October 9, 2020 | The Gay Land

immigration crisis, gay news, Washington Blade — A section of the border fence between the Mexico and the U.S. as seen from the highway that runs parallel to Tijuana International Airport
in Tijuana, Mexico, on Jan. 26, 2019. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

Advocates this week said the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies have not stopped LGBTQ people in Central America’s Northern Triangle from traveling to the U.S. to seek asylum.

“It’s not a deterrent in the sense of ‘Oh, I’m not going to do this right now. I’ll go next year,’” said Emem Maurus, an attorney with the Transgender Law Center who is based in the Mexican border city of Tijuana, on Wednesday during a virtual press conference that Human Rights Watch organized.

“It
is certainly having a practical impact, I do want to say that,” added
Maurus. “These policies are causing people to be hurt, they are causing
people to die, truly. They are causing a lot of harm and in that sense, they
are practically impeding asylum, but I don’t know that it’s causing people to
be like, ‘Oh, I’ll wait until next spring’ necessarily.”

Guatemala,
Honduras and El Salvador comprise the Northern Triangle. Human Rights Watch on
Wednesday released a
report that highlights persecution in the region based on sexual
orientation and gender identity and Trump administration policies that have put
LGBTQ asylum seekers from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador at even more
risk.

The
report notes the U.S. in March “entirely closed its southern border to
asylum seekers, leaving them to suffer persecution in their home countries or
in Mexico.”

“The
COVID-19 pandemic served as the pretext for the closure, but for years, the
Trump administration had adopted increasingly severe measures aimed at
preventing asylum seekers from ever reaching the United States and expelling
them quickly if they did cross the border,” reads the report.

Estuardo Cifuentes, a gay man from Guatemala, is among those who the U.S. has forced to await the outcome of their asylum cases in Mexico under the “return to Mexico” policy. Cifuentes, who asked for asylum in the U.S. at the end of July 2019, runs a project in the Mexican border city of Matamoros that helps LGBTQ asylum seekers as he awaits the final outcome of his case.

“I went back to Matamoros without knowing anything, without knowing anything about the process,” Cifuentes told the Washington Blade during a recent Zoom interview.

Maurus on Wednesday noted Guatemala in 2019 signed a “safe third country” agreement with the Trump administration that requires migrants who pass through Guatemala on their way to the U.S. to first ask for asylum in the country. TransLatin@ Coalition Executive Director Bamby Salcedo during the press conference also highlighted the inadequate health care and other mistreatment that LGBTQ asylum seekers face while in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.

Roxsana Hernández, a trans woman from Honduras
with HIV, died in ICE custody in New Mexico on May 25, 2018. Johana
“Joa” Medina Leon, a trans woman from El Salvador with HIV, died
on June 1, 2019, at a Texas hospital three days after ICE released her from
their custody.

Three police officers in El Salvador in July were
sentenced to 20 years in prison for the 2019 murder of Camila Díaz Córdova,
a trans woman who asked for asylum in the U.S. two years before her death.
Díaz’s friend, Virginia Gómez, earlier this year during
an interview with the Blade in El Salvador confirmed a judge denied Díaz’s
asylum claim and the U.S. deported her back to the Central American country on
Nov. 7, 2017.

Bianka Rodríguez, executive director of
COMCAVIS Trans, a trans Salvadoran advocacy group, also participated in
Wednesday’s Human Rights Watch press conference.

“As
long as this kind of violence and discrimination do persist, LGBT people from
the Northern Triangle will continue to travel north to the United States to
attempt to seek asylum and what the Trump administration has done in the last
two years—which is to make asylum so restrictive that there’s barely an asylum
system left to speak of—is unconscionable and it puts LGBT people at great
harm,” said Human Rights Watch Senior LGBT Rights Researcher Neela
Ghoshal. “These policies should be reversed.”

Maurus during the press conference acknowledged
“it was not people’s first choice to leave.”

“They had discrimination and abuse throughout much of their live and their first choice is not to leave their home, their family, their community, their friends. It is something happens that truly forces them—I leave or I will die,” they said. “It’s a last choice and it’s the only choice and to that extent it isn’t a choice. I do think people are concerned … about detention, who are concerned about what’s going to happen in Mexico.”

“People know, it doesn’t come as a surprise, that right now the policies are awful, but I think for many they need to leave,” added Maurus.

Ghoshal
also specifically criticized the Trump administration’s rhetoric around the
migrant caravans that in recent years have traveled from Central America to the
U.S.-Mexico border.

“We were disturbed to hear President Trump use very dehumanizing language to describe the people who were in these caravans, in particular dismissing them all as criminals and of course, we know that for many of the members of the caravans—including LGBT people within them—they were survivors of crimes and they were people who were trying to escape lifetimes of marginalization and dehumanization and they needed the opportunity to arrive at the U.S. border, seek asylum and be heard and protected,” said Ghoshal.

A group of LGBTQ asylum seekers from Central America meet with Del. **Eleanor Holmes Norton** (D-D.C.) at Casa Ruby in D.C. on March 26, 2019. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

The post Report: LGBTQ asylum seekers from Central America still seek refuge in U.S. appeared first on Washington Blade: Gay News, Politics, LGBT Rights.

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