US: Gay man with HIV previously charged with soliciting for oral sex will not be deported to Mexico

The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) has vacated an Immigration Judge’s ruling ordering the deportation of an HIV-positive immigrant convicted of solicitation for oral sex. The order follows a motion by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) seeking to retract its earlier argument that the man’s HIV status made his solicitation conviction a “particularly serious crime.”

The DHS motion came shortly after Lambda Legal and the HIV Law Project submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, In the Matter of X, asking the BIA to overturn the Immigration Judge’s ruling, arguing that contracting HIV through oral sex is extremely rare, if not impossible absent extenuating circumstances.