ICE Threatens to Deport Longtime AIDS Activist; Caribbean Equality Project
Details
Out-FM show aired on May 5, 2026
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Segment 1:
ICE Threatens to Deport Longtime AIDS Activist
Michelle Lopez
Women Don't Get AIDS They Die from It.
Michelle Lopez is a beloved national and international pioneer in HIV advocacy, research. and community care. She is a proud Black Latina bisexual woman who is now facing the threat of deportation by ICE to Trinidad, a Caribbean island where she hasn't lived for decades. This despite having a U.S. green card and so-called "alien" ID number, and having lived in the U.S. for 42 years. She has absolutely no criminal record.
Michelle Lopez was diagnosed with AIDS at age 25 in 1991, so she’s been a long-term survivor for 35 years, now age 59, using a combination of modern prescription drugs and nutritional treatments. She has two children, Raven, 35, also living with HIV and also an AIDS activist, and Rondell, age 39, as well as three grandchildren.
Women Demand Access to Treatments
Since the 1990s Michelle has been a fierce advocate and counselor for people with HIV, especially women, people of color, and immigrants. In 1994, Michelle was one of several women with HIV who testified at a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) hearing, held in response to an ACT UP Women’s Caucus protest campaign about the urgency of requiring drug companies to test experimental drugs in women. That advocacy, and years of pressure led by women AIDS activists, led to a major change in government policy. Today, drugs have to be tested in women before FDA approval. This is just one of many advances for people with HIV won with the strategic role of Michelle as part of this community-based movement.
Among many other roles over three decades, Michelle has served as Board Chair of the Bronx Community Pride Center; Board member of Caribbean Women Health Association; Co-Chair of the Consumer Advisory Committee of the NYS Dept. of Health Quality of Care Community Advisory Board; Campaign Coordinator of NY HIV Treatments Work at the CDC; and professionally as a licensed clinician, credentialed Alcohol and Substance Abuse Counselor, and Director of HIV Programs at the Brooklyn Multi-specialty Group. In addition, she has repeatedly met with the manufacturers of HIV drugs, seeking to ensure their proper testing and availability for women and children.
Michelle has been repeatedly honored, including being listed as one of the POZ 100 HIV/AIDS leaders – and POZ is the national magazine about living with HIV -- and subject of a cover feature in 1996.
The GoFundMe appeal for Michelle’s legal expenses (now paused) is here.
A 2022 interview with Michelle by Making Gay History is here.
Any questions or letters attesting to Michelle’s character can be sent care of Out-FM at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
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Segment 2:
Caribbean Equality Project
As Trump clamps down on immigration to the U.S., there are resources in New York City to fight back. One such resource is the Caribbean Equality Project (CEP), founded in 2015 by Mohamed Q. Amin, an Indo-Caribbean queer Muslim immigrant and survivor of anti-LGBTQ hate violence, to serve Caribbean LGBTQ immigrants with culturally competent, intersectional support. We’ll play an interview with Mr. Amin and Tiffany Jade Monroe, a multiracial trans woman from Guyana and undocumented asylum seeker. Tiffany is CEP’s Trans Justice Manager; she rose from volunteer to lead trans-centered programs.
CEP provides culturally grounded legal help (asylum, name/gender marker changes), emergency relief, housing and immigration assistance, peer support groups, mental health referrals, and gender-affirming care navigation. The organization centers Afro- and Indo-Caribbean LGBTQ communities, using storytelling, oral histories, and trans-led programming to combat invisibility and stigma rooted in family, religion, and colonial-era laws.
CEP engages in policy and coalition advocacy: wins include contributions to the Trans Equity Fund (~$13.725M), Housing Access Voucher funding, Safe Haven protections for trans youth, and campaigning for right-to-counsel/representation for immigrants.
CEP reports increased barriers to asylum and heightened deportation risks under current federal immigration policy, stressing lack of counsel, language/technology/literacy barriers, and detention concerns. CEP’s website is caribbeanequalityproject.org and its social media reachable at @CaribbeanEqualityProject.
(4/18/26 presentation at Center for LGBTQ Studies [CLAGS] conference by Out-FM's Bob Lederer)
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