The Obama administration announced today the hiring of its first openly transgender White House staffer, Raffi Freedman-Gurspan. Freedman-Gurspan has not always been supportive of Obama and his policies, however.
In 2014, Freedman-Gurspan took part in an immigration reform march that was critical of Obama. Freedman-Gurspan posted a photo on Facebook referring to Obama as the “Deporter in Chief!!”:
The photo claims the number of deported illegal immigrants, at the time, is “2 million 2 many.”
Freedman-Gurspan also included multiple photos of drag queens in an album titled, “Photos from today's rally for immigrants' rights at the White House.” One of the photos includes the famous Obama “O” symbol as a rainbow and the words “queer” and “trans” along with “Not 1 more deportation!”:
In a Facebook album on May 27, Freedman-Gurspan posted photos from a “#BreaktheCage LGBT immigration detention protest at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency headquarters.” Photos from the album, allegedly taken in front of the Immigration And Customs and Enforcement office, include transgender flags:
Prior to joining the Obama administration, Freedman-Gurspan served as the “Racial and Economic Justice Initiative” policy advisor for the National Center for Transgender Equality. According to her now-deleted staff information page, one of the issues Freedman-Gurspan is passionate about is “immigration reform.”
On June 29, Freedman-Gurspan’s National Center for Transgender Equality issued a statement calling for the “release of LGBTQ immigrants as ICE announces transgender detention measures.”
In the statement, Freedman-Gurspan criticized Obama: “To really end the suffering transgender detainees face, the Obama Administration must release transgender detainees for whom being in detention makes them a target of sexual assault and violence."
Freedman-Gurspan will serve as the outreach and recruitment director for presidential personnel in the White House Office of Presidential Personnel.