Being Human is Not a Crime: HIV, Immigration, and State Violence
An HIV is Not a CrimeDay statement by CHLP calling for cross-movement solidarity to resist carceral systems and affirm that no person’s health or immigration status should ever be grounds for punishment
When we say “HIV is not a crime,” we affirm that no person’s health status or identity can ever be a legal basis for their arrest, prosecution, or imprisonment. CHLP is an abolitionist organization rooted in a radical Black queer feminist politic. We fight to end stigma, policing, and state violence that brutalize our communities. This past year, our communities have weathered military occupation, ethnic cleansing, immigration enforcement operations, and an escalating campaign of state terror intended to suppress political opposition against an illegitimate authoritarian regime. With February 28 being HIV is Not a Crime (HINAC) Awareness Day, we must be clear: when we say “HIV is not a crime,” we also mean no person is illegal.
Failing to connect this moment of anti-immigrant, anti-Black violence, and those at its intersections, to the fight against health criminalization is an unacceptable and dangerous disconnect. The rhetoric used by this regime to portray immigrants as violent criminals who are taking resources away from “good,” “hardworking Americans” echoes the same narratives used to criminalize and subjugate Black Americans since the founding of this country. The spectacle of state power in Minnesota and beyond plainly reveals the bridge between cruel anti-immigrant crackdowns unleashed on our cities and the legacy of the criminal legal system: white supremacy. The people targeted by both forms of state violence—the policing of our borders and our streets—are Black and brown people. The very same people confronted by racist barriers to HIV care, prevention, treatment, and housing are criminalized by the state because of their health or immigration status.
HIV criminalization laws can operate as a fast track to detention and deportation. Any arrest, admission, or conviction can trigger immigration consequences, and immigration courts often interpret these cases in ways that deepen stigma and reinforce the idea that immigrants are outsiders and inherently dangerous. This mirrors the discrimination routinely faced by people living with HIV (PLHIV) who are wrongly framed as threats due to their health status. The overlap is obvious: anyone not white, not straight or cis, not wealthy, is seen as a criminal and must be warehoused away from the public for safety’s sake.
Criminalization and the fear it provokes deepen the mistrust and isolation of communities. The ongoing campaign of violence waged by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) against immigrants adds yet another barrier to healthcare for already marginalized groups. Since January 2025, nearly half of undocumented immigrant adults – along with many documented immigrant adults and naturalized citizens – reported avoiding medical care for themselves or family members. Systemic failures, including inadequate and insufficient housing and employment opportunities, already prevent many Latinx people from accessing HIV care. As a result, Latinx people accounted for 32% of new HIV diagnoses, despite making up only about 19% of the U.S. population; only 66% of those in care achieve viral suppression. Black and Latinx communities also remain dramatically underrepresented among PrEP users. Masked soldiers patrolling the streets and murdering civilians only worsens these disparities, and ICE’s violence becomes deadly in more ways than one.
The harm does not stop on the streets. People in detention face medical neglect. And treatable conditions such as measles, diabetes, and malnutrition become death sentences. Multiple people have died after months in captivity, and recently, a man from Philadelphia, Parady La, died after alerting ICE officials he was suffering from opioid withdrawal after just 24 hours in custody.
The state’s anti-Blackness and homophobia are on full display in who is targeted by their violence. Somali immigrants were used to justify the militarized occupation of Minnesota that resulted in two civilian murders. During the 2024 election, Haitian immigrants in Ohio were scapegoated with racist lies by JD Vance, predictably fueling anti-Black harassment and violence. And this violence is not limited to ICE. In 2025, police raided a cruising spot at New York’s Penn Station and then turned one person directly over to immigration officials. These are not isolated events. They are a continuation of a history of brutality from before and since Stonewall, Jim Crow, and the founding of this country.
The scapegoating and targeted violence of immigration crackdowns is strikingly similar to how people who use drugs or engage in sex work are targeted by HIV criminal laws (with many arrested due to raids and stings). When we fall for propaganda that turns our neighbors into enemies, we allow the state to keep expanding its surveillance, attacks, and the reach of the carceral system – none of us are safe.
As Mariame Kaba charges us: “Let this radicalize you rather than lead you to despair.” We must continue to resist this violence as has been done for centuries. This HIV is Not a Crime Awareness Day is another chance for us to build solidarity across movements and stop the escalation of fascism and state-sponsored terrorism in our communities. We cannot stand by while our neighbors are stigmatized, criminalized, and kidnapped because of their health status, immigration status, or both. This has always been our fight. When we let carceral systems fester and go unchallenged, we permit our own future subjugation. Our task is to defend our dignity and bodily autonomy, and regardless of country of origin or health status, to keep seeing the humanity in each other.
