In December 2018, the Trump administration started forcing asylum seekers at the southern border to wait long periods of time in Northern Mexico while a makeshift tent “court” considered their asylum case in the United States. Under this unprecedented policy—cynically named “Migrant Protection Protocols”—the U.S. government returned to extreme violence and destitution tens of thousands of  highly vulnerable individuals and families who were already fleeing persecution in their home countries.

After escaping her tormentors’ impunity in Guatemala in 2019, hoping to reunite with her husband and their six-year-old daughter and apply for asylum in Miami, Elia Lopez and her three-year-old daughter were held up by the U.S. government for over a year and a half in the state of Tamaulipas—a “Do Not Travel” location, according to the U.S. State Department, due to rampant crime and kidnappings. Because they are fluent only in Mam—an indigenous language for which the “Remain in Mexico” system (unlike the regular asylum system it upended) provided no interpreters—their repeated pleas not to be returned to Mexico were never fully heard. This was by design, in yet another vicious attempt by the last administration to flout even its most basic legal obligations to refugees.

Not even the brutal assaults Y.G. routinely suffered on account of her being transgender, nor Dayami Gonzalez’s kidnapping and rape, could move the U.S. government to live up to its own supposed humanitarian standards. These two women fled Cuba in 2019 only to be betrayed by this country’s oppressive border policy. The previous administration hypocritically spouted coarse rhetoric about intolerable repression in Cuba, while rejecting Cuban refugees at every turn. These two were stranded in Tamaulipas also for a year and a half, despite being eligible for desperately-needed assistance in Miami, where their family members—U.S. citizens and permanent residents—worried for their safety and anxiously awaited being reunited.

Now sixty days into the new administration, relief has finally come for these families. The new President vowed to end the “Remain in Mexico” policy. Elia and her toddler, as well as Dayami and Y.G.—all clients of the ACLU of Florida—have now been processed into the United States to pursue their asylum cases. Still additional steps to provide meaningful access to protection for all individuals subjected to MPP and other anti-asylum and anti-immigrant policies during the Trump administration need to be taken. The Biden Administration should return U.S. asylum seekers with pending cases who are waiting in Mexico and release them on recognizance, bond, parole, or alternatives to detention while their cases proceed in immigration court. This change in policy could mean life or death for those awaiting outcomes to their cases.

Floridians who celebrate the promise of America should welcome these developments and advocate for these policy changes in support of those seeking protection. We honor our state’s successful legacy of immigration by affording these newcomers a chance. They have endured enough, including for doing just what the law asked of them. People seeking protection in this country must never again be held hostage to the whims of political opportunists.

The Biden administration will also need to pull out of shoddy enforcement arrangements peddled by the previous administration to co-opt our state and local governments, and pull back from an exorbitant immigration detention model that prioritizes pretextually holding large numbers of people in punitive conditions for long periods of time to discourage them from fully pursuing their cases. These steps will be necessary to begin dispelling the insidious false myth that immigration poses a threat to our communities and to fully turn the page on four years of systematic immigrant abuse. We must meet the moment and work to rebuild an immigration system that ensures fairness for all.

Much like the events following the police raid at New York’s Stonewall Inn in June 1969 – which helped trigger what we now celebrate as LGBTQ+ Pride – there has long since been an ongoing rebellion led by transgender and gender non-conforming people, lesbians, gays, street hustlers, and several others, many of whom are people of color, against the violent and routine harassment they have long experienced at the hands of state officials.

That night at Stonewall wasn’t the first time we’d see such a coalition fight back against the forces that purported to serve, protect, and defend the rights of all Americans. It wouldn’t be the last, either.

In 1937, more than thirty years before Stonewall, a group of unsuspecting patrons ran for safety at a gay bar in Miami called La Paloma when dozens of people raided it. That raid, however, hadn’t been officially orchestrated by the police, but rather by the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan had implored the police to shut La Paloma down for weeks and insisted that if the police did not act soon, they would take matters into their own hands. And so they did. The police at least tacitly approved of it and later followed that raid up with a number of their own.

As the histories of both La Paloma and Stonewall make clear, LGBTQ+ rights can only be fully secured alongside the liberation of those most marginalized among us, including the full liberation of Black folks and other people of color, immigrants, and transgender and gender non-conforming people, among others.

Five years ago, in June 2016, a person waged a hate-filled attack of terrorism on the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando and ended the lives of 49 people -- mostly LGBTQ+ people of color.

When the Pulse massacre occurred, it was the largest mass shooting in U.S. history. It no longer is. In fact, despite the countless number of tragic mass shootings that happened both before and after Pulse, we’ve seen almost no progress in gun control reform. These snapshots from our historical archives provide both guidance and roadmaps for moving forward.

LGBTQ+ Pride means defending the right to teach Black history and studies across our campuses in Florida and beyond, now demonized and banned in the form of the latest boogeyman known as “critical race theory.” Of course, Black history is LGBTQ+ history too. Pride also means defending the rights of immigrants, many of whom have been at the center of the LGBTQ+ movement from the start. It is also fighting back against attacks on transgender people in the state and beyond, most recently by prohibiting them from playing school sports.

LGBTQ+ liberation will only ever come to fruition if we maintain a vision of full liberation for us all.

UPDATE: After 13 years, Britney’s conservatorship finally ended in November 2021, restoring her right to make decisions about her own life. But there are still over 1 million people with disabilities living under some form of conservatorship or guardianship in the U.S. — people who deserve access to their civil liberties, too.

There were many shocking moments in Britney Spears’ 24-minute statement calling for an end to her conservatorship, delivered Wednesday to a Los Angeles probate judge by phone. The pop star, who has lived under a conservatorship chiefly overseen by her father for 13 years, described grueling labor demands, constant surveillance, being cut off from friends, and being confined against her will. As Spears made her case for the judge, one startling detail stood out amidst the laundry list of abuses: Although she would like to have children and be married, her conservators refuse to allow her to have her intrauterine device (IUD) removed, she said, “because they don’t want me to be able to have children.”

Fans, onlookers, and the media seized on this revelation, many expressing shock and dismay that a conservator could require a 39-year-old woman to use birth control against her will. “Britney HAS to keep an IUD in under her conservatorship?” asked one horrified Twitter user. “How is any of this legal/okay?”

Unfortunately, losing your reproductive freedom because you are in a conservatorship is very often legal. When a court puts a person under a conservatorship or guardianship, the court is taking away that person’s right to make their own choices. And often, that includes reproductive choices. Even though a conservatorship is a highly invasive, severe loss of rights and liberty, courts approve them routinely, and almost always allow them to continue permanently.

Spears’ experience is part of a long history of people with disabilities — most often people of color — being forcibly sterilized, forced to end pregnancies, or losing the right to raise their own children. Thanks to Spears’ large platform and following, her demands to be freed from her conservatorship have been heard. But there are untold thousands of people living under this same type of restrictive structure, who have lost their rights to reproductive freedom, often permanently.

As the eugenics movement gained popularity in the early 20th century, numerous states passed laws allowing for the involuntary sterilization of people with disabilities. In 1927, an 8-1 decision from the Supreme Court approved forced sterilization laws, in a sweeping and bigoted opinion penned by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. The plaintiff in that case, Buck v. Bell, was a woman named Carrie Buck, who challenged her forced sterilization. She had been deemed “feebleminded” by a family that had taken her in as a servant, and whose relative had raped her. To cover up the resulting pregnancy, the family had doctors commit her to an institution where they planned to sterilize her. Justice Holmes’ opinion for the court’s majority stated:

“It is better for the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.”

This opinion had profound consequences. Between 1907 and 1945, upwards of 70,000 people — overwhelmingly poor people of color — were sterilized involuntarily under eugenic sterilization laws. California’s forced sterilization law was not repealed until 1979, and forced sterilization in California prisons continued even after that. Buck v. Bell has never been overturned.

While the bald cruelty of Holmes’ words may seem antiquated, the practice of controlling the reproductive choices of people with disabilities continues today. Then, as now, forced sterilization or birth control is often cast by courts and conservators as a protective mechanism in the best interest of a person with a disability, or for their safety. Some guardians and conservators who rob conservatees of these choices are certainly acting out of genuine concern and love for the person in their care. But the choice to have or not have a child, and when to do so, is a fundamental right. Many people with disabilities, even significant disabilities, have and raise children in loving, safe families. The denial of that right is too often based in stigma, paternalism, and stereotypes, and can have a lasting mental, emotional, and physical impact on the person deprived of their reproductive autonomy.

We still don’t know the specific terms or details of Spears’ conservatorship. We don’t know whether she identifies as a person with disabilities, or what private medical conversations she or her conservators have had about these choices. But we now know that she has stated that she wants to have another child and be a parent, and that she is being prevented from doing so. And we know that she has said that she wants to get out of the conservatorship. As we’ve said before, the ease with which people with disabilities are placed under the control of a conservator or guardian and stripped of their civil rights and liberties is a deeply concerning, systemic issue, and what Spears has shared publicly fits the pattern of harm and deprivation of autonomy that happens all too often across the country.

Thankfully, an IUD is not a permanent method of birth control, and Spears should be able to have a child after its removal, should she still want to. We are hopeful that thanks to Spears’ large platform and the spotlight on her statement, the judge will heed her request to restore her rights. There are many less-restrictive support systems, like supported decision-making, that she and trusted family or friends can use.

Justice Holmes’ offensive and bigoted rhetoric may no longer be in use, but Buck v. Bell is still the law of the land, with few exceptions. As The Daily Beast reports, more than half of states permit the forced sterilization of people under conservatorships in some capacity. And across the country, people still rely on stereotypes and assumptions to take reproductive choices out of the hands of people with disabilities — especially BIPOC and marginalized people with disabilities. The coercive power and control handed to conservators is a disability rights crisis, and an insult to the reproductive liberty of people with disabilities.