by celia (they/them/elle),
staff attorney
Nidia is a transgender woman from Honduras who experienced years of severe discrimination and persecution. As a teenager, she came to understand herself as transgender and began living openly as herself. Unfortunately, she was ridiculed and rejected by most of her family and regularly harassed by members of her community. She also experienced physical and sexual violence at the hands of gang members and Honduran police officers, ultimately forcing her to flee Honduras in search of safety. She sought to rebuild her life in Mexico, but discrimination made it difficult to find housing or work. There, she was also raped by Mexican military officers.
Knowing she could not remain in Mexico for fear of further brutalization and perhaps even death, Nidia decided to seek asylum in the U.S. When she first arrived at the U.S. border, Border Patrol officers told her they "didn’t want any more homosexuals in the United States” and that she would not be able to get asylum. She was immediately deported to Mexico. Knowing that returning to Honduras would put her at risk, Nidia spent months once again making her way to the U.S., this time traveling with a caravan of LGBTQ+ asylum seekers. In 2017, she was finally permitted to enter and petition for asylum.
Centro Legal de la Raza (Centro Legal), an Oakland-based nonprofit providing legal representation to low-income immigrants, began representing Nidia in 2019. As with many removal defense cases, her immigration court hearing was delayed multiple times, prolonging a process that would span years. During that time, Nidia worked with several attorneys, although building trust took time given the years of persecution and mistreatment she had experienced throughout her life. Her experiences had understandably made it difficult for her to feel safe sharing her story with others, even as Centro Legal continued working to represent her and move her case forward.
In 2024, Centro Legal began a new partnership with Oasis Legal Services (Oasis). At the time, Oasis focused exclusively on affirmative immigration cases and did not yet have an in-house removal defense practice. Together, the two organizations built that capacity: Oasis would host a legal fellow, celia meredith, who received training and supervision from Centro Legal’s experienced removal defense attorneys while representing several Centro Legal clients over the course of two years. All the while, celia helped build what is now Oasis' robust Removal Defense Project.
celia represented Nidia at her individual merits hearing before an immigration judge, along with an ICE attorney arguing that Nidia was ineligible for asylum because she had "firmly resettled" in Mexico. Despite clear and consistent testimony about the persecution and sexual violence Nidia had experienced there, the judge and the ICE attorney remained stuck on the question of whether she had "resettled" in Mexico. The case lasted two full hearings, after which the judge indicated it was a very close call for him and that he would be issuing a written decision. While there was no way to know what the judge would decide, celia was hopeful that he was simply taking the time to carefully consider Nidia’s claim.
Weeks and then months went by with no decision from the judge, and then we learned that the judge was taking an early retirement. celia did everything they could to compel the judge to issue his decision, but the judge retired without ruling on Nidia’s case. celia then had to advocate before a new immigration judge, and for Nidia’s asylum claim based on the existing record.
The new judge had a 95% denial rate in asylum cases so Nidia’s team prepared for the possibility of having to appeal a denial. However, a year after Nidia’s second merits hearing before the now-retired judge, amazingly, a written decision granted her asylum! Everyone was elated and shocked at her good fortune. Publicly available statistics showed that the judge had granted only one other asylum case in February and denied more than 200 cases before granting Nidia’s case in June.
After nearly a decade of fighting to remain safe in the U.S., Nidia can finally begin building her future with the protection of asylum. She expressed immense gratitude for celia, one of the few people she says she feels completely safe with. celia will continue to work with Nidia as an Oasis staff attorney, whether that means applying for permanent residency or representing her before the Board of Immigration Appeals if the government appeals the asylum grant.
Nidia’s case illustrates what the partnership between Centro Legal and Oasis has made possible. This collaboration has established a robust removal defense practice and Oasis has since hired another attorney and a paralegal, helping to fill a need that advocates have observed for the last decade: access to removal defense representation with specialized expertise in LGBTQ+ asylum cases. Oasis’ model reflects an understanding of the unique legal issues that LGBTQ+ asylum seekers face, and remains grounded in trauma-informed and culturally responsive representation for people who have faced a lifetime of mistreatment due to their sexual orientation, gender identity, and/or HIV status.