Nisha left India to come to the UK both to study for her Master’s degree and begin her transition. She was enjoying her studies, began hormone therapy and was starting to feel more able to be herself. Nisha soon graduated and got put onto a new visa which she thought enabled her to work in the UK. However, it did not and Nisha was detained by the Home Office for breaking the terms of her visa.
Nisha was detained in Scotland, it was there she learnt she could claim asylum. “Before” she says “I never knew that I could claim asylum on the basis of gender identity”.
She knew she could not return to India. Her family had made violent threats against her, and she was scared about what would happen if she went back. She would also not have access to the medical care she needed. Instead, Nisha claimed asylum. She was released from detention but claiming asylum was not a quick or easy process for her.
Nisha lived on her friends’ sofa for 2 years while she waited for her asylum decision. When her initial claim was refused, she then went through the process of appeal. This time was very difficult for Nisha, she says: “I had to revert back to where I was. I couldn’t work. I had to hide my identity, because my friends who are helping if they knew my trans identity, they would not help me.”
“I didn’t have a home that accepted me as a trans person.”
When Nisha’s appeal was dismissed by the Tribunal, she was sent back to detention, “the second time I got detained,” Nisha says “I suffered a lot.” Nisha describes detention as “horrible,” categorising her experience in detention as both unsafe and dangerous.
Similar to many other trans people entering detention, the Home Office failed to recognise Nisha’s correct gender identity and she was detained in a male facility. Research by Rainbow Migration and Stonewall has found that LGBTQI+, and particularly trans people, face systematic discrimination, harassment and violence in detention, both from staff and other detainees. This was true for Nisha too, Nisha says that for trans people “when you are in detention centres, you are always vulnerable”.
Nisha felt scared, she says, “I did not have a shower for the first week because it was an open shower. So someone could see. I was on hormones before I was detained…So it was not good for me to expose myself. I had to hide.”
“I’ve come so far compared to where I was… I didn’t even know this was a possibility when I was younger. It makes me feel really happy, I’m out and I can do whatever I want.”
While she was in detention Nisha heard about Rainbow Migration. She got in contact and accessed Rainbow Migration emotional support, this was a vital lifeline to her when she was feeling her most vulnerable. Rainbow Migration (at that time called UKLGIG) also helped Nisha find a lawyer, she says “without UKLGIG it would not have been possible for me to find a lawyer that was aware of LGBT issues and understood my case as a LGBT person.”
Even with a specialist lawyer Nisha’s case went on for a further 3 years. However, the courts found that removing her from the UK would be a breach of her rights under Article 8 of European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to private and family life. As a result, Nisha was eventually successful and after years of waiting, she was granted discretionary leave to remain.
Now that Nisha has regularised her immigration status in the UK, she recently got a new job and has just received a letter informing her that she can begin the next stage of her transition.
“There’s still more to come”, Nisha says “but I’ve come so far compared to where I was… I didn’t even know this was a possibility when I was younger. It makes me feel really happy, I’m out and I can do whatever I want.”
