Tsion Gurmu

Tsion Gurmu is the Legal Director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI), the nation’s first national immigrant rights organization for people of African descent. BAJI is a membership-based human rights organization that engages in legal representation, grassroots organizing, advocacy, and cross-cultural alliance-building in order to raise awareness around the unique issues facing the nearly 10 million Black immigrants, refugees, and their loved ones in the US. These challenges include the impact of harsh immigration policies especially the detention and deportation of Black women, children and youth; the cancellation of vital humanitarian programs; family separation; mass incarceration; and economic and health inequality. Our national headquarters is in New York City and we have chapters in Miami, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Oakland, DC, and Minneapolis.

Tsion is also the Founder of the Queer Black immigrant project (QBip), a black radical lawyering initiative that provides legal representation to LGBTQIA+ Black immigrants while creating a safe space for clients to resist dominant narratives about race and immigration through storytelling. QBip's mission is to create a systemic response to meet the legal and social needs of LGBTQIA+ Black immigrants while elevating narratives that illuminate global injustices of state-sponsored homophobia and anti-Black racism. Forbes recognized her as a 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 Law & Policy honoree. Tsion travels public speaking, consulting, and working with immigrant communities to dismantle multi-layered systems of oppression.