U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has released from its custody 14 transgender women who are seeking asylum in the U.S.The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts in a July 31 press release that announced the trans women’s release said they had been detained at the Cibola County Correctional Center in Milan, N.M.
The press release notes the ACLU of Massachusetts’ Immigrant Protection Project, 18 lawyers and two law students in June petitioned ICE through a New Mexico organization to release 20 trans women who were seeking asylum in the U.S.
The ACLU of Massachusetts says the trans women left El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala and arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border in May. The press release notes ICE detained them once they entered California.
“The women suffered harm because of their gender identity in their home country, and were found by federal immigration officials to be at serious risk of persecution if they were returned to their home country,” reads the press release.
“We kept fighting and we won,” said ACLU of Massachusetts’ Immigrant Protection Project Coordinator Javier Luengo-Garrido in the press release. “This victory has changed the lives of 14 women, and has energized us to continue fighting for people’s basic human rights.”
Violence and persecution based on gender identity remains pervasive in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.
An activist in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, who has previously received death threats told the Washington Blade last month during an interview at her office that insecurity and a lack of economic opportunity are among the reasons that prompt trans Hondurans to migrate from the country. Advocates in El Salvador with whom the Blade spoke last month also said violence and poverty prompt LGBTI Salvadorans to seek refuge in the U.S.
“People are not going to the U.S. because it’s cold,” said Andrea Ayala, executive director of Espacio de Mujeres Lesbianas por la Diversidad, an advocacy group known by the acronym ESMULES, during a July 13 interview in the Salvadoran capital of San Salvador.
President Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy that includes the separation of migrant children from their parents continues to spark outrage in the U.S. and around the world.
Roxana Hernández — a trans Honduran woman with HIV who U.S. Customs and Border Protection took into custody on May 9 when she asked for asylum at the San Ysidro Port of Entry south of San Diego — was at the Cibola County Correctional Center before she died at a hospital on May 25. U.S. Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) in June said after he traveled to South Texas there are no policies in place that specifically address the needs of trans, gay, lesbian, bisexual and intersex migrant children who the Trump administration has separated from their parents.
Activists in Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados this month held their countries’ first-ever Pride parades.Hundreds of people took part in a Pride parade in the Trinidadian capital of Port of Spain on Saturday.
Many of the participants were holding Pride flags as they participated in the event. Newsday, a Trinidadian newspaper, reported a health fair took place in a local park named after former South African President Nelson Mandela before the parade.
“The visibility we share here, today, is going to shine a light on the issues that LGBTI people face, that so many people want to stifle and keep us in the closet and don’t want to deal with to find the kind of solutions we are looking for,” Kennedy Maharaj, chief administrative officer of the Silver Lining Foundation, a Trinidadian advocacy group, told Newsday.
More than 100 people took part in Barbados’ first Pride parade that took place Bridgetown, the island’s capital, on July 22.
Donnya Piggott, executive director of Barbados-Gays, Lesbians and All-Sexuals Against Discrimination (B-GLAD), a Barbadian LGBTI advocacy group, told the Washington Blade in an email the Royal Barbados Police Force provided “excellent security.” Piggott also described the parade as “an incident free event full of allies, LGBTQ community and a diverse group of Barbadians from all backgrounds.”
Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago are among the countries in the English-speaking Caribbean in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized.
A judge on Trinidad and Tobago’s High Court in April struck down the country’s sodomy law. Three LGBTI rights advocates in Barbados in June filed a lawsuit with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights against the island’s colonial-era statute that criminalizes consensual same-sex sexual relations.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights in January issued a landmark ruling that recognizes same-sex marriage and transgender rights.
The Organization of American States in 1979 created the Costa Rica-based court in order to enforce provisions of the American Convention on Human Rights. January’s ruling is legally binding in Barbados and the 19 other countries in the Western Hemisphere that recognize the convention.
“We have finally reached a point in our country where we can have an open LGBT pride event that speaks to how far we have come as a country, as a society and more so, as a people,” Maharaj told Newsday after the Port of Spain Pride march. “That is what we value as success here, the fact that we can be out an open and have this kind of event, that is what we are banking on.”
Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination Guyana, an LGBTI advocacy group in Guyana, organized the South American country’s first-ever Pride parade that took place on June 2. J-FLAG, a Jamaican LGBTI advocacy group, is organizing a series of Pride events in the country’s capital of Kingston that are scheduled to begin on Tuesday.
Consensual same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized in both countries.
A number of anti-LGBTI organizations participated in a three-day religious freedom conference the State Department held this week in D.C.The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom on Thursday tweeted a picture of Family Research Council President Tony Perkins “welcoming attendees” of a workshop that focused on U.S. government grants.
A conference schedule the Washington Blade obtained indicates the workshop took place at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s offices in Northwest D.C. The picture on Twitter shows Perkins — who is a member of the commission — speaking at a podium in front of a screen with the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor and its Office of Global Programs’ names projected onto it.
The conference schedule notes the Liberty Counsel and Faith and Action co-sponsored a breakfast with U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback that took place at Faith and Action’s offices in Northeast D.C. on Tuesday.
The Heritage Foundation and Concerned Women for America co-sponsored a panel titled, “Protecting International Religious Freedom from the Politicization of Human Rights” that took place at the Rayburn House Office Building on Tuesday and again at the Heritage Foundation on Thursday.
The event’s description in the conference schedule includes a reference to “The Debasement of Human Rights: How Politics Sabotage the Ideal of Freedom,” a book written by Dr. Aaron Rhodes, and how it “identifies a dangerous trend in the international human rights movement. Increasingly, the natural rights of individuals, like religious freedom, are being conflated with manufactured rights which are the social and economic policy priorities of particular groups and governments.”
“Natural rights protect the fairness of the political process by ensuring that individuals are free to think, speak, and act according to their convictions, including their religious beliefs,” reads the description. “However, when governments and social groups can transform their economic and social policy goals into ‘human rights,’ this undercuts the moral legitimacy and persuasive power of natural rights like religious freedom.”
“The panelists will discuss how robust protection of religious freedom will ultimately lead to economic prosperity and why natural rights are best protected when they are protected for all, not for members of particular identity groups,” it adds.
U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Callista Gingrich was among the panelists who took part in a panel titled “The Fight for International Religious Freedom: Perspectives from the Vatican” the Religious Freedom Institute and Catholic University of America’s Center for Religious Liberty held on Tuesday. Alliance Defending Freedom International and the James Dobson Family Institute on Thursday co-sponsored a panel on parental rights that took place at the Museum of the Bible.
“Issues surrounding the fundamental human right of parents to provide care, custody, and control of their children includes questions of religious and philosophical convictions,” reads the panel description in the conference schedule. “To what extent and at what point should a state intervene or even override parents’ decisions or objections? Join religious liberty and parental rights experts at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., to discuss.”
Vice President Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Brownback — who have each faced criticism from advocates over their anti-LGBTI rights records — all spoke at the conference.
Pompeo on Wednesday hosted a reception at the State Department with “foreign government delegations, select civil society and religious community participants, U.S. government officials and members of Congress.” The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom on the same day hosted an invitation-only reception at the U.S. Institute of Peace.
“In America, we prove every day that religious freedom buttresses all other rights,” said Pence in his remarks that he delivered on Thursday. “It provides a foundation on which a society can thrive.”
“Here, in America, believers of all backgrounds live side-by-side, adding their unique voices to the chorus of our nation, proving that religious freedom means not only the right to practice one faith; it lays a foundation for boundless opportunity, prosperity, security and peace,” he added.
Participant criticizes ‘presence of well-known anti-LGBTI’ groups
The conference took place less than two months after the Trump administration applauded the U.S. Supreme Court for ruling in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple because of his religious beliefs.
The Supreme Court last month upheld the Trump administration’s policy that effectively bans the citizens of five Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. Pope Francis is among those who have criticized the separation of migrant children from their parents under the White House’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has classified the Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom and Liberty Counsel as hate groups based on their anti-LGBTI positions and rhetoric. These groups have also supported anti-LGBTI efforts overseas.
The Blade has previously reported Liberty Counsel Chair Mat Staver has attended events in Jamaica that were organized by groups opposed to efforts to decriminalize consensual same-sex relations in the country. The Alliance Defending Freedom, along with current and former staffers, have supported campaigns against the repeal of anti-sodomy laws in Belize and India.
Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who has an openly lesbian sister, in 2016 reiterated his opposition to marriage rights for same-sex couples during an Alliance Defending Freedom event in New York.
Harry Samuels, a policy advisor for the American Jewish World Service, a D.C.-based organization that funds LGBTI advocacy groups around the world, is among those who attended the conference. He told the Blade on Friday in a statement the “presence of well-known anti-LGBTI and anti-choice groups at the ministerial illustrates the cynical nature of the Trump administration’s promotion of ‘religious liberty,’”
“The administration intentionally conflates honorable efforts to protect religious minorities from violence with using ‘religious conscience’ to legitimize discrimination against LGBTI people and deny sexual and reproductive health services to women and girls around the world,” added Samuels.
State Department officials have yet to provide the Blade with information that specifically identifies the organizations and/or individuals from them who participated in the conference. The State Department earlier this week did, however, release a list of the heads of the delegations from the more than 80 countries that attended.
They include Assistant Egyptian Foreign Minister for Human Rights Ahmed Gamal El Din, Vatican Foreign Minister Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, Israeli Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi and Mexican Foreign Affairs Secretary Luis Videgaray. Ingibjorg Solrum Gisladottir, director of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, also attended.
LA UNION, El Salvador — It was nearly 100 degrees in the Salvadoran city of La Unión at 1:15 p.m. on July 14 when Ever Pacheco, director of Colectivo LGBTI Estrellas del Golfo, a local advocacy group, began talking with three of his colleagues in their small office that is located on a quiet residential street.Advertisements about receiving remittances from the U.S. are commonplace throughout the city that is located three hours east of the Salvadoran capital of San Salvador on the Gulf of Fonseca. Pacheco said fear over President Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy is increasingly palpable among La Unión’s more than 30,000 residents.
“Everyone has delayed their plans to travel (to the U.S.) because they are afraid of being detained,” he told the Washington Blade.
El Salvador has one of the world’s highest per capita murder rates because of violence that is frequently associated with MS-13, 18th Street and other street gangs. Pacheco and other advocates with whom the Blade spoke this month said this violence is among the main reasons that prompt LGBTI Salvadorans to leave the country.
Ever Pacheco, director of Colectivo LGBTI Estrellas del Golfo, an LGBTI advocacy group in La Unión, El Salvador, and his colleague Valeria at their offices on July 14, 2018. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
‘People aren’t going to the U.S. because it’s cold’
Pacheco said six transgender people from La Unión have migrated to the U.S. in recent years “because of the situation in the country with the gangs.” He told the Blade that discrimination and a lack of economic opportunities because of their gender identity also factored into their decisions to leave El Salvador.
Karla Guevara, president of Colectivo Alejandría, a San Salvador-based advocacy group, pointed out to the Blade last year that 18 trans women were known to have been killed in El Salvador in 2015. Francela Méndez, a Colectivo Alejandría board member, on May 31, 2015, became one of these statistics when she was murdered at a friend’s home in Sonsonate Department, which is about an hour west of San Salvador.
Three trans women were killed in February 2017 in San Luis Talpa, a city that is near El Salvador’s main international airport. Karla Avelar, a prominent activist who the Blade interviewed in San Salvador last September, asked for asylum in Ireland after she and her mother received threats.
“People are not going to the U.S. because it’s cold,” said Andrea Ayala, executive director of Espacio de Mujeres Lesbianas por la Diversidad, an advocacy group known by the acronym ESMULES, as she spoke with the Blade at a San Salvador coffee shop on July 13. “People are not going (to the U.S.) because it’s so beautiful.”
“People migrate because they will die and because they are hungry and because they are in need,” she added.
William Hernández, chief executive officer of Asociación Entre Amigos LGBTI de El Salvador, another Salvadoran advocacy group, echoed Ayala.
Hernández told the Blade on July 13 during an interview at a San Salvador hotel that is less than a mile from the U.S. Embassy that the violence in El Salvador is “worse” now than it was during the country’s civil war from 1979-1992.
He said some gangs target trans people and “obviously gay men.” Hernández also told the Blade the only time residents of one neighborhood that is controlled by two rival gangs can cross the street “without suffering the consequences for the act of crossing the street” is when they need to take public transportation.
“This is the reality in general,” he said.
Salvadoran government urged to forcefully criticize Trump
The Trump administration’s decision earlier this year to end the Temporary Protected Status program for the up to 200,000 Salvadorans who have received temporary residency permits that allow them to stay in the U.S. sparked widespread outrage among immigrant rights advocates.
Ayala and Ámbar Alfaro of ASPIDH Arcoiris Trans, a San Salvador-based trans advocacy group, are among those who criticized the White House’s decision. Pacheco’s mother is a TPS recipient who has lived in Houston for 15 years.
“The impact that it has had has been very clear,” Pacheco told the Blade, referring to the end of TPS for Salvadorans.
The Salvadoran government in January condemned Trump after he reportedly described El Salvador as a “shithole” country. Ayala and Hernández both accused President Salvador Sánchez Cerén of not doing enough to challenge the White House over its immigration policy, which includes the continued separation of migrant children from their families.
“It (the Salvadoran government) has a close relationship with the Trump administration, at the very least, for money,” said Pacheco.
The U.S. Agency for International Aid on its website notes El Salvador received $74,831,935 in U.S. foreign aid in fiscal year 2016. Remittances, which primarily come from Salvadorans who live in the U.S., accounts for nearly a fifth of El Salvador’s GDP.
Hernández said there is a “lack of leadership” from Sánchez Cerén on a host of issues that include health care, LGBTI rights and abortion. Hernández also noted U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador Jean Manes has been “very serious” in criticizing the government’s efforts to reduce gang violence and fight corruption.
“The United States government cannot tell us what to do, but it’s also what are we going to do,” said Hernández. “The honorable ambassador has a very rigid position, but also one of a lot of cooperation.”
A store in La Unión, El Salvador, allows customers to receive remittances from the U.S. Salvadoran government figures indicate remittances account for nearly a fifth of the country’s total economy. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
Group provides information, assistance to LGBTI migrants
Asociación Entre Amigos LGBTI de El Salvador has created an online initiative that seeks to provide information to migrants about where they can seek assistance as they travel from El Salvador to the U.S.-Mexico border. Hernández nevertheless told the Blade that neither he nor his organization encourages LGBTI Salvadorans to leave the country without documents.
“We encourage people not to migrate illegally or undocumented,” he said. “But we know that many times they leave the country with only minutes to spare. So, what we are doing is getting the word out about the safest way to go and how they can receive support along the way.”
A store in La Unión, El Salvador, allows customers to receive remittances from the U.S. Salvadoran government figures indicate remittances account for nearly a fifth of the country’s total economy. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen earlier this month met with the foreign ministers of El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico in Guatemala City. She announced the creation of an office within her agency that will advise their governments about the reunification of migrant children who have been separated from their parents.The Trump administration on June 19 withdrew the U.S. from the U.N. Human Rights Council. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein the day before condemned the separation of young migrant children from their parents along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Ayala told the Blade the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the U.N. Human Rights Council was an attempt to deflect attention away from its immigration policy. She also spoke directly to Americans who continue to support it.
“I invite them to reflect with respect to the pain that this figure is inflicting on not only people from his country,” Ayala told the Blade.
ESMULES Executive Director Andrea Ayala in San Salvador, El Salvador, on Sept. 25, 2017. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
She noted the U.S. provided military aid to the Salvadoran government during the civil war.Salvadoran immigrants who fled the war formed MS-13 in Los Angeles in the 1980s. Gang members who have been deported to El Salvador over the last two decades have been linked to murders and other acts of violence in the country.
“(The war) left El Salvador in ruins with military dictators, with an untold number of disappeared people,” Ayala told the Blade. “We survived 12 years of armed conflict that was, in part, supported by the United States.”
She added Trump continues to use migrants as scapegoats.
“Hate is a very strong word,” said Ayala. “This hatred is the distinction of what is different.”
Ernesto Valle in San Salvador, El Salvador, contributed to this article.
A proposed amendment to Cuba’s new constitution would extend marriage rights to same-sex couples.Francisco Rodríguez Cruz, a gay Cuban blogger who writes under the pen name Paquito el de Cuba, on Friday wrote the proposed amendment would “redefine marriage as a voluntary union into which two people who are legally eligible can enter.” Rodríguez reported the proposed amendment also “incorporates the principle of nondiscrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”
Maykel González, an independent Cuban journalist and LGBTI rights advocate who contributes to the Washington Blade, also confirmed the proposed amendment.
Mariela Castro, the daughter of former Cuban President Raúl Castro who directs the country’s National Center for Sexual Education (CENESEX), in May told reporters during a Havana press conference that her organization planned to submit proposals to the Cuban National Assembly in support of marriage and other rights for LGBTI Cubans. Her comments came against the backdrop of pro-marriage equality campaigns that several independent LGBTI advocacy groups had previously launched.
Moisés Rodríguez of Corriente Martiana, a Cuban human rights organization told the Blade on May 11 during an interview at his home in Cabañas in Artemisa Province that everyone knows “the damages caused by the lack of marriage equality.” Lidia Romero of Acepto, a group that also supports marriage rights for same-sex couples, made a similar point when she spoke with the Blade later that day in Havana.
“Everyone talks about the need for the recognition of or the legalization of marriage for same-sex couples,” she said.
Five Evangelical church groups last month publicly expressed their opposition to marriage rights for same-sex couples.
The Cuban government denied their request to hold a march in Havana. Pictures posted to social media earlier this month show supporters of these groups holding signs during church services that read, among other things, “I am in favor of original design: The family as God created” with a picture of a man and a woman and two children holding hands.
The debate over marriage rights for same-sex couples in Cuba is taking place nearly six decades after gay men and others deemed unfit for military service were sent to labor camps, known by the Spanish acronym UMAP, following the 1959 revolution that brought Mariela Castro’s uncle, Fidel Castro, to power.
The Cuban government until 1993 forcibly quarantined people with HIV/AIDS in state-run sanitaria. Fidel Castro in 2010 apologized for the work camps during an interview with a Mexican newspaper.
Cuba since 2008 has offered free sex-reassignment surgeries through its national health care system, although only a few dozen people have been able to receive them. Mariela Castro, who is a member of the National Assembly, and CENESEX since that year have organized a series of events across the country each year that commemorate the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia.
A three-judge panel in Havana last October granted Violeta Cardoso custody of her late daughter’s three young children who she is raising with her partner of 32 years, Isabel Pacheco. The ruling is believed to be the first time the Cuban government has legally recognized a same-sex couple.
“There was no problem,” Cardoso told the Blade in Havana on May 11.
The National Assembly will debate the proposed amendment and other changes to the Cuban constitution three months after President Miguel Díaz-Canel succeeded Raúl Castro. Cuba would become the first country in the Caribbean to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples if the proposed amendment becomes part of the new constitution.
Violeta Cardoso, second from right, and her partner, Isabel Pacheco, second from left, attend an International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia march in Havana on May 12, 2018, that the National Center for Sexual Education (CENESEX) organized. Cardoso last October received custody of her late daughter’s three children who she is raising with her partner. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
Activists have sharply criticized the passage of a bill in the Israeli Knesset that prevents gay couples from using surrogates.The Jerusalem Post reported the bill passed on Wednesday by a 59-52 vote.
Media reports indicate the bill allows lesbian couples to use surrogates, but it does not include men who are in same-sex relationships. A Wider Bridge, a U.S.-based organization that says it is “dedicating to supporting LGBTQ communities in Israel,” on Thursday said gay couples and single men could face up to three years in prison if they try to use a surrogate in Israel.
Hundreds of LGBTI activists marched through the streets of Tel Aviv on Thursday to protest the bill’s passage. Businesses have also said their employees can participate in a strike against the measure that is scheduled to take place on Sunday.
The Aguda, the Israeli National LGBT Task Force, is supporting the strike.
“The LGBTQ community in Israel is calling you to join our protest,” it wrote on its Facebook page. “In Israel today, lesbian women cannot register their children to (sic) school, transgenders are stabbed on the streets. LGBTQ teens are running into homophobia every day in schools.”
“The Knesset…has recently passed laws that threaten equality and basic human rights,” it adds. “We cannot sit quietly anymore and continue living life like this.”
A Wider Bridge Executive Director Tyler Gregory in his group’s statement described the bill’s passage as a “worrisome development.”
“LGBTQ people in Israel face mounting odds, something made clearer after the Knesset’s passage of the discriminatory legislation last night, despite fierce opposition from Israel’s LGBTQ communities and allies, and words of support from the prime minister,” he said. “The ability of the ultra-orthodox parties within the government to force a vote on anti-gay legislation is yet another instance of the Israeli government highlighting its support of LGBTQ rights abroad while harming LGBTQ people at home by prioritizing coalition politics over people’s lives.”
Members of Colectivo Unidad Color Rosa, an LGBTI advocacy group in the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula, on July 11 were sewing a transgender Pride flag for an upcoming march. On the wall behind them were the pictures of 19 local activists and community members who have been killed over the last decade.“You can be killed at any moment in this extremely violent country,” a lesbian activist told the Washington Blade during an interview with three others affiliated with Colectivo Unidad Color Rosa who identify themselves as transsexual women.
Honduras has one of the world’s highest per capita murder rates because of violence that is frequently associated with gangs and drug traffickers. Violence and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation remains commonplace in the Central American country that borders Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua.
One of the activists with whom the Blade spoke at Colectivo Unidad Color Rosa has previously received death threats.
She and her three colleagues asked the Blade not to publish their names or take their pictures because of concerns over their personal safety. One of activists — a trans woman — said “nothing has changed” in San Pedro Sula since the Blade last reported from the city in February 2017.
“What has increased and has changed is migration,” she said. “There are more trans girls migrating from the country.”
Trans women ‘always have poverty, insecurity’
The activists spoke with the Blade against lingering outrage over President Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy, which included the separation of migrant children from their parents once they entered the U.S.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen last week met with the foreign ministers of Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico in Guatemala City. She announced the creation of an office within her agency that will advise their governments about the reunification of migrant children who have been separated from their parents.
The activists with whom the Blade spoke said violence and a lack of economic opportunities are the primary reasons that prompt lesbian, gay, bisexual, intersex and especially trans Hondurans to leave the country.
Statistics from Cattrachas, a lesbian feminist network that is based in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, indicate 15 people have been reported killed in the country so far this year because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
A gay Honduran man seeking asylum in Mexico told the Blade on Tuesday during an interview outside a refugee center in Mexico City that he fled San Pedro Sula earlier this year after gang members attacked him. The man said the gang members also raped his friend before they killed her in front of him.
“The situation therefore never changes for the community,” said the trans activist in San Pedro Sula who has previously received death threats. “We always have poverty, insecurity for trans girls. This is the main reason for migrating.”
A newsstand in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on July 10, 2018, sells a Honduran newspaper with a front page devoted to a shootout between police officers and gang members in a San Pedro Sula suburb that left a police officer and two suspected gang members dead. The newspaper also notes the 2018 World Cup semi-final game between France and Belgium (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
Trans woman who died in ICE custody ‘represented a struggle’
The death of Roxana Hernández — a trans Honduran woman with HIV who died at a New Mexico hospital on May 25 while in ICE custody — sparked outrage among advocates in Honduras and in the U.S.
Hernández, who was from the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, was in San Pedro Sula before she joined a 300-person caravan that traveled to the U.S. border. U.S. Customs and Border Protection took her into custody on May 9 when she asked for asylum at the San Ysidro Port of Entry near San Diego.
Hernández’s picture is among the 19 that are on the wall at Colectivo Unidad Color Rosa’s offices. The four activists with whom the Blade spoke were quick to point out other trans Hondurans have also been killed after leaving the country.
“Roxana’s case is being politicized at the moment,” said the lesbian activist. “It is being politicized in the sense that she represented a struggle when we were looking for martyred colleagues.”
“Roxana became a colleague as a result,” she added. “There are many other colleagues as well.”
Activist: Honduras government has no socio-economic plan
Honduran first lady Ana García earlier this month visited a detention center in McAllen, Texas, after Trump issued an executive order that ended the separation of migrant children from their parents. CNN reported García urged Hondurans to remain in the country and “let’s look for solutions to support you.”
García on June 19 made a similar plea on her Twitter page.
“Don’t migrate, don’t risk the lives of your children on that route,” she said. “Avoid traumas because with the U.S. ‘zero tolerance’ policy, you will be separated from your little ones when you arrive illegally.”
More than 30 peopled died in violent protests that took place across the country after President Juan Orlando Hernández’s disputed re-election last November. The activists in San Pedro Sula with whom the Blade spoke said it is possible the Honduran government has not explicitly criticized Trump’s immigration policy because it does not want to lose U.S. aid.
The U.S. Agency for International Development reports Honduras received $127,506,634 in U.S. foreign aid in fiscal year 2016. Full figures from fiscal years 2017 and 2018 are not yet available.
A flyer taped to a storefront in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on July 10, 2018, urges customers to apply for a U.S. visa. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
The lesbian activist with whom the Blade spoke said the Honduran government has not implemented a socio-economic plan “to benefit the population.”She said the government has increased funding of the country’s Military and National Police, which have been accused of human rights violations. The lesbian activist also told the Blade a lack of legal protections for trans Hondurans and their inability to legally change the name and gender on their ID cards has also made them increasingly vulnerable to discrimination and violence.
Graffiti on a wall in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, equates the police to rapists and murderers. Activists in the Honduran city insist police officers routinely target transgender women and other members of the
LGBTI community. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
One of the trans activists noted the Honduran government “does not have a plan” to help LGBTI migrants. U.S. Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) last month told the Blade after he and other members of Congress traveled to South Texas there are no policies in place that specifically address the needs of LGBTI migrant children who the Trump administration separated from their parents.All four of the activists with whom the Blade spoke said they have no plans to leave Honduras in spite of the rampant violence and discrimination that exists in their country.
One of the trans activists told the Blade she traveled to Mexico City three years ago to undergo cosmetic surgery. She said she returned to Honduras because her experience in the Mexican capital was “very ugly.”
The lesbian activist said she will stay in Honduras because she has “stability.”
“I would think about leaving, about migrating, if I didn’t have the stability that I have,” she added.
The Human Rights Campaign and the National LGBTQ Task Force are among the co-sponsors of protests against President Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy that are scheduled to take place across the country on Saturday.
A #FamiliesBelongTogether rally is scheduled to take place in Lafayette Square across from the White House. Other rallies and protests are scheduled to take place in Baltimore; Alexandria, Va.,; Dover, Del., and in hundreds of other cities and towns across the country.
The events will take place against the backdrop of growing outrage over Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy that includes the separation of more than 2,000 immigrant children from their parents.
Trump on June 20 signed an executive order that ended the separations.
Attorneys general from D.C., Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, California, Washington, Oregon, New Mexico, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Jersey New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Vermont on Tuesday filed a lawsuit that seeks to force the Trump administration to reunite immigrant children with their parents. A federal judge in San Diego on Tuesday ruled all of them must be reunited within 30 days.
U.S. Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) told the Washington Blade after he visited South Texas on June 17 there is no policy in place that specifically addresses the needs of LGBT immigrant children who are in custody.
“HRC will be sponsoring the rally in D.C. on June 30 and will also be mobilizing our 3 million members and supporters for the other rallies around the country as we stand united in condemning this administration’s unconscionable actions,” HRC Government Affairs Director David Stacy told the Washington Blade last week.
A man holds a sign during a rally against President Trump’s “zero
tolerance” immigration policy that took place in Freedom Plaza in D.C. on June 27, 2018. Hundreds of protests, rallies and other events against the controversial policy are scheduled to take place across
the country on Saturday. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
Stacey Long Simmons, director of the Task Force’s Advocacy and Action Department, on Tuesday said her group is supporting the #FamiliesBelongTogether protests because “ripping children away from their parents is inhumane.” She also noted to the Blade that former first lady Laura Bush is among those who have publicly criticized the policy.
“Trump’s policies have jeopardized the lives and emotional well-being of nursing infants, toddlers, and other children by forcing them away from their parents, ignoring the needs of unaccompanied minors and locking these children up like dogs in cages,” said Simmons.
Other LGBT advocacy groups across the country are also supporting the protests.
Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in New York, which is the world’s largest LGBT synagogue, earlier this week traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas.
Capitol police on Jan. 18 arrested Kleinbaum and other immigrant rights advocates during a protest at the Russell Senate Office Building. Kleinbaum in a statement she sent to the Blade on Monday said she believes “God demands of us to put our bodies on the line for as long as it takes to protect the vulnerable, to protest evil and injustice and to non-violently take action that brings redemption to this world.”
“I will not be silent and our congregation will be wherever we need to be to joyously bring God’s vision of justice to our world,” she said.
Capitol Police on Jan. 18, 2018, arrest Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum of New York’s Congregation Beit Simchat Torah during an immigrant rights protest at the Russell Senate Office Building. Congregation Beit Simchat Torah is among the organizations expected to participate in protests against President Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy that are scheduled to take place across the country on June 30. (Photo courtesy of Tasha Calhoun/Congregation Beit Simchat Torah)
Equality Florida has also encouraged its supporters to take part in the #FamiliesBelongTogether protests.
“Equality Florida adds its voice to the overwhelming public outcry against the Trump administration’s policy that has torn more than 2,300 traumatized children, toddlers and infants from asylum-seekers and immigrant parents who believed the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty,” said Nadine Smith, the group’s CEO, on Tuesday.
U.S. Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) on June 17, 2018, speaks with reporters outside the McAllen Border Patrol Processing Center in McAllen, Texas. He said there are no specific policies “in place” to help LGBT immigrant children who have been separated from their parents. (Photo courtesy of Richard Luchette/U.S. Rep. David Cicilline)
Editor’s note: President Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order that stops the separation of immigrant children from their parents. The White House has yet to say how it will reunite them.
U.S. Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) on Tuesday said there is no policy in place that specifically addresses the needs of LGBT immigrant children the Trump administration has separated from their parents.
Cicilline told the Washington Blade he asked Southwest Key Programs CEO Juan Sánchez if such a policy exists when he visited Casa Padre, a facility in Brownsville, Texas, in which nearly 1,500 boys are currently living.
Southwest Key, which is based in Austin, Texas, operates the facility that was once a Walmart supercenter. Cicilline told the Blade that Sánchez “indicated there were no policies in place that address the needs of LGBT youth.”
“That’s all he said,” said Cicilline. “They did say they attempt to address issues raised by the kids.”
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement oversees Casa Padre and other detention facilities in which immigrant children who have been separated from their parents are being held. The agency did not respond to the Blade’s request for comment about whether it has LGBT-specific policies in place.
An Immigration Equality spokesperson on Tuesday said their organization is “not aware of any policies” that specifically address “how to treat or help LGBTQ youth or minors living with HIV.”
‘What is underway is a barbaric system’
Statistics from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security indicate 2,342 immigrant children since early May have been separated from their parents under the White House’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy. The Associated Press on Tuesday reported the Trump administration has opened at least three “tender age” shelters in South Texas to house babies and young immigrant children who have been separated from their parents.
Cicilline on Sunday traveled to South Texas with U.S. Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and U.S. Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Filemon Vela (D-Texas), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Vicente González (D-Texas) and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas). The lawmakers visited the McAllen Border Patrol Processing Center, the McAllen Border Patrol Station, the Hidalgo Port of Entry and the Port Isabel Detention Center.
Cicilline told the Blade he and his fellow lawmakers met with 10 women who were being held at the Port Isabel Detention Center, which U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operates. Cicilline said a woman said her son was taken from her when she asked for asylum at a U.S. port of entry.
Cicilline on Twitter said he saw dozens of “kids by themselves in cages” inside the McAllen Border Patrol Processing Center.
“What is underway is a barbaric system of literally ripping children from their mothers’ arms,” Cicilline told the Blade.
Trump faces worldwide criticism over immigration policy
The Trump administration’s policy has sparked condemnation in the U.S. and around the world.
Attorneys general from D.C., Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, California, New Mexico, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington in a letter they sent to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary Kristjen Nielsen on Tuesday urges the Justice Department to “immediately cease these draconian practices.” U.S. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), John Boozman (R-Ark.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.), Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) have sent a similar letter to Sessions and Nielsen.
Cicilline is among the co-sponsors of the Keep Families Together Act, which would ban the Department of Homeland Security from separating migrant children from their parents, “except in extraordinary circumstances.” U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who is being challenged by U.S. Rep. Beto Rourke (D-Texas), has introduced a bill that seeks to “limit the separation of families seeking asylum in the United States and expedite the asylum process for individuals arriving in the United States with children.”
Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam on Tuesday said they would pull their respective states’ National Guard troops from the border.
Trump has continued to defend the policy in spite of these condemnations.
The Associated Press on Wednesday reported Nielsen — who left a Mexican restaurant in downtown D.C. the day before after members of Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America heckled her — is drafting an order that would end the policy. It was not immediately clear at deadline whether Trump will support it, but the Associated Press reported he said at the White House that he would sign something “in a little while.”
Cicilline bristled at the notion that Trump is using immigrant children as a bargaining chip to convince Democrats to support his immigration agenda.
“The idea that you would enact a policy to rip children from their mothers’ arms is disgusting,” Cicilline told the Blade.
Activists condemn Trump policy
LGBTI activists are among those who have also criticized Trump over this policy.
“As a nation of immigrants, the United States has stood as a beacon of hope for people around the world fleeing persecution, violence and oppression,” Human Rights Campaign Government Affairs Director David Stacy told the Blade on Wednesday in a statement.
“The Trump-Pence administration’s attacks on immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees is an affront to our values,” he added. “Like the vast majority of Americans on both sides of the aisle, we are appalled by this administration’s policy of ripping away children from their parents at the border.”
Equality California National Policy Director Valerie Ploumpis on Tuesday said these families “have already faced such suffering, poverty, discrimination and hardship that they left everything behind for the hope of a brighter future.”
“Too many members of our LGBTQ community know that pain,” she added. “That the Trump-Pence administration would further traumatize children by ripping them from their families — perhaps never to be reunited — truly shocks the conscience.”
OutRight Action International Executive Director Jessica Stern agreed.
“There is no justification for systematically taking children away from their families,” Stern told the Blade. “There is also no justification for systematically denying migrants entry to the U.S. who in many cases are fleeing violence, persecution and even economic devastation.”
Trans Honduran woman dies in ICE custody
Violence associated with gangs and drug trafficking have prompted LGBT and intersex people from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to flee their respective countries. A lack of access to education, employment and health care have made transgender migrants in particular susceptible to discrimination, violence and exploitation.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection took Hernández into custody on May 9 when she asked for asylum at the San Ysidro Port of Entry near San Diego. An ICE press release said Hernández entered its custody on May 13 and was being housed in a unit at Cibola County Correctional Center in Milan, N.M., for trans detainees.
The press release notes Hernández was admitted to the hospital with “symptoms of pneumonia, dehydration and complications associated with HIV” on May 17. Hernández died from cardiac arrest on May 25.
“She is the transsexual girl who died in the hands of the U.S. government,” said Erick Martínez, an LGBTI rights advocate in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa.
Andrea, left, a transgender woman who lives in San Luis Talpa, El Salvador, eats lunch at a restaurant in the Salvadoran capital of San Salvador on Sept. 23, 2017. She asked the Washington Blade not to use her real name and disclose her identity because of anti-trans violence in her hometown. Rampant violence has prompted many LGBT people in El Salvador and neighboring countries to flee. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
LGBTI rights advocates in El Salvador with whom the Blade spoke this week also reiterated their criticism of Trump’s immigration policy, which includes his continued support for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“It’s sad,” said Bessy Rios, executive director of Asociación de Familiares y Amigos de Población LGBTI de la Mano Contigo. “Our people from the Northern Triangle — El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — are being mistreated, discriminated against, forced to migrate and they are forced to return when they arrive to the border.”
William Hernández, director of Asociación Entre Amigos de El Salvador, agreed.
“The segregation that is occurring with the people who arrive — and above all with children — is a serious violation,” he told the Blade.
The U.S. on Tuesday announced it has withdrawn from the U.N. Human Rights Council.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley told reporters during a press conference at the State Department that Cuba, Venezuela, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other countries “with unambiguous and abhorrent human rights records” are members of the council. She also accused the council of having a “chronic bias against” Israel.
“America has a proud legacy as a champion of human rights, a proud legacy as the world’s largest provider of humanitarian aid, and a proud legacy of liberating oppressed people and defeating tyranny throughout the world,” said Haley. “While we do not seek to impose the American system on anyone else, we do support the rights of all people to have freedoms bestowed on them by their creator. That is why we are withdrawing from the U.N. Human Rights Council, an organization that is not worthy of its name.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also spoke to reporters.
“We have no doubt that there was once a noble vision for this council,” he said. “But today, we need to be honest – the Human Rights Council is a poor defender of human rights.”
Pompeo added the council “has become an exercise in shameless hypocrisy — with many of the world’s worst human rights abuses going ignored, and some of the world’s most serious offenders sitting on the council itself.”
Council has emerged as LGBTI rights champion
The U.N. created the council in 2006.
The U.S. joined the council in 2009 after former President Obama took office. The council over the last decade has become an increasingly vocal champion of LGBTI rights.
The council in 2011 narrowly approved an LGBTI rights resolution. It adopted a resolution against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in 2014.
The council in 2016 approved the creation of the U.N.’s first-ever position to combat anti-LGBTI violence and discrimination. Cuba and Venezuela are among the countries that voted for the resolution.
The U.S. last September voted against a council resolution that includes a provision condemning the death penalty for those found guilty of committing consensual same-sex sexual acts. An American official told the Washington Blade the U.S. backed language in the resolution “against the discriminatory use of the death penalty based on an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, while also requesting changes to make the larger resolution in accordance with U.S. law” that says the death penalty is legal.
The Human Rights Campaign and the Council for Global Equality are among the organizations that told Pompeo in a letter they are “deeply disappointed” with the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the council.
“This decision is counterproductive to American national security and foreign policy interests and will make it more difficult to advance human rights priorities and aid victims of abuse around the world,” they said.
Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer on Tuesday applauded the decision when he spoke at his embassy’s annual Pride reception in D.C. U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) — who was born in Havana before the 1959 Cuban revolution brought Fidel Castro to power — also praised Haley and Pompeo.
Tuesday’s announcement coincides with growing global outrage over the Trump administration’s policy of separating immigrant children from their parents when they enter the U.S. from Mexico.
U.N. experts have sharply criticized the U.S. over its response to Hurricane Maria that devastated Puerto Rico last September.
The Trump administration’s overall LGBTI rights record also continues to spark outrage among activists.
“Without a history of progress on LGBTIQ human rights at the Human Rights Council we would have no progress to speak of within the U.N. system today,” said OutRight Action International, a global LGBTI advocacy group, in a statement. “Withdrawing from the council sends a message to other countries that its acceptable to walk away from the system when it doesn’t suit you to be there.”
“Imagine, what would happen if all countries walked away from the U.N. because of disagreements,” asked the organization.
Haley at the State Department press conference stressed the administration has “used America’s voice and vote to defend human rights at the U.N. every day, and we will continue to do so.”
“Even as we end our membership in the Human Rights Council, we will keep trying to strengthen the entire framework of the U.N. engagement on human rights issues, and we will continue to strongly advocate for reform of the Human Rights Council,” she said. “Should it become reformed, we would be happy to rejoin it.”