had lived in the United States since 2013 and had been diligent about maintaining his legal status and personal growth. During that time, he had entered a rehabilitation program for alcohol addiction—a commitment that, coincidentally, caused him to miss the scheduled court hearing. Medical records explained by Alexandra Rizio, Allan’s attorney, corroborate this.
Because the judge did not know Allan was in rehab, a removal order was issued in his absence.
“He didn’t realize that he had a removal order in his name,” Rizio, the Make the Road New York attorney, explained. “When you have a removal order, it means ICE can pick you up at any moment. He walked into that interview completely unaware that he was at risk of being arrested on the spot.”
The officer acknowledged that their marriage was legitimate but denied Allan’s green card application. She told them they would need to appear before an immigration judge, signaling that his journey to legal status was far from over and still subject to the whims of others.
“She told us, ‘Out of the goodness of my heart, I’ll let you leave today. I could have called ICE, but I won’t,’” Matt recalled. “My husband started crying, I was a wreck.”
Despite that comment, the couple was escorted through a series of back hallways. Allan’s file was handed off to ICE officers, and the supervisor walked away.
“They walked us down this long hallway, took his file, handed it to ICE agents, and just left. No explanation, no warning. Suddenly they’re telling him to put his hands behind his back, and I’m standing there asking, ‘What is happening?’”
The gravity of the situation escalated.
“He was crying, I was crying, we were hugging, and I kept saying, ‘It’s going to be okay,’” Matt said. “And then they just pulled him away into an elevator and left me there. It happened so fast it didn’t even feel real.”
A supervisor entered briefly to distinguish between what could be controlled inside the office and what could not be controlled outside. Rizio called this a deliberate choice to intensify the emotional pressure.
“What the officer could have done was say, ‘You have a removal order—go hire a lawyer,’” Rizio said. “That would have been the humane and reasonable response. Instead, ICE was called, and they arrested him.”
Outside the room, Ashcraft heard the chaos unfold.
“The next thing I heard was Matthew screaming down the hallway: ‘Amanda! Amanda! They took him!’” she recounted. “That’s how it happened—just like that, after everything they had prepared.”
For the next 36 hours, Matt had no information about his husband’s whereabouts.
“For 36 hours, I had no idea where my husband was,” he said. “No phone call, no information, nothing. It felt like he had just disappeared.”
The following morning, Matt’s mother and sister drove down from Connecticut to help. They returned to Federal Plaza with Allan’s anxiety medication and contact information, only to be told minutes later that Allan was no longer there. The couple could not locate him through the ICE online system. Only after contacting an attorney did they learn he had been transferred to Delaney Hall, a detention facility in New Jersey.
Matt and Allan’s mother drove to Delaney Hall in Newark, an industrial area where families—including children—waited in the rain. Inside, staff initially insisted Allan was not present, despite documentation proving otherwise. After long delays, they were finally allowed to see him.
This was the first time Matt felt the point-blank homophobia of the detention system.
“When I finally saw him, they told us we couldn’t touch,” Matt said. “I’m watching straight couples kiss and hold each other, but I can’t even hold my husband’s hand.”
“You ripped my husband away, didn’t tell me where he was for 36 hours, and now I’m not allowed to console him?” he added. “It was so cold—it felt completely inhuman.”
Conditions inside detention quickly became grueling.
“He was moved in the middle of the night, chained at his wrists and ankles, not told where he was going,” Matt said. “They kept the cuffs on for days—he had cuts and bruises.”
“The worst part isn’t even the facilities—it’s the transport,” Matt continued. “You’re chained like an animal, trying to eat a bologna sandwich and drink water while shackled. You can barely move your body.”
Allan remained at Delaney Hall for approximately two weeks. One night, he told Matt that groups of detainees were being taken out in the middle of the night without warning. Shortly afterward, he was among them.
Around 12:30 a.m., Allan called to say he was being moved. He and others were gathered in a visitation room and held for hours without food or beds. By midday, they were shackled again, loaded onto transport, and flown out of state. His location once again disappeared from the ICE tracking system.
Over the next several days, Allan was moved through multiple locations, including a holding area near an airport in Phoenix, where detainees were kept in overcrowded, tent-like enclosures without seating. He remained in restraints for extended periods and was denied access to his medication.
From there, he was transferred through facilities in Texas and Louisiana before ultimately being sent to a remote detention site in the Florida Everglades, informally known as “Alligator Alcatraz.”
Conditions there were severe. Detainees were held in cages with dozens of men in each enclosure. Sanitation was poor, with overflowing toilets near sleeping areas. Exposure to the elements and limited access to medical care caused Allan’s health to deteriorate. Phone calls were limited to short, scheduled windows.
“He told me about being in a cage in the Everglades—30 men, toilets overflowing next to where they sleep,” Matt said. “There were signs about poisonous snakes, and he said, ‘If one shows up, I’m going to die—there’s nobody here.’”
“ICE officers would tell them, ‘You’re a burden to your family. Just sign your self-deportation papers,’” Matt added. “He would call me crying, saying, ‘Just let me go, forget about me.’ That’s psychological warfare.”
Ashcraft reflected on the system’s cruelty.
“At every step, it feels designed to be as insular, as cruel, and as impenetrable as possible,” she said. “At every turn, we’re seeing a new kind of cruelty…Someone will say, ‘They can’t do that,’ and we have to say, ‘Actually, they are.’”
Eventually, Allan was transferred to a detention facility in Natchez, Miss., where conditions were more stable and he was finally able to receive his prescribed medications. Around this time, his legal case began to shift.
His attorney submitted documentation showing that the missed 2022 hearing had occurred while he was in a verified rehabilitation program. The same immigration judge who had issued the original removal order agreed to reopen the case and rescinded that order, restoring Allan’s standing.
“The judge agreed with us and granted bond. At that point, we thought he would be released and we could move forward. That’s how the system is supposed to work,” Rizio said.
In early February, a bond hearing was scheduled. Matt traveled to Mississippi in anticipation of Allan’s release. The legal team presented extensive documentation, including letters of support from members of Congress, as well as evidence of Allan’s marriage and community ties.
Instead of releasing him, ICE exercised its authority to place a 10-day hold while considering an appeal. During that time, Matt remained in Mississippi, visiting Allan regularly.
“ICE decided to just ignore that and not release him. They used something called the ‘auto stay’ provision to keep him locked up anyway,” Rizio said. “It’s essentially them saying, ‘We don’t like the judge’s order, so we’re not going to follow it….That feels crazy—because it is crazy. There’s no real statutory basis for it. It’s a regulation that allows them to operate outside the bounds of what the law actually says.”
Before the hold period ended, a second immigration judge became involved. Without reviewing the full evidence or receiving a newly filed green card application, the judge issued a decision in advance.
“A completely different judge—who isn’t even an immigration specialist—stepped in and denied an application that wasn’t even before him,” Rizio explained. “I have never seen anything like that in 14 years of practice.”
She has argued that the decision was procedurally improper and legally flawed.
“He decided, based on rehab records showing recovery and sobriety, to label Allan a ‘habitual drunkard.’ He cherry-picked information and ignored the evidence that he had successfully completed treatment.”
When the 10-day hold expired, Allan’s legal team attempted to secure his release again, but ICE cited the new ruling to continue detaining him. By that point, Allan had been in detention for more than 100 days.
“He could have walked out of detention with a green card,” Rizio said. “Instead, he’s still sitting in detention because of actions that simply shouldn’t have happened.”
“None of what I just described reflects a system that cares about justice,” she said. “It feels like punishment. I feel very confident these actions are designed to make people give up… Allan has already lost over three months of his life. He’s never going to get that time back.”
“We did everything right,” Matt said. “We followed the law, built a life, got married, had a clear pathway to citizenship. And now my whole life is on pause. If someone wants to understand this, imagine someone coming in and kidnapping the person you love most—taking away all your control. That’s what this feels like.”
Allan remains in detention in Natchez while legal challenges move forward. Throughout his time in custody, detainees have reported being pressured to accept voluntary deportation, often being told they are burdens to their families. Despite the mounting legal and emotional toll, Allan continues to fight his case from inside detention, while his family and community advocate for his release on the outside.
The couple has set up a Go-Fund-Me to help with the financial costs of this ongoing situation.
The Blade contacted ICE and DHS for comment but did not receive a response.
The White House
Kennedy Center leadership changes as Trump ally Grenell departs
Numerous productions cancelled shows during gay Trump loyalist’s tenure
Longtime Trump ally and openly gay “Special Presidential Envoy for Special Missions of the United States” Richard Grenell is stepping down from his leadership role at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
The story was first reported by Axios on March 13 before President Donald Trump made any official statements about the leadership change at the Kennedy Center, which has undergone a sweeping overhaul of rule changes and pro-Trump appointees to its board since Trump took office in 2025.
In addition to packing the Kennedy Center boardroom with loyalists and appointing himself chair of the board in February 2025, the Trump-Vance administration has placed the president’s name on the facade in an attempt to rename the center — despite the move being illegal without an act of Congress to officially change its name. The administration has also painted the building’s columns white and removed diverse programming.
Since these changes, multiple shows have pulled out of performing at the historic venue — including productions associated with the Washington National Opera.
Matt Floca, the former vice president of facilities operations at the national cultural center under Grenell, has been named the new head of the Kennedy Center, according to Trump.
The change is expected to be announced at a Kennedy Center board of directors meeting at the White House on Monday, which Trump is expected to attend.
“I am pleased to announce that Matt Floca, subject to the approval of the Board of Directors, will be named the Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director of THE TRUMP KENNEDY CENTER where, as Vice President of Operations, Matt has helped us achieve tremendous progress in bringing the Center to the highest level of Excellence!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “A Complete Reconstruction of THE TRUMP KENNEDY CENTER will begin after the July 4th Celebration, with a scheduled Grand Re-Opening in approximately two years.”
“Ric Grenell has done an excellent job in helping to coordinate various elements of the Center during the transition period, and I want to thank him for the outstanding work he has done,” the post added. “THE TRUMP KENNEDY CENTER will be, at its completion, the finest facility of its kind anywhere in the World! — President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
Grenell previously served as U.S. ambassador to Germany and later as acting director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term. He led the Kennedy Center during a period in which its programming was reshaped and new board members aligned with Trump were appointed. Trump also named himself chair of the board.
Congress approved $257 million in reconstruction funding for the Kennedy Center in last year’s spending package, a project estimated to take roughly two years to complete. Kennedy Center officials have also said they implemented increased cost-cutting measures — including large-scale layoffs — and that staff salaries are no longer being paid using debt reserves.
Actor Harvey Fierstein, a longtime critic of Trump’s takeover of the cultural institution and an award-winning openly gay performer, posted on Instagram celebrating Grenell’s departure.
“Good old anti-LGBTQ+ self-loathing dick licker, #RichardGrenell, is moving on to ruin something new under the auspices of our demented war-mongering MAGA fool Prez,” Fierstein wrote. “Maybe #RicGrennell can open a little boutique selling red baseball hats. But first, after destroying the Kennedy Center for the Arts, he’s earned a vacation. Maybe he and Kristi Noem can go puppy hunting together. They can tell each other tales of when they were once called ‘the best people’ and other fairy tales.”
Report: US to withhold HIV aid to Zambia unless mineral access expanded
‘They took him!’ Gay married couple torn apart by ICE
Man charged with carjacking, kidnapping after having sex in D.C. park pleads guilty
The rule of law, not the rule of religion
Meet the Scandals, D.C.’s LGBT rugby team
Trump proclamation targets trans rights as State Dept. shifts visa policy
Gay Venezuelan man ‘forcibly disappeared’ to El Salvador files claim against White House
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PHOTOS: Awesome Con
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