The Department of Homeland Security is working to ensure it is “sensitive” to the concerns of gay immigrants detained for coming to the United States illegally, a top agency official assured Congress on Thursday.
“We have a policy group that has been involved in looking at that guidance,” Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldana told a panel of the House Judiciary Committee.
“Any time we issue guidance like that, we make sure everyone who touches those cases where there might be a concern that someone is detained and … they might be subjected to abuse, that we look at those cases and make sure people understand what our guidance is, that we must be sensitive to these issues, that we must look through the environment to place these folks,” Saldana added.
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Saldana, the nation’s top immigration enforcement official, was responding to a question from Rep. David Cicilline. The Rhode Island Democrat asked what the agency was doing to “enhance” guidelines “for LGBT individuals in ICE custody,” and about training and instruction ICE officers were receiving on the subject.
Saldana assured members that officers were being instructed to talk with gay illegals in order to determine how best to accommodate their stay in American detention facilities. “We must talk to the individuals themselves to see what their interests are,” Saldana explained. “So we train consistently on that subject, and we have input from the community themselves on what we can do better with respect to that.
“This isn’t an issue that we’ve dealt with a lot, I can say, but it’s a very serious one in our view,” Saldana added.
