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(800) LA TIMESFounded Dec. 4, 1881
Vol. CXXXVIII No. 332
LOS ANGELES TIMES (ISSN 0458-3035)
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period.Printed with soy-based ink on recycled newsprint from wood byproducts.know how this is going to
end.”
Studies show LGBTQ
migrants are among the
most vulnerable, more likely
to be assaulted and killed:
88% were victims of sexual
and gender-based violence
in their countries of origin;
two-thirds suffered similar
attacks in Mexico, accord-
ing to a 2017 study by the
U.N. high commissioner for
refugees.
Non-Mexican migrants
seeking asylum must now
await U.S. immigration
court hearings south of the
border under the Trump
administration’s Remain in
Mexico program. A Home-
land Security spokeswoman
said asylum seekers may be
removed from the program
and allowed into the U.S. if
they are “more likely than
not to face persecution or
torture in Mexico.”
Some transgender mi-
grants have indeed been
released or placed in deten-
tion in the U.S. But many
more LGBTQ asylum seek-
ers have been placed on
waiting lists or returned to
Mexico for months. Dozens
of LGBTQ asylum seekers
in Ciudad Juarez, Matamo-
ros and Tijuana said in
interviews that U.S. immi-
gration officials told them
they were not exempt from
Remain in Mexico.
Villegas, a 27-year-old
hairdresser from El Sal-vador, first sought refuge in
the U.S. five years ago. She
entered the country via
Tijuana, but was deported.
Two years later she re-
turned, only to be deported
again by a judge who didn’t
believe she was Salvadoran
or transgender, according to
court documents she keeps
with her.
Villegas said she and a
transgender friend were
kidnapped in the southern
Mexican city of Tapachula
by men who stripped and
raped them repeatedly.
Villegas, who dropped out of
college to help support her
family, managed to escape
and return home, only to be
assaulted and forced into
prostitution by Salvadoran
gang members. She re-
ported the attacks to the
police and to Amnesty
International, testifying at a
human rights conference.
But after receiving a death
threat from the gang in May,
she headed north again,
hoping to join her aunt, a
legal resident in Houston.
Villegas said her family
accepted her as transgen-
der. Her aunt, a fellow hair-
stylist, would help her find
work and made room for
Villegas in her suburban
home. But the aunt, who is
conservative, also would call
her by her male name, pres-
sure her to attend church
and criticize her if she wore
flashy dresses or anything
too feminine.
In Matamoros, Villegas
waited three weeks before
she was allowed to cross the
border bridge to
Brownsville, Texas, and
claim asylum. Customs and
Border Protection agents
could see from her identifi-
cation that she was trans-
gender. When she asked if
there were exceptions to
Remain in Mexico for trans
migrants, “They said that
would happen at my court
hearing.”She was sent back to
Mexico the same day. Her
immigration hearing in
Brownsville wasn’t until
Dec. 9.
“I could die before that,”
she said.
Migrants bathing in the
nearby Rio Grande last
month found the torso of a
man whose limbs and head
had been cut off. Villegas
thought about her own
death a lot.
“Where will I be buried?”
she wondered aloud. “Will
my mother know?”b
On Sept. 1, she and half a
dozen LGBTQ migrants,
accompanied by U.S. legal
advocates, entered the
bridge and confronted
customs officers, demand-
ing they be removed from
Remain in Mexico. They
were sent back to Matamo-
ros. As weeks passed, life at
the camp worsened. Mi-
grants threw trash onto a
fetid black pile beside Ville-
gas’ tent. The woman who
had threatened her kept
circling. Villegas wondered if
she would get attacked. “I
think about suicide some-
times,” she said.
She did not consider
wearing men’s clothes or
acting macho to blend in.
“I’m a woman,” she said.
“I can’t give up what I am.”
Villegas has a smooth
face and breasts, having
taken hormone blocking
drugs since age 16. She
dreamed about having
gender confirmation
surgery once she made it to
the U.S. and found work.
She said she wanted to be
free to walk the streets
without fear, “to finish my
transition and to not be
persecuted by anyone any-
more.”
Though her hearing was
weeks away, an immigrationlawyer offered to walk her
over the bridge to attempt
an asylum claim this month.
Days later, she heard that
presidential candidate
Julián Castro, working with
the Texas Civil Rights Proj-
ect, was coming to
Matamoros to escort fellow
LGBTQ asylum seekers
across the bridge.
Villegas wondered what
would increase her chances
for asylum. Crossing on her
own? With her friends?
In her tent the night
before she was due to cross,
she packed two small suit-
cases and messaged other
LGBTQ asylum seekers on
WhatsApp.
“What would you do in
my shoes?” she said.
It’s unclear how many
LGBTQ people are among
the 54,000 asylum seekers
returned to Mexico or the
26,000 more on waiting lists
to apply for asylum. Forty-
five congressional lawmak-
ers wrote to Homeland
Security officials in June
demanding they clarify the
Remain in Mexico policy for
LGBTQ migrants and
detail how many had been
returned.
“Forcing them to remain
in Mexico or creating addi-
tional hardships in their
asylum process only makes
them more susceptible to
the same violence that
forced them from their
home countries in the first
place,” the lawmakers
wrote.
Homeland Security
Deputy Undersecretary
James McCament declined
to release details, citing
lawsuits challenging Re-
main in Mexico. “But I want
to reiterate DHS’s commit-
ment to the responsible
implementation of this
program as it applies to all
populations, including
[LGBTQ] asylum seekers
and other vulnerable popu-
lations,” he wrote in a Julyletter to the lawmakers.
This month, Rep. Raul
M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said he
was drafting a follow-up
letter to Homeland Security
demanding it disclose the
information.
“We’re going to press it
again,” he said in an inter-
view. “The vulnerability of
LGBTQ asylum seekers is
historic in this country, as
well as Latin America. We
want some response and
acknowledgment that that’s
true, and what are you going
to do about it.”
Rep. Nanette Barragan
(D-San Pedro), who serves
on the House Homeland
Security Committee, said,
“We do need to get some
answers and some clear
definitions of who qualifies,
and we need to push so that
vulnerable populations do
qualify to be exempt.”b
LGBTQ migrants are
facing pressures all along
the U.S.-Mexico border.
In Juarez, more than 800
miles west of Matamoros,
the only shelter for LGBTQ
migrants has no steady
funding, no windowpanes
and crumbling walls. In
some places, the roof has
caved in and is patched with
trash bags that don’t keep
out water when it rains.
Transgender nurse
Grecia Herrera Alvarado
founded the shelter last year
and named it Respetttrans
“because we want respect,
respect of our identity.”
Unlike religious migrant
shelters in Juarez, it has
received little funding from
the Mexican government,
she said.
One day in September,
the shelter housed about 50
people, a dozen of them
LGBTQ. Young boys on a
tattered couch giggled as
they pointed at a poster
showing dozens of transgen-
der migrants who had
stayed at the shelter, includ-
ing two who died after they
crossed the border and fell
ill at U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement
detention centers.
More migrants were
arriving every day. Soon,
temperatures would start to
dip as winter approached.
Herrera needed to fix the
roof and windows before
then, but a GoFundMe
website had raised only
enough to cover monthly
expenses.
“Sometimes I get tired,”
she said. “Seeing the deaths
of my sisters; when I see the
house, the condition the
state leaves us in; that we
don’t matter to anyone.”
A week before, two trans-
gender women she knew
had been found dead in a
nearby viaduct, shot and
chopped up. Five had been
killed in Juarez in the last
month, she said.
Transgender Honduran
Courtney Collins has been
waiting at the shelter to
claim asylum in the U.S. forMAYELA VILLEGAS,center, a hairdresser from El Salvador, is staying at a camp in the border city of Matamoros, Mexico, while awaiting her immigration hearing.
Photographs byGary CoronadoLos Angeles TimesA crapshoot for transgender migrants
“WE’RE JUSTlooking for a place where we can be who we really are,” says 20-year-old Courtney Collins.[SeeMigrants,A5][Migrants,from A1]