NYC Council candidate advocates for LGBTQ refugees
Edafe Okporo, an author and immigrant rights activist, on Sept. 26 headlined the 25th anniversary celebration of the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, a nonprofit providing legal services to immigrants facing detention and deportation, at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
Before taking the stage to read from his book “Asylum: A Memoir and Manifesto,” Okporo spoke to the Washington Blade about his experiences as an asylum seeker and the challenges faced by LGBTQ refugees in the U.S. “Immigration detention centers are jails, but special jails for migrants,” Okporo, who is running for New York City Council, said.
In 2016, he was detained in an immigration detention center in Elizabeth, N.J., for more than five months. He had fled to the U.S.
from his home country of Nigeria — which in 2014 criminalized same-sex relationships with penalties of up to 14 years in prison — after being beaten unconscious by a group of people who broke into his apartment and dragged him out onto the street.
