MEXICALI, Mexico — Marlon, a 35-year-old man from Guatemala, used the CBP (U.S. Customs and Border Protection) One app to schedule an appointment to enter the United States at a port of entry.
His CBP One booking took place on January 21 at 1:00 PM Pacific Time (4:00 PM Eastern Time) in the Mexican city of Tijuana, which borders San Diego. Marlon learned that his appointment had been canceled around 11 a.m. Pacific Time (2 p.m. Eastern Time) on January 20th.
President Donald Trump was sworn in less than two hours later.
“We are stuck,” Marlon told the Washington Blade in an interview on January 31 at Posada del Migrante, a migrant shelter in the Mexican border city of Mexicali run by Centro Comunitario de Bienestar (COBINA), an organization that serves LGBTQ people and other marginalized groups.
The Trump-Vance administration’s immigration policies have left Marlon and many other immigrants and asylum seekers (LGBTQ and others) in limbo.
Daniela is a 20-year-old transgender woman from Tijuana who has been living for a month at Jardín de las Mariposas, a shelter for LGBTQ immigrants and asylum seekers in the city’s Obrera neighborhood. Jardín de las Mariposas is located approximately 9 miles south of the Mexico-U.S. border.
She told the Blade in an interview on January 29 that she was raped four months ago in Hermosillo, the capital of Mexico’s Sonora state. Daniella said her roommate and five others then tried to kill her while they were “drunk and on drugs.”
Like Marlon, Daniela had plans to attend CBP One, but it was canceled after President Trump took office.
“I am completely alone in Tijuana and elsewhere,” Daniela said. “I think the United States is a better option to start over.”
Stephanie, a 25-year-old self-identified lesbian from El Paraiso, Honduras, arrived in Tijuana last July and lives in Jardín de las Mariposas.
She told the Blade that her family is “very religious” and that she is “the only one in the family who is part of the (LGBTQ) community.” Stephanie said her cousin from Louisiana agreed to live with her once she entered the United States, but she refused after seeing her cut her hair.
“Once I arrived here in Mexico, I felt a little bit more free…and my hair was so long that I decided to cut it,” Stephanie recalls. “One day she video-called me and saw my short hair and said she can’t accept you, I can’t accept you, what kind of example are you going to be for my son?”
In addition to shutting down the CBP One app on January 20, President Trump has issued several immigration-specific executive orders since taking office. They include:
• Declares national emergency on southern border
• Suspension of U.S. Refugee Admissions Program
• Termination of Birthright Citizenship Under the Fourteenth Amendment. (U.S. District Judge John Cogner, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, called the directive “blatantly unconstitutional” in a Jan. 23 ruling that temporarily blocked it.)
President Trump reinstated the Migrant Protection Protocols program, also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which forces asylum seekers to pursue legal proceedings in Mexico.
State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said Tuesday that Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, in a meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, “agreed to bring back all Salvadoran MS-13 gang members who are in the United States illegally” and “committed to accepting and imprisoning criminal illegal immigrants from all countries, as well as violent illegal immigrants, including members of Venezuela’s Torren de Aragua gang.” The Department of Homeland Security noted in a press release that Torren de Aragua members were on board the first U.S. military “flight of criminal aliens” to arrive at Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Tuesday.
Mariposas Gardens Director Jamie Mullin told the Blade on January 29 that President Trump’s policies are causing “a lot of fear.”
He said some shelter residents whose CBP One appointments were canceled have entered the United States in other ways, including by returning to their countries of origin or with the help of smugglers known in Mexican-Spanish as “coyotes.” Marin said Jardín de las Mariposas works with people who decide to stay in Tijuana, helping them secure identification and employment.
“Our goal was to be a temporary shelter for those immigrating to the United States,” she told the Blade. “Now it looks like we might become a permanent shelter until we find another solution for them.”
Susie Barrales is the president of Casita de Union Trans, a transgender advocacy group she founded in Tijuana in 2019 after being deported from the United States.
She told the Blade in a Jan. 30 interview from her office a few blocks from the border that two immigrants deported by the U.S. arrived at Casa de Unión Torrance the day before without medication. Barrales, like Marin, said President Trump’s immigration policies are causing concern in Tijuana.
“He’s running this kind of political campaign,” Barrales said in response to a question from the Blade about President Trump’s policies. “I think this is a political thing, a political strategy, as a way to slow immigration. This is why he makes such racist statements about immigrants and communities.”
Situation along the Mexico-US border is ‘tense’
The Trump-Vance administration’s decision to suspend nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending for at least 90 days had a direct impact on Mexican organizations serving LGBTQ immigrants and asylum seekers.
Casa Frida works with more than 300 LGBTQ asylum seekers and immigrants in the cities of Mexico City, Monterrey, and Tapachula. Sixty percent of Casa Frida’s annual budget is funded by U.S. government grants, particularly those from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Department of State, and the Office of Human Trafficking Monitoring and Combating.
Casa Frida Director Raul Caporal told the Blade on Monday that the United States stopped funding for five of the organization’s initiatives on January 24.
A poster put up inside COBINA’s offices on January 31 included a QR code directing migrants to a WhatsApp page with information on how to “migrate informed and legally.” The State Department partnered with Partners of the Americas, a Washington-based NGO, on this effort.
Maqui Pollorena, a COBINA volunteer and Mexicali-based activist, told the Blade that the WhatsApp page stopped providing information on January 24th. Pollorena also said that most migrant shelters in Mexico’s Baja California state, of which COBINA and Mexicali are the state capitals, have lost 50 to 70 percent of their funding.
“All of us in the Baja California border region are nervous,” said COBINA President Altagracia Tamayo.
Marin pointed out that Jardín de las Mariposas’ funding does not come from the U.S. government, but from other NGOs, including the Transgender Law Center and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. The administration of Baja California Governor Marina del Pilar Ávila donated the building where the Jardin de las Mariposas is located. The International Organization for Migration, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Refugee, Asylum and Migration Agency are also supporting Mariposas Park.
Despite this lack of dependence on U.S. government funding, the Trump-Vance administration’s policies could be deadly, Mullin said.
“These decisions by the Trump administration will cost lives, not just here but for the LGBT community,” she said. “Many lives will be sacrificed in the United States as well.”
Source: Washington Blade: LGBTQ News, Politics, LGBTQ Rights, Gay News – www.washingtonblade.com
