#3: queers against ICE
on the power of "regular ass faggots and queers and lesbians and straight people," plus resources to protect your community against ICE
This is Other Kinds of Intimacy, a newsletter about love and relationships at their most expansive by journalist and writer Juliana Feliciano Reyes. You can subscribe here.
Last summer, in Philly, I took the trolley to the Gayborhood for a training on how to protect your community against ICE.
It was run by a group of queers, mostly cis gay men (whom my friend Nicole adoringly calls the gay boys), though there was at least one lesbian in the mix (that would be Nicole) who looked especially cute teaching us about constitutional rights while wearing my navy blue shorts. (Well, they were hers now. But clothes between us were fluid, as demonstrated by the “little lesbian tanktop” of hers I wore all summer.)
In Philly, as it was all over the country, we watched in disgust and horror as ICE hunted immigrants. They raided homes, snatched people out of parks, arrested them leaving immigration court. And so I was grateful for an opportunity to do something, in whatever small way. To educate myself in a form of harm reduction, like learning how to administer Narcan.
It seemed that the more than 100 people who attended felt the same. An elderly man shared that he was thinking about the role of bystanders in fascism. “I do not want to be a bystander,” he said.
At the beginning of the training, as we discussed why we had come, the man next to me asked me who was running the event.
I think they’re called Philly Queer Fundy, I told him, which felt funny to say because even though they called themselves that, I knew they were not any kind of official institution in the way that we think of official institutions—they were lawyers, labor organizers, policymakers, but mostly, they were just normal people, queers, friends who wanted to do something about the horrors we were facing.
like before sunrise but make it buenos aires + deep platonic intimacy between organizers
Last week, I asked one of the training’s co-organizers, Glen, to voice memo me about how the training came to be.
He traced it back to the beginning of the year, on an evening spent with Nicole at a very cool bar in Buenos Aires, where they just happened to be at the same time. They were thinking about fascism and the desaparecidos and queer death. (Just chill light conversation; this has Nicole allll over it.)
Glen, who’s 33, also talked about his frustrations with gay culture and how he hadn’t engaged with it much since his twenties. He was disillusioned by what he described as “the apolitical nature of gay men.”
“Nicole and I were talking a lot about how gay men have really sat out, like once we got marriage and AIDS medication for those with health insurance, like gay men have really just sat out the movement writ large, particularly gay white men,” he said.
“The thing I remember most was her saying, ‘Well, why are you going to cede this space?’”
Why are you going to cede this space? That question, or really, a challenge, an invitation, was the starting point for him in thinking about how he and others could influence queer spaces.
fundraising & flirting as the institutions crumble
Back in Philly after Buenos Aires, Nicole had another idea, this time pitched over sourdough pizza in Fitler Square. What about throwing a party to raise money for trans healthcare?
“I was like, OK, I can do that, I had thrown a lot of parties in high school in order to hang out with the cool kids,” Glen said.
They held it in the basement of an old funeral home and ended up raising $6,000, mostly in contributions of $20, $25. It was supposed to be just a one and done thing, but it was obvious, he said, that they should do more.
“The way that that space felt in that funeral home, just like having gays and dolls and Nicole, of course, brought a thick ass crew of lesbians and just having people together for a cause … while our institutions were caving and crumbling. It just felt so good and so powerful that so many people in that room were like, we gotta do more.”
What followed was the first ICE OUT training, the one I attended last summer. Then they trained staff at six bars in the Gayborhood on how to respond if ICE arrives.
Then there was another fundraising party, this time for Asylum Pride House, which supports queer asylum seekers (from the Fundy recap email: “We danced, … we built community, (we flirted a bit 😉), and we raised $11,000 for Philly queer immigrants!”), and another ICE OUT training this past week, which 100 people attended.
Since the fundraising parties have begun, gay bars have started showing interest in hosting more of them, Glen said.
It’s been powerful, he said, “to remind people these spaces are political and they need to be and we can't cede them, you know? We need to take control of them.”
‘if this was happening to me, what would i want someone to do?’
At the training, the organizers reminded us that while knowing the law is important, it doesn’t always protect us.
“We know we are the only ones who will protect us,” Nicole said.
When talking about how to intervene if you witness an ICE arrest, one trainer said, if you’re unsure of what to do, think: “‘If this was happening to me, what would I want someone to do?’ And go with that.”
I had written about know your rights/anti-deportation trainings before but they were largely geared toward undocumented immigrants—those understood as the directly impacted.
“The thing I remember most was her saying, ‘Well, why are you going to cede this space?’”
This training seemed to acknowledge what had become clear: that while those of us with citizenship had the privilege of … not being hunted, we could no longer say that this wasn’t our problem, that it did not affect us and our communities. That we had a responsibility to each other.
And, as Nicole put it:
“We know that this is just the tip of the iceberg,” the attacks on immigrants, pro-Palestine organizers, trans people. “They are coming for all of us.”
‘organizing is not some mystical thing’
Through the horrors of early 2025, the onslaught of deportations, genocide, attacks on trans rights, and on and on, the gay boys and Nicole (lol, iconic crew) looked to ACT UP. They read, and felt deeply inspired by, Let the Record Show, Sarah Schulman’s oral history of AIDS organizing.
The biggest thing I learned from ACT UP, Glen said, is that it was just everyday people who were driving change.
“I kinda had this idea that it’s other people that decide what these spaces are for,” he said. “Through ACT UP, they were all just regular ass faggots and queers and lesbians and straight people who were like, this is fucked up.”
I asked him if he had advice for people who wanted to organize but didn’t have any experience, which was the same position he was in at the beginning of the year, back in Buenos Aires. (Other than, of course, finding a lesbian organizer muse a la Nicole.)
“Organizing is not some mystical thing,” he said. You already have these skills, he says, like throwing a party, bringing people together. “Organizing is just the stuff we all do everyday, we just don’t call it that or have the same intention or focus on it.”
“What I’ve been trying to convey is there is no special group,” he said. “We all have this ability, we all have this power. We can all be actors and influence our spaces and community and culture.”
–
Check out this folder shared by Philly Queer Fundy at the training for resources like a workplace preparedness checklist and advice for intervening if you witness a raid.
Here is just a little bit of what I learned at the training; all of which was shared with the caveat that this is not legal advice.
Know the difference between a judicial warrant and an administrative warrant. ICE can only enter private areas (a home, for example) with a judicial warrant that’s signed by a judge. (Check out the samples in the resources folder.)
You don’t have to self-sort. If ICE shows up at your workplace and they ask workers who were born in the US to stand in one place and those who were born elsewhere to stand in another, you don’t have to comply.
Make a plan for if ICE shows up. This, of course, is a larger undertaking that involves organizing—getting your coworkers on board for an ICE response plan. Some things to think about include: Can you get your employer/manager to agree not to let ICE into private spaces? Can you train your coworkers on what not to do (self-sort, give ICE any information about coworkers, etc)? Can you designate private areas? More on that below.
Designate private areas. ICE cannot enter private areas in a workplace (kitchens, break rooms, supply rooms) without a judicial warrant or consent from the employer, so think about what these areas in your workplace are, and if none exist, create some. Putting up a sign that says “employees only” on a door can turn a room into a private area. (And then treat it like one.)
Thanks for reading.
Till Sunday again,
Juliana