Release GSA Network alum and all LGBT youth from ICE detention

Yordy Cancino is a leader who worked to transform his high school and his city of Los Angeles as the Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) club President at Animo Jackie Robinson High School. A GSA Network alum from the class of 2011, Yordy has lived in California since he was a child and gone to school here since elementary school.

Now, Yordy is being held in detention, not allowed to return to the home he worked so hard to make safer for all LGBTQ youth.

As a GSA president, he was a trained leader who graduated as salutatorian and would have qualified for higher education. Unfortunately, officials in his high school did not provide him information about college opportunities, including the Dream Act that grants students in CA the right to higher education. While in California as a student leader, Yordy regularly spoke out for LGBTQ rights, but because he was unable to attend college or attain a job, he returned to Mexico where he faces violence and cruelty for being gay.

Hoping to return home and escape homophobic violence, Yordy took the courageous step of placing himself into immigration custody and asking for humanitarian parole and asylum. Yordy along with other LGBTQ Dreamers are now in immigration detention in San Diego facing deportation.

GSA Network alum Yordy Cancino has devoted so much of his life to enriching this country with his courage and leadership, making it a safer, more just place for LGBTQ youth. Now Yordy and fellow LGBTQ immigrants in detention are the victims of homophobia, violence, and our broken immigration policy. Yordy, like all LGBTQ immigrants in detention, deserves to come home to the United States and pursue his dreams of higher education.

We call on President Obama to be a champion for all LGBTQ youth and exercise discretion in granting the asylum requests for Yordy Cancino, and all LGBTQ immigrants who seek protection within our borders.