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"What I really want the world to know is that [queer Ghanaians] have no life, they have no voice,” Mr. B, who was recently granted asylum, told The Advocate.
It was 2019 when Mr. B first left Ghana.
As a gay man living in a country where homosexuality is criminalized, there wasn’t a single person among family or friends that Mr. B told about his sexuality. Despite his caution, and his seemingly quiet life as a truck driver, Mr. B was brutally assaulted by a gang that year.
The attack would spur his decision to seek refuge in the United States. Unfortunately, the worst of Mr. B’s journey was not yet behind him.
Mr. B, who asked to use a pseudonym, passed through over ten countries on his way to the U.S., encountering a different danger with every new step. Once he reached the Americas, this included crossing the Darién Gap, which is known as the most dangerous land route in the world for migrants.
"Some places we have to go by foot, some places we have to go by boat, some places you have to go by forest. We experience it all,” Mr. B told The Advocate. “Especially in the forest where we used to rest, you hear animals nearby. We are lucky enough they didn't come closer. A lot of people get injured by animals."
But the wilderness would prove to be the least of Mr. B’s concerns, as in nearly every country he passed through, he was robbed and extorted by people in uniforms – government authorities who claimed instead that they would help him.
"I think sometimes there's a simplistic notion of the border being just the land crossing between the United States and Mexico,” said Claire Thomas, lead professor of the Asylum Clinic at New York Law School. “But the border for Mr. B started much further than that."
When he finally reached North America, Mr. B was detained for a month in Mexico, then kept in the country for an additional five months without any language interpretation. He was surrounded by authorities and interrogation checkpoints in the country, which Thomas noted has many "conservative states where being out is not okay."
"He also had to hide his sexuality in Mexico. No one could know because he, as a black man, as a Muslim man – all of those are very problematic for folks in migration," she said. "And as a gay person, that's even more problematic."
Mr. B made it to the U.S. border at the end of May 2020, where he found that it was closed to asylum-seekers due to the COVID-19 pandemic. After being detained for three months, he was transferred to the Stewart Detention Facility in rural Georgia where he was held in a dormitory with over 60 men. Mr. B said he was provided no personal protection equipment, and therefore had to use the same surgical mask the entire time he was at the facility. Nearly everyone became ill under these conditions.
“Most of us began to cough,” he said.
That was when a family friend of a friend brought Mr. B’s case to Thomas. Through the New York Law School’s Asylum Clinic, nonprofits Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR) and the Envision Freedom Fund paid Mr. B’s $15,000 bond, and volunteers with the Southern Poverty Law Project were able to get him on a bus to Atlanta, from where he would eventually travel to New York.
Mr B. arrived in New York in late August 2020 and met Thomas in a park near New York Law School’s campus to sign documents. Services were fully remote at that point, and law school students had to prepare his case as the date continued to be postponed due to COVID-19 Immigration Court closures.
Mr. B finally had his individual hearing date in New York Immigration Court three and a half years later, and was officially granted asylum earlier this year after a long-fought battle. Though Mr. B’s journey isn’t over yet – he’s currently looking to get his commercial driver’s license so he can go back to work as a truck driver.
“We're hoping to get the word out and to have him sponsored by a company to pay for that, which will lead to a job,” Thomas said. “In Ghana, he had a two year apprenticeship to learn also how to do repairs for his own truck, because if it broke down, there's no self service.”
In order to help migrants and asylum seekers like Mr. B, Thomas suggested donating to bail bonds such as the ones that helped him, and to also “help connect people with jobs.”
“It’s about being there, connecting people, being a good neighbor, and welcoming people who are effectively future new Americans,” she said.
Mr. B, who’s “so relieved” to have been granted asylum, is now most looking forward to “dating and working” in the U.S. He also recently attended his first-ever Pride celebration, where he said “the atmosphere was great.”
“I noticed that everyone can do anything they want here because they are free,” he said.
As Ghana weighs criminalizing LGBTQ+ identity even further, Mr. B said that he hopes the world will continue fighting for their rights.
"What I really want the world to know is that [queer Ghanaians] have no life, they have no voice,” he said. “They live and survive by a miracle, meaning that if you, as a queer person, make even the littlest mistake, you will be gone."
