Bi-National Gay Couple Facing Separation by Deportation

A Philadelphia couple that got married in D.C. in June is facing separation Friday, when Anton Tanumihardja is scheduled to be deported.

Tanumihardja can’t be sponsored for residency because that option doesn’t exist for same-sex couples, NBCPhiladelphia.com reported.

Tanumihardja came to the U.S. from Indonesia on a tourist visa in 2002 and later had his application for political asylum denied. He was scheduled to leave his partner, Brian Andersen, and this country in February but was granted a temporary reprieve.

“He is a gay man who has had the opportunity to live openly as a gay man in Philadelphia. And now he's going back to live where in order to survive, you cannot be open," Lavi Soloway, the couple’s attorney, told CNN in February.

Eight months later, Tanumihardja’s time is up again.

The couple filed a marriage-based green card petition after getting married in Lafayette Park, near the White House, The Advocate reported.

Two months later, the Obama administration said bi-national gay couples can be considered low priority deportation cases. Gay immigration advocates have asked for guidelines for immigration officials working same-sex couple cases.

On August 18, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano announced that DHS had initiated an intra-agency working group tasked with a case-by-case review of pending deportation orders. An unnamed senior administration official later clarified in a conference call with reporters that cases deemed low-priority can include those of individuals with "strong community ties, with community contributions, and with family relationships. We consider LGBT families to be families in this context."

Written policy on the matter has yet to be issued, however. It’s also not yet known what steps, if any, the administration has taken to ensure that immigration officers use prosecutorial discretion in cases involving LGBT families. Tanumihardja and Andersen’s attorney, Lavi Soloway, wrote last month that during a scheduled check-in with ICE on August 25, the officer handling Tanumihardja’s case was unclear how to proceed with the new guidelines and postponed a decision until October 7.

Tanumihardja and Andersen meet with ICE Friday.

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