(Falls Church, Va.) A Pakistani man with HIV is fighting deportation from the United States and seeking asylum.

Under Pakistani law, being gay is punishable by death. LGBT people are forced to live in secrecy and constant fear of exposure, a legal brief said.

An Immigration judge disputed the risk and denied S.K.’s application for asylum. 

The judge held that S.K., who has HIV and was in a committed relationship with a man in Minnesota, could avoid persecution by hiding his sexual orientation, marrying a woman, and having children. 

The Board of Immigration Appeals originally upheld the Immigration Judge’s decision and is now reviewing the case a second time.

On Monday, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and Heartland Alliance’s National Immigrant Justice Center filed an amicus brief with the Board of Immigration Appeals in Falls Church on behalf of a number of other LGBT, HIV/AIDS, and immigrant-rights organizations in support of S.K.

“No one should have to live in fear that just by being themselves they could be punished with prison or death by their own government,” said Shannon Price Minter, legal director of NCLR. 

According to the amicus brief, the immigration judge also failed to recognize that S.K.’s traumatizing diagnosis of HIV, whic had progressed to AIDS, understandably delayed his filing.

“In addition to the many difficulties he was already facing, S.K. was diagnosed with HIV and AIDS, and the understandable psychological and physical difficulties he experienced immediately following that diagnosis delayed his filing for asylum,” said Claudia Valenzuela, supervising attorney for the National Immigrant Justice Center’s Detention Project, a program of Chicago-based Heartland Alliance. 

“Our country’s asylum laws were written to take into account situations like S.K.’s, in which individuals’ circumstances may change long after they arrive in the United States and make them subject to renewed danger in their home country.”

S.K. appealed the initial rulings to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. After reading briefs submitted to the Eighth Circuit by S.K. and NCLR, the government took the unusual step of requesting that the case be remanded back to the Board of Immigration Appeals so that the Board could clarify its decision. 

NCLR said in a statement that it worked with a number of other LGBT, HIV/AIDS, and immigrant-rights groups including the National Immigrant Justice Center, Immigration Equality, the ACLU, AIDS Legal Council of Chicago, and International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care to submit a joint amicus brief in support of S.K. to the Board of Immigration Appeals.