In 2005, she was sent to prison after being convicted for supplying “class A” drugs. While at prison, the unnamed woman entered into lesbian relationships with fellow inmates.

According to the Jamaican Observer, British immigration officials do not believe the woman and say her claims are just “a ruse to avoid deportation.”

The United Kingdom and the United States have granted asylum to Jamaican gays in the past because of the extreme levels of homophobia in the island nation.

Read the full Jamaican Observer story here.

Tan and Jaylynn “Jay” Mercado were married in San Francisco in 2004. Their marriage was voided, but even if it still were in effect the federal Defense of Marriage Act prevents Mercado from sponsoring her partner of 23 years for immigration.

Were the women a married opposite-sex couple, Tan could be legal.

“From the moment my sons were born we have never been apart.  It’s tearing me apart to have to leave without them,” said Tan.

Legislation was re-introduced in Congress last month that would allow Americans in a same-sex relationship to sponsor their “permanent partners” for legal residency in the United States.

The Uniting American Families Act was filed in the House by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and in the Senate by Sen. Patrick Leahy.

With Democrats now in Control of the Congress and the White House LGBT advocates are hopeful the measure will become law.’

“Shirley Tan’s unacceptable situation is just one example of why Congress must pass immigration equality legislation.  The Uniting American Families Act, which I co-sponsored, will allow lesbian and gay Americans to sponsor their permanent partners for residency in the United States,” said Rep. Jackie Speier, one of 110 cosponsors.

“In the near term, I am confident that any official who examines the facts in Shirley Tan’s case will come to the conclusion that this hard-working mother of two should not be sent to a country where she has no support network and was the victim of a horrific act of violence.”

“Until the UAFA passes, families like Jay and Shirley’s are at terrible risk,” said Immigration Equality Executive Director Rachel B. Tiven.  “We are hopeful their members of Congress will introduce a private bill that would spare their twin boys and the boys’ grandmother from having the country they love tear their family apart.”

It is doubtful though that any legislation could be passed before the Friday deadline.

Across the country, 37,000 couples face similar circumstances.

Last week, the White House issued a statement about the Uniting American Families Act, saying “[President Obama] thinks Americans with partners from other countries should not be faced with a painful choice between staying with their partner or staying in their country.”

Victoria Neilson, Immigration Equality’s Legal Director, stated, “There may be no options for Jay and Shirley under existing law. How can they explain to their children that the U.S. Government does not consider them a family?”

”The general atmosphere in Jamaica is a feeling of no tolerance towards homosexuals in general, and as such. . . the respondent’s life is definitely at risk,” Immigration Judge Irma Lopez-Defillo said, according to court documents obtained by the Miami Herald.

The 29-year old, identified by the paper only as “Nicole,” originally had been ordered deported by Lopez-Defillo, but stayed the order based on the climate toward gays in Jamaica.

She was ordered to check in regularly with immigration officials in Miami. The woman is staying with family in South Florida.

Although a number of people facing deportation have claimed they would be subjected to homophobic abuse if returned to their homelands, the argument is seldom accepted. In several cases, immigration judges have ruled the person could avoid trouble in their countries if they remained closeted.

Even though though “Nicole” has avoided deportation for now, she could still be removed from the country by the Department of Homeland Security, leaving her status in the U.S. in limbo.

Sodomy is illegal in Jamaica, with a sentence of 10-years in prison on conviction.

The country has been described by human rights groups as having the worst record of any country in the New World in its treatment of gays and lesbians.

Homophobic attacks are seldom pursued by police and even when charges are laid there are few convictions.

One of the most recent attacks occurred on January 29, when a group of men approached a house where four males lived in the central Jamaican town of Mandeville. They demanded that the residents leave the community because they were gay, according to Jamaican human rights activists who spoke with the victims.

Later that evening, a mob returned and surrounded the house. The four men inside called the police when they saw the crowd gathering. The mob started to attack the house, shouting and throwing bottles.

Those in the house called police again and were told that the police were on the way. Approximately half an hour later, 15 to 20 men broke down the door and began beating and slashing the inhabitants.

Human Rights Watch, quoting local activists, said that police did not arrive until a half hour after the mob had broken into the house – 90 minutes after the men first called for help.

One of the victims managed to flee with the mob pursuing. A Jamaican newspaper reported that blood was found at the mouth of a nearby pit, suggesting he had fallen inside or may have been killed nearby.

The police escorted the three other victims away from the scene; two of them were taken to the hospital. One of the men had his left ear severed, his arm broken in two places, and his spine reportedly damaged.

There have been no arrests.

The attack echoes another incident in the same town on Easter Sunday, April 8, 2007, when approximately 100 men gathered outside a church where 150 people were attending the funeral of a gay man.

According to mourners, the crowd broke the windows with bottles and shouted, “We want no battyman [gay] funeral here. Leave or else we’re going to kill you. We don’t want no battyman buried here in Mandeville.”

Several mourners inside the church called the police to request protection. After half an hour, three police officers arrived.

Human Rights Watch said that instead of protecting the mourners, police socialized with the mob, laughing along at the situation.

A highway patrol car subsequently arrived, and one of the highway patrol officers reportedly told the churchgoers, “It’s full time this needs to happen. Enough of you guys.”

The highway patrol officers then drove off. The remaining officers at the scene refused to intervene when the mob threatened the mourners with sticks, stones, and batons as they tried to leave the service. Only when several gay men among the mourners took knives from their cars for self-defense did police reportedly take action by firing their guns into the air. Officers stopped gay men from leaving and searched their vehicles, but did not restrain or detain members of the mob, Human Rights Watch said.

More than 30 gay men are believed to have been murdered since 1997 J-FLAG says. In most of the cases the killers have never been brought to trial.

Arrests, however, have been made in several cases which received international attention.

In 2004, Brian Williamson, Jamaica’s leading LGBT civil rights advocate, was brutally murdered. He had been stabbed at least 70 times in the neck. A 25-year-old man is currently serving a life sentence for the murder.

In December 2005, Lenford “Steve” Harvey, who ran Jamaica AIDS Support for Life, was killed.

Harvey was shot to death on the eve of World AIDS Day. His organization provided support to gay men and sex workers. Four men were arrested almost a year later.

In 2006, the bodies of two women believed to have been in a lesbian relationship were found dumped in a septic pit behind a home they shared. The killers of Candice Williams and Phoebe Myrie have not been caught.

Students at University of the West Indies in Kingston rioted last year as police attempted to protect a gay student and escort him from the campus. The incident began when the student was chased across the campus by another student who claimed the gay man had attempted to proposition him in a washroom.

The same year, a young man plunged to his death off a pier in Kingston after reportedly being chased through the streets by a mob yelling homophobic epithets.

In February 2007, three men in “tight jeans” and wearing what some witnesses described as makeup were cornered by a mob of 2000 in a drugstore. There were yells of “kill them” along with gay slurs and demands the three be sent out “to face justice.” Police had to fire tear gas into the crowd to rescue the three.

Reggae, or Jamaican dancehall music, is blamed for fueling homophobia in that country. Reggae star BujuBanton’s hit song Boom Boom Bye Bye which threatens gay men with a “gunshot in ah head.”

The man, who wishes to be identified only by his initials, S.K., fears persecution based on his sexual orientation and HIV status if he is returned to his homeland.

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.