Almost ten years ago, a young Jamaican man walked into Tsion Gurmu's office with nothing. No home. No family. No friends. He had fled his country after violent attacks targeting him for his sexual identity, and he arrived in the United States with no idea what came next.

Gurmu found him a bed at a shelter in Harlem. She filed his asylum application. And then, due to a sudden policy shift that prioritized the newest applications over those already waiting, his case was pushed into what she describes as "an eternal backlog."

For a decade, his life remained in limbo.

"Since that time, his life has evolved so much," Gurmu says. "He was married, he was divorced. He developed a career in fashion in the United States. He has his own clothing label. So much had changed for him."

Then, just weeks ago, the call finally came. An asylum interview was scheduled. And just before the federal government paused all affirmative asylum adjudications, he was granted protection.

"His case is an example of so many shifts in immigration law and policy and changes in administrations that significantly affect outcomes for immigrant communities," Gurmu reflects. "It affects the progression of their life, the trajectory of what they think is possible when their status is in limbo for a decade."

This is the work Tsion Gurmu does every day as Legal Director at the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI): navigating a system designed to test the limits of human patience, while fighting for the people most often overlooked within it.

Tsion Gurmu's Personal Journey: Born in Civil War, Raised in Asylum

Gurmu's commitment to immigration law is not academic. It is personal.

She was born in Axum, Ethiopia, in the middle of a civil war. Her father, a political activist who had been imprisoned for five years as part of a student movement pushing for democracy, was eventually forced to flee the country, leaving Gurmu and her mother behind.

"My dad was able to make it to the United States where he sought asylum," she explains. "I later came after he was granted asylum. I came as a derivative asylee."

The family settled in Atlanta, where Gurmu's childhood was defined not by isolation, but by community. Her parents built networks with other Ethiopian refugees and asylees, "figuring out how to navigate the city together."

That early experience of communal survival planted something in her.

"Those early experiences as immigrants in the U.S. later lent itself to other community building work I did in immigrant communities," she says, "and then eventually going to law school and specializing in immigration law and international human rights law."

Building the Queer Black immigrant project (QBip): Tsion Gurmu's First Legal Program

After law school, Gurmu received an Equal Justice Works Fellowship, a two-year grant designed to fund social justice projects developed by recent law graduates. But this was no ordinary staff attorney role. The expectation was to identify an unmet need and build something new.

Gurmu saw the need clearly.

Across Africa, anti-homosexuality legislation was expanding. The result was a surge of Black LGBT asylum seekers arriving in New York City, many of whom were also living with chronic illnesses like HIV/AIDS. These were people fleeing persecution with nowhere to turn.

"I developed a project for African and Caribbean LGBT asylum seekers fleeing anti-homosexuality legislation," she explains, "with a focus on folks living with chronic illnesses."

She partnered with African Services Committee, a holistic agency founded by an Ethiopian refugee that offered both public health services and free legal assistance. The fit was natural.

The project became known as the Queer Black immigrant project (QBip), and it expanded beyond legal services. Gurmu facilitated a support group for LGBT asylum seekers alongside mental health counselors, creating a space for people who often found themselves caught between worlds.

"They found themselves not finding community in the U.S.," she explains. "Although there are many LGBT spaces, there were racial,cultural, and language barriers that didn't allow them to fully participate. And then there may be ethnic spaces from their home country, but various aspects of their sexuality and gender identity created boundaries to being accepted there too."

The project continues to this day, now housed across multiple nonprofits.

BAJI and Opal Tometi: How Tsion Gurmu Expanded Legal Services Nationally

As Gurmu sought to grow the Queer Black immigrant project (QBip), she approached the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI). At the time, BAJI was a power-building organization focused on community organizing and high-level policy work. Its executive director was Opal Tometi, one of the three founders of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Gurmu asked a simple question: Would BAJI be interested in building a legal team?

"She was open to it, and we agreed that I would lead it," Gurmu recalls. "So I started with BAJI in 2018."

What began as an experiment has grown into something far larger. Today, BAJI operates seven offices nationally and runs what Gurmu describes as "a vibrant, bustling legal program." The team now includes five attorneys, legal fellows, and DOJ-accredited representatives handling everything from asylum cases to family unification, removal defense, and consular processing.

"It has been a really challenging and exciting journey over the past eight years to just grow our work together," she says.

The Reality of Immigration Cases: Capacity, Backlogs, and Policy Whiplash

The work is relentless.

Gurmu describes a practice defined by uncertainty. Cases that should be resolved in months drag on for years. Policy changes arrive without warning, reshaping what is possible overnight. The team must be ready to pivot at any moment.

"We're a small team with a high volume of cases," she explains. "The timeline of the cases is so unknown that we must be diligent about staying on top of cases that may be called up in a matter of weeks or ten years, and we have to be ready to go within a couple of weeks."

This constant state of readiness means capacity is always a constraint. When old cases suddenly resurface, new intakes must pause. When detention cases spike, affirmative work slows. The math never quite balances.

"Right now, because we're getting called for lots of asylum interviews for 2016 cases, we have to put a pause on new intakes," she says. "If we were not in that position, we could do maybe five times as many intakes a month. But because of the rise in detained cases, we have to shrink that number by a lot."

Tsion Gurmu's Advice for Immigrants: Trust, Patience, and Community

When asked what advice she would give to people navigating the immigration system, Gurmu returns to three themes: trust, patience, and community.

First: Build a real relationship with your attorney.

"There is so much fear at this time around immigration processes," she acknowledges. "There is pressure on folks to present what they think will be successful. But if folks are able to trust their advocate and just put it all on the table, that is the best way to build an attorney-client relationship. It allows for real collaboration, for an opportunity to develop a legal strategy built on mutual trust and complete honesty."

Second: Be resilient.

"So many changes are being implemented at this time, and it can generate a lot of frustration, doubt, anxiety," she says. "And all of those reactions are so valid. But unfortunately, some things are outside of our locus of control. Patience and resilience is really the only thing that we have on our side, so we have to yield that resilience as a source of strength."

Third: Find your community.

"Folks' lives are in limbo for extended periods of time," Gurmu notes. "It is so important that you have community and folks who you can speak to about those frustrations, and about how to live your life when you have so much anxiety about a case that feels like it's not going anywhere."

This is why the support group Gurmu initiated for Black LGBT asylum seekers matters. It is not a substitute for legal representation. It is a space where people can be fully themselves while waiting for a system that offers no guarantees.

The Danger of Hiding Your Story: What Immigrants Get Wrong About Asylum

One of the most common mistakes Gurmu sees is immigrants hiding parts of their own story due to the stigma and persecution they have experienced in the past.

"There's a tendency for folks to want to hide certain past lived experiences because they think that might be a hindrance to their immigration proceedings," she explains. "For example, because certain sexual identities or experiences of gender-based violence are stigmatized in African and Caribbean countries, folks feel pressure to hide their sexual identity and other experiences from their attorneys."

But those stigmatized experiences are often the very basis for protection.

"The aspects of your identity that are stigmatized in your home country may be a pathway to immigration relief here," she says. "This is generally true for certain chronic illnesses, past experiences of gender-based violence, female genital cutting, domestic violence, and persecution based on sexuality and gender identity. Whatever those stigmatized aspects of our lives that may be in our communities, that we’re pressured not to share with others back home, can be really important things to share with an attorney."

Gurmu also pushes back against the pressure immigrants feel to shape their narratives into a neat arc: persecution in the homeland, liberation in America.

"Our stories are very rarely that simple," she says. "Usually there's a lot of harm that happens throughout that journey and even while in the United States. When folks feel comfortable to share the reality of everything they've experienced, that makes for a more credible case. And it gives us an opportunity to determine whether you're eligible for other forms of relief, like for example U visa or VAWA relief."

BAJI's Research on AI in Immigration: Tsion Gurmu's Warning to the Industry

Beyond direct legal services, Gurmu has become a leading voice on the risks of artificial intelligence in immigration enforcement.

She has authored two reports for the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance examining how AI systems perpetuate racial discrimination against Black immigrants. The research spans the entire immigration journey: AI-powered surveillance before arrival, facial recognition at ports of entry, algorithmic screening of applications, and predictive tools used in detention.

"The U.S. government makes racialized determinations about who are quote-unquote high-risk immigrants," she explains. "Applications are screened by USCIS as being potentially fraudulent or applications that should be denied based on racist uses of AI. AI reflects the racial biases of its developers and deployers, as well as the biases in the data AI relies on."

She points to the now-defunct CBP One app, which was the sole method for asylum seekers to schedule interviews at the border.

"That app was notoriously not helpful for Black migrant communities," she says. "Its facial recognition technology was often unable to accurately scan Black faces, and as a result there was increasingly discriminatory access to asylum at the border."

The second report, focused specifically on facial recognition technology, is set to be published in April 2026.

"I am deeply concerned about the discriminatory impact of AI technologies in immigration spaces," Gurmu says, "and I'm most concerned about migrants from the global South who experience disproportionate impacts with respect to discrimination, violence, and rates of detention and deportation."

The Road Ahead for Tsion Gurmu and BAJI

Ten years after she took on her first Equal Justice Works project, Tsion Gurmu's work continues to expand. BAJI's legal program has grown from a concept into a national operation. The Queer Black immigrant project (QBip) she founded lives on across multiple organizations. And her policy research is shaping international conversations about technology and racial justice.

But the heart of the work remains the same: one client at a time, navigating a system that demands everything and promises nothing.

"Resilience is really the only thing that we have on our side," she says. "For a lot of us, there are wins at the end of that road."

The Jamaican fashion designer who waited a decade for his asylum interview is now on his pathway to citizenship. His case file, Gurmu notes, is finally moving toward a green card.

It is a long, winding road. But he is there. And he is making progress.