Looking for a safe place to call home
For transgender migrants, new struggles
When she lived in Nicaragua, 25year-old Griselda says she was constantly harassed after she came out as a transgender woman.
When she walked down the street, men threw rocks, yelled slurs or chased her with knives and machetes.
She could not get a decent job. The only work open to her, she said, was in the sexual servitude industry, and working as a prostitute.
Sometimes when she went to hotels with clients, they became enraged when they discovered she was born male.
"I’ve had people point guns at me and threaten to throw me out the window of the hotel," Griselda said. "I was afraid they would knock my teeth out because they wanted to beat me, to kill me, simply because of who I am, because of my gender identity."
Gangs also targeted her family because of her gender identity, Griselda
Advocates say U.S. officials haven’t done enough to protect transgender women from assaults and abuses.
said.
Men armed with guns came to her house. When they found out she wasn't home, they trashed the place, then beat up one of her brothers.
"They whacked him with a machete," Griselda said.
Griselda, who asked that her full name not be used because she fears for her safety, was describing the conditions in Central America that force transgender people to flee. She was standing in front of a vegan cafe in Tijuana with a group of other transgender women waiting for a meeting with American lawyers who had come to Mexico to provide legal assistance to migrants seeking asylum in the U.S.
For safety, they had traveled together through Mexico as part of a much larger caravan of several hundred migrants from Central America who arrived in Tijuana in late April, and along the way drew a negative reaction from President Trump.
She said she had not told her family back in Nicaragua that she was in Mexico out of fear the gangs she fled would track her down.
Griselda said her goal was to apply for asylum in the United States, where she hoped she could live free from the persecution and abuses she faced in her home country as a transgender woman.
But advocates say transgender migrants, who appear to be arriving in growing numbers at the southern border from Mexico and Central America, often trade one form of persecution for another when they enter the U.S. immigration system seeking asylum.
Transgender women have for years been held in all-male immigration detention centers, where they often spend months and sometimes years awaiting the outcome of their asylum cases, and where advocates say immigration officials have not done enough to protect them from sexual assaults and other abuses.
What's more, despite years of complaints about the treatment of transgender women in allmale detention centers, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has just one pod dedicated for holding transgender men and women, advocates say.
The pod is in the Cibola County Detention Center in Milan, a small town in New Mexico, 80 miles west of Albuquerque. The location in a rural area makes it difficult, advocates say, for transgender migrants to access legal assistance to help them file complaints about abuses or help with their asylum cases.
"There have been a lot of concerns about the treatment of transgender women in immigration detention for a long time," said Clara Long, senior researcher at the U.S. Program for Human Rights Watch. A 2016 Human Rights Watch report based on interviews with more than two dozen transgender women who had been held in immigration detention centers documented complaints of sexual assaults and other abuses.
Transgender women vulnerable
Over the past several years, a wave of families and children unaccompanied by parents or guardians have been fleeing gang violence, poverty and political instability in Central America and arriving at the southern border of the U.S. to apply for asylum. But transgender women are an especially vulnerable population, said Nicole Ramos, director of the Border Rights Project for Al Otro Lado, a transnational group that provides legal services to deportees and migrants seeking asylum.
"They are coming from countries that have deeprooted patriarchal ideas about gender norms that don’t make room for people who have a different gender orientation such as transgender women," Ramos said.
"And they are also coming from societies that are incredibly religious, not only in Catholicism but evangelical Christianity, that does not make room for transgender women ... In any facet of life, they are constantly bombarded with the message that they are an abomination, that they should not even exist, that their lives are worthless and that they should be exterminated."
For protection, the transgender women traveled as a group as part of the larger caravan, sleeping in separate quarters, as the caravan made its way from Tapachula on foot, on buses and on freight trains 2,500 miles through Mexico before reaching Tijuana.
Along the way, they could often be seen sitting on benches together, laughing and talking.
But once they arrived in Tijuana, danger set in.
The transgender women were housed at the Catholic-run Caritas migrant shelter.
Most of them were turned away several times by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers after attempting to present themselves to apply for asylum at the San Ysidro border crossing, according to Ramos.
Then, early in the morning of May 6, six armed men broke into the Caritas shelter and robbed several migrants of their cellphones, money and meager belongings, according to Mexican news reports.
The Caritas shelter is one of several migrant shelters in Tijuana where migrants traveling with the caravan were housed. Ramos believes the men targeted the Caritas shelter because that is where the transgender women were staying.
After the robbery, the transgender women left the shelter out of fear and tried to present themselves again that afternoon to CBP officers at the San Ysidro port, Ramos said.
The group handed the CBP officers a note written by the director of the shelter stating that LGBT migrants staying at the shelter had received threats and describing the robbery that took place.
"Because of this situation, we ask that you help this group which is the most vulnerable," according to a copy of the letter provided by Ramos.
Letticia Herrera, the director of the Caritas shelter, confirmed in a telephone call that she wrote the letter.
Even so, the group was told by CBP officers that the port was not accepting asylum seekers that day and turned them away, Ramos said.
The transgender women did not feel safe returning to the shelter, Ramos said. After the transgender women made an appeal on Facebook that they would have to spend the night on the streets, members of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Diego stepped in and helped them find a secure location to stay in Tijuana, Ramos said.
The next night, someone blocked the entrance to the Caritas shelter with a mattress and set it on fire, according to Mexican news reports.
One migrant was burned in the fire, according to a video posted on the Telemundo 20 website. The video shows the charred metal door and blackened walls surrounding the entrance.
After the attacks, the Caritas shelter was put under police protection, according to the Catholic News Service.
On May 9, a total of 17 transgender women in two groups were allowed by CBP officers to enter the U.S. to apply for asylum, Ramos said.
In a statement, CBP officials said that in May the San Ysidro port, the busiest in the nation, exceeded capacity due to an increase in undocumented persons arriving at the port and making asylum claims or presenting complex cases.
In general, undocumented immigrants making asylum claims are processed in the order that they arrive, although some may be given priority for urgent humanitarian needs, the statement said.
"To effectively process trade and travel, address enforcement priorities, and appropriately process those who present without documents or who are making asylum claims, CBP must carefully manage resources and space," the statement said.
Transgender women held in N.M.
Advocates say the 17 were among about 35 transgender woman who traveled with the caravan who applied for asylum at the San Ysidro port. All 35 are currently being held at the Cibola detention center in New Mexico, advocates said.
In all, 327 migrants who traveled with the caravan have been admitted into the U.S. after presenting themselves to border officers at the San Ysidro port and asking for asylum, immigration officials told Congress last week.
ICE has been holding transgender women at the Cibola detention center since 2017, when the agency closed a facility dedicated to holding gay, bisexual and transgender migrants at the Santa Ana City Jail near Los Angeles. ICE was forced to close the Santa Ana facility after City Council members, under pressure from local immigrantrights advocates, planned to scale back the city's contract with ICE, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Because of its location in a small town in rural New Mexico, the Cibola detention center has created challenges for providing legal assistance to transgender women seeking asylum, said Long, the Human Rights Watch researcher.
"The chances of getting asylum in the U.S. is very dependent on whether you get an attorney and one of the things detention does is make it be far from where attorneys are and make it hard to access legal advice," Long said. "I do know that there are likely far fewer attorneys who are able to go to Cibola than there are near Los Angeles where they were previously being held."
Long, who is based in Oakland, said she planned to visit the Cibola facility in June to investigate the conditions under which transgender woman are being held.
Because they are a particularly vulnerable population, transgender women who don't pose a public safety threat and have a good chance of receiving asylum should be released while their cases are pending, Long said.
In a statement, Lauren Mack, an ICE spokeswoman, said the agency is "committed to ensuring that those in our custody reside in safe, secure and human environments, and under appropriate conditions of confinement."
She could not provide statistics on the number of transgender women who traveled with the caravan currently in ICE custody.
As of Jan. 24, ICE had "just over 70" self-identified transgender individuals in nearly 20 facilities across the country, according to ICE officials.
The decision of where transgender detainees are placed is made on a case-by-case basis, ICE officials said, taking into account such factors as the transgender individual's preference, and the safety and well-being of the detainee and others.
Transgender male and female detainees are housed in separate units based on their physical gender, ICE officials said.
Housing transgender women, however, in allmale units, put them at risk of sexual assault and other abuses, said Flor Bermudez, legal director of the Transgender Law Center, which helps match pro bono attorneys with transgender men and women being held in immigration detention centers.
"The conditions that transgender women face in male prison include continued isolation, sexual victimization, lack of medical care, verbal and physical assault, and lack of respect for their gender
identify," Bermudez said.
The 35 transgender women who arrived at the southern border as part of a caravan this year was double the number who arrived in a similar caravan in 2017, Bermudez said.
Nine of the 17 have been released on parole while awaiting the outcome of their asylum cases, she said. The other eight have been voluntarily deported back to their home countries, she said.
In 2015, under the Obama administration, Thomas Homan, then executive associate director of ICE, issued a 16-page memo providing guidance on the care of transgender detainees while in ICE custody. Homan is now the interim director of ICE under President Donald Trump.
ICE "will provide a respectful, safe, and secure environment for all detainees, including those individuals who identify as transgender," the memo states.
The memo was a "pretty dramatic step towards addressing" the treatment of transgender women being held in immigration detention centers, said Fatma Marouf, director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at Texas A&M Universality School of Law.
But under the Trump administration, Marouf said, she does not believe any detention centers have adopted a contract amendment included in the memo requiring detention personnel to follow certain protocols aimed at protecting transgender detainees.
The Trump administration also scrapped plans by ICE to open a second pod to house LGBT immigrants at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, Marouf said.
Mack, the ICE spokesman, said the 2015 memo regarding the care of transgender migrants "remains valid and current policy." However, ICE officials confirmed that none of the more than 200 immigration detention facilities in operation under ICE have adopted the contract amendment, which is voluntary.
'He’s very strict, this Donald Trump'
A few days before she presented herself to U.S. border officials to apply for asylum, Griselda, the transgender woman from Nicaragua, said she was worried about how she would be treated as a transgender woman.
"We know that things are very tough right now in the United States, because of this new president, he’s very strict, this Donald Trump," Griselda said.
But ultimately, she hoped to receive asylum in the United States.
"I hope to have decent job, maybe working in a restaurant or a store. I don’t want to stay in the streets. I don’t want to stay in prostitution. That is not a good life," Griselda said. "What we are looking for is a safe place, where you can work with dignity, a place where you don’t have to survive on the street, where you don’t have to live with hunger, cold, thirst."