NEW YORK and TIJUANANEW YORK and TIJUANA — The woman from central Mexico didn’t have money to pay the cab driver.
Still nervous after her flight from San Diego, Sandra stood next to the taxi in Manhattan, her eyes searching for someone she had never met — the woman who was supposed to shepherd her through this new life as an asylum seeker in the United States.
Soon Jessica Guaman appeared walking briskly from a nearby subway station. Guaman hugged her tightly and then paid the driver.
“Welcome,” Guaman told her in Spanish.
Guaman has similarly welcomed more than 200 asylum seekers, the majority transgender women, who came to the United States in pursuit of safety and freedom. A trans Indigenous immigrant herself, she plays a key role as a sponsor in an unofficial cross-border network of LGBTQ+ activists in Tijuana and New York. They have made it their mission to asylum seekers in their own community.
The women they help come with hopes of finding safe work, stable homes and, most importantly, the ability to be themselves without discrimination or attacks.
“My dream is my own peace, to be able to live without fear of persecution,” said Sandra, who was targeted by organized crime in the state of Guanajuato because she is trans.
She and some other women interviewed for this story are not being fully named due to ongoing safety concerns.
Many trans women find temporary refuge in Tijuana shelters that house LGBTQ+ migrants. Though Tijuana has more such shelters than most Mexican border cities, it’s not enough to meet the demand. One of the shelters has a waitlist that is over 100 people long.
Through the shelters, they learn about Guaman.
The women usually have strong asylum cases, but without someone in the United States to sponsor them, requesting protection can be nearly impossible.
Not allowed to work to themselves when they arrive, asylum seekers in general often turn to relatives for help. However, family are frequently among the persecutors that trans asylum seekers have fled. Guaman’s efforts give them a fighting chance in a system that is notoriously difficult to navigate.
San Diego has several organizations that help LGBTQ+ asylum seekers. But because of programs unique to the city of New York for HIV prevention and treatment, Guaman is able to do more.
Her work shows a potential alternative to the way asylum seekers are often received in the U.S., an alternative ed by many human rights advocates. It suggests that by ensuring that people have their basic needs met, they can participate more fully in their immigration cases, leading to more just outcomes and a better functioning system.
“If we want someone to successfully navigate the immigration process, if we want them to not just show up at their appointments and hearings but actually have a successful immigration case, they need that stability in the other parts of their lives as well,” said Katharina Obser, director of the migrant rights and justice program at Women’s Refugee Commission in Washington.
To provide that stability, Guaman is building on decades of activism by the LGBTQ+ community in New York, from protests at the Stonewall Inn in 1969 to successful efforts to repeal the “Walking While Trans” ban in 2021.
Through HIV prevention and treatment programs with a holistic approach, she can provide everything from housing to dental work to medical insurance to many of the women in her care — many services beyond what a typical sponsor gives.
But more than that, Guaman, 42, has become a mother figure in the community she has helped to build.
“I try to give them all of the affection that I have, that could possibly come out of me,” Guaman said.
Though most of the women Guaman has sponsored still have pending cases, about 20 have already won, she said. None have lost.
Physical evidence of abuse
Many trans women carry thick, jagged scars across their bodies as proof of what drove them to leave home.
Jessica Marilyn fled Guatemala and tried to make a life in Mexico, but she found herself once again under attack for her identity. At Casa Arcoiris, one of the Tijuana shelters, she showed the scar that runs down the side of her neck and across her throat.
“This has been my life,” she said.
A study from UCLA found that from fiscal 2012 through 2017, roughly 4,000 LGBTQ+ asylum seekers told U.S. officials during initial screenings that they were fleeing persecution based on sexual orientation or gender identity. That was just over 1 percent of people screened.
As the number of asylum seekers has increased since then, it is likely that many more have fled for those reasons.
The study noted that more than 98 percent ed their screenings. That’s considerably higher than asylum seekers in general. In fiscal 2017, about 76 percent of cases ed, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The agency did not have information publicly available for the full six-year time range.
It is unclear how many go on to win their cases because that data isn’t publicly available. But attorneys and activists who work with trans asylum seekers say that with the right , they have a real chance of success even in a system that migrants and their attorneys often say feels stacked against them. So far, Guaman’s early success rate bolsters that claim.
“Mostly we see (cases from) Central America and Mexico, and those are strong cases in general,” said Fatma Marouf, director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at Texas A&M School of Law. “People end up getting granted asylum.”
Because the harms they flee are based on something intrinsic to their core identities, trans asylum seekers’ claims fit more neatly into asylum law requirements than those of many others seeking protection from violence in the region. Court precedents recognize persecution against transgender people as valid reasons for asylum grants.
Their physical evidence also helps. Unlike paper documents or files stored on cellphones, their scars cannot be lost or stolen on the route to safety.
Many have spent time in Mexico City, where trans women from Mexico and Central America often scrape together money for gender-affirming surgeries. However, most are unable to find jobs because of the discrimination they face. As a result, many are forced or coerced into sex work as the only way to pay for food, housing and their transitions.
Several women who have found safety in New York City recounted the exploitation they faced working in the streets in Mexico and the violent attacks they experienced because of hatred toward their identities.
In Tijuana LGBTQ+ shelters, many are quick to share the evidence left by their attackers.
Dulce Guifarro and her partner, Keny Antonio Martinez Flores, who goes by the name Evans, fled Tegucigalpa, Honduras, after they were attacked because she is a trans activist. Martinez Flores has scars on his arms, belly and rib cage that recall how close he came to death in protecting his girlfriend.
The couple, together for more than six years, hopes to get married in the United States, something they could not do in Honduras.
Yulissa Escalante Jimenez, who found temporary refuge in Jardín de las Mariposas, another Tijuana migrant shelter, has limited use of one hand.
She has brain damage and nerve damage from an abusive relationship that was complicated by the discrimination she faced as a trans woman in Mexico City. When she finally escaped, she was attacked again, this time in Tijuana while she was operating her business selling undergarments that she makes for trans women.
She got an appointment to request asylum at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in March.
After crossing the border, she stayed at a San Diego shelter before making the same journey many others had — to New York and Guaman.
“Today I’m already more at ease because now I feel more liberated,” Escalante Jimenez said.
The gift of stability
Without Guaman, finding a sponsor would have been a major roadblock for many trans women.
The smartphone app for making appointments at U.S. ports of entry to request protection — currently the only way to access the asylum system for most migrants — requires a sponsor’s address before giving a date to cross.
Once they’re inside the United States, the women Guaman helps have to figure out how to survive while navigating the complexities of the asylum system and its well-documented biases. While the U.S. is a significant improvement in of their rights and safety, they also have to learn what dangers to avoid in a country where transphobia and xenophobia still exist.
Guaman has accompanied them to police stations to report attacks when necessary, teaching them how to insist that a police report be filed. She said it can still be difficult for a trans woman to be taken seriously.
“I’ve always liked to say, ‘You know what, you have to respect me. It doesn’t matter who I am,'” Guaman said.
The she provides gives the women not only a path to asylum but also a path to success in their new lives once they win their cases.
At first, many of the women Guaman helped were from El Salvador. Now, she’s receiving many from Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala as well as some from Peru and her home country of Ecuador.
Through her work at Betances Health Center, on the Lower East Side, she is able to connect HIV-positive asylum seekers with city programs to find shelter, and later more permanent housing, as well as access to food benefits. Because of the stigma still often associated with the virus, they are even more likely to have potential sponsors reject them.
At the clinic, they receive medication for the condition and can visit doctors, a dentist and even a therapist. If they have not yet had gender-affirming surgeries, they can get insurance coverage for those procedures.
Obser, of the Women’s Refugee Commission, said having a go-to person who has the knowledge to navigate the various systems that new arrivals face can make all the difference.
When someone is more focused on a pressing medical need or whether they’re going to eat that day, that becomes a higher priority than finding an attorney or gathering evidence for their case, she said. Recounting traumatic moments that would qualify someone for asylum can be impossible if a person’s life isn’t stable enough for them to feel safe.
“A person who doesn’t have housing doesn’t have emotional stability,” said Antonio Pereira, a coordinator at Betances Health Center.
Since 1996, asylum seekers have had to wait at least five months after submitting their asylum applications to request work permits. Court procedures can add further delays. Some have to survive years without the ability to work.
There’s no guarantee that an asylum seeker’s sponsor will be able to address the range of needs that might arise during that time, and there’s no safety net if they don’t. Several asylum seekers of various backgrounds told the Union-Tribune in recent months that their sponsors were not able to help with housing or food once they got across the border. Some sponsors refused. Even sponsors with the best of intentions can struggle to financially loved ones.
Marouf, who runs the law clinic in Texas, said that local efforts similar to Guaman’s could go a long way to increasing asylum seekers’ stability to pursue their cases fully.
“Instead of starting from this presumption of ‘They’re going to run away,’ why don’t we start with the presumption that they’re here to follow our legal processes and they’re going to follow it?” she said. “If you get somebody set up with the services they need, social services they need, and if you educate them about the immigration process, it’s much easier for them to comply.”
The Biden istration has made some efforts to grow case management programs for people waiting for immigration court. So far those programs are mostly through Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency responsible for opposing asylum seekers in court, as well as detaining and deporting them. Advocates including Marouf have argued that such programs should be disconnected from ICE and instead be implemented as community-based approaches similar to Guaman’s.
For asylum seekers who do not have HIV, Guaman has fewer resources because of the city programs on which she relies, but she still finds ways to help, including housing several in her apartment in Queens and finding hosts for others.
Andrea Hernandez knows first-hand what it feels like to try to make it in New York without a sponsor’s .
The 32-year-old fled Mexico City and then Tijuana after she became the target of violence. She felt so desperate that in 2022 she ran onto U.S. soil through the car lanes at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, yelling for help.
“I entered this country with the clothes I was wearing, so I had absolutely nothing,” Hernandez recalled.
Someone she knew in Texas agreed to sponsor her, but once she made it to a San Diego migrant shelter, the person stopped answering the phone. A friend in New York helped her get a plane ticket there instead.
Without a credit card to put down for a hotel room and without any identification to use for a lease, Hernandez struggled to stay housed. Eventually, she met Guaman and found to move her court case from Texas. Through some luck, the help of new friends and under-the-table work, she has found hard-won stability.
She’s still waiting to find out if she’ll get asylum, but, with Guaman’s assistance, Hernandez has already won something bigger.
On a rainy Friday in February, she rushed to her car on one of Manhattan’s busy streets near the Mexican Embassy, blocks from Grand Central Station, protecting her freshly obtained proof that life in the United States was different — better.
She video-called her mother and showed the piece of paper, her birth certificate, which now indicated that she is a woman.
“All of my life I’ve waited for this,” Hernandez said.
Motivated by shared trauma
Guaman believes that many who do work in her community’s network are motivated by the traumas they’ve experienced in their own lives. She knows it is true in her own case.
She immigrated to the United States alone from Ecuador when she was a teen. For years, she lived and worked undocumented in New York.
She was fired from her jobs when she transitioned. She was later beaten by New York City police, she said. An activist helped her through the aftermath of that experience, and Guaman ed the community of LGBTQ+ activists herself.
When she visited trans asylum seekers at an immigration detention center in 2018, she felt called to help them and began her work as a sponsor.
“I feel identified with them,” she said. “I love my job.”
Most days, Guaman is up around 5 a.m., answering messages from women across the city who are adjusting to life in New York and working on their immigration court cases. From the Bronx to Brooklyn, she visits the different boroughs to meet with women in her care. She also hosts weekly groups at the health clinic.
She tries to help all of the asylum seekers she s find legal help, and when she can’t, she often accompanies them to their hearings so they feel less alone.
Her phone keeps buzzing until around 11 p.m., when she silences it for a few hours of rest.
Her apartment is filled with mementos given to her by the women she has helped — stacks of letters and displays of paintings and embroidery.
On a recent trip to Tijuana, she received a statue of San Judas Tadeo, or Saint Jude, the patron saint of difficult cases, to whom she keeps an altar in her living room. She prayed to the saint during her own hardships, and now she asks for his goodwill for the women she helps.
Her counterparts in Tijuana feel similarly about their work.
Yolanda Rocha, director of Jardín de las Mariposas, is affectionately known as La Madrina or godmother.
Earlier in her life, Rocha was an addict and living on the streets. One of her closest friends during those years was a trans woman named Patricia.
On her deathbed, Patricia told Rocha that she’d had a vision and asked Rocha to help her people. Rocha followed through, cleaned up her life, and started Jardín de las Mariposas as a drug rehabilitation facility for the LGBTQ+ community.
When migrant caravans began arriving in Tijuana several years ago, Rocha was approached about helping out. Soon after, she converted the space to helping migrants full time.
It is hard for migrants to find shelter, and even more so for LGBTQ+ asylum seekers, who are often rejected by the religious organizations that run most of the shelters along the route.
Jardín is one of a few Tijuana shelters for the LGTBQ+ community where they can begin to feel safer. For many, it is the first time they’ve lived so closely in community with people like them.
“It’s the best family I know,” said Guifarro, 29, the trans activist who stayed at Casa Arcoiris with her partner. “They know me as myself — it’s the best that exists in the world.”
Many in the Spanish-speaking LGBTQ+ community refer to themselves as la comunidad to reflect their shared identity.
The Tijuana shelters receive from the San Diego LGBTQ+ community.
That’s part of a longstanding relationship, according to Roberto García-Garibay, who manages much of the day-to-day operations at Jardín. He recalled San Diego activists crossing the border with HIV medication back when it was not yet available in Mexico.
At Casa de Luz, which was built in recent years through donations, a sign in the upstairs common area acknowledges the room’s sponsor — Rich’s San Diego, a nightclub in Hillcrest.
“I that I was destroyed when I arrived, and what I wanted was a hug,” said Paola Esthefania, a 27-year-old Mexican trans asylum seeker from Michoacán. “Casa de Luz hugged me when I needed it.”
Living in community
The success of Guaman’s work has allowed her to cultivate a new generation of community leaders.
She often asks women who have been in New York longer and are more settled to host new arrivals in their homes for days or weeks. If she hears about a trans woman who was initially sponsored somewhere else in the United States and is facing rejection or abuse, she’ll ask her community to chip in for a plane ticket for the woman to come to them.
Hernandez, who did not have a sponsor’s help, frequently hosts newcomers in her home. She doesn’t want other women to experience the hardships that she faced.
Now, she takes care of a 23-year-old woman from Guatemala whom she met in Mexico City. She calls the woman her daughter.
Hernandez allows trans women whose housing is less stable to use her mailing address and has stacks of their mail in her bedroom. She pays security deposits for newly arrived women to get apartments, and she even moved to a place with enough space to host more women in her own home.
“From the little that I can, I help the other girls,” Hernandez said. “I think that by uniting we make ourselves strong.”
In April, Guaman celebrated the rising leaders with a visit to San Diego and Tijuana.
Accompanying her from New York were Hernandez and two women who were crowned queens in an annual pageant at the health clinic. The new queens will be public representatives on issues affecting their community over the next year.
On the last day of their trip, the New Yorkers visited Trans Fronteras, an organization that offers to trans and nonbinary asylum seekers in San Diego. On a patio behind the University Avenue office, Guaman similarly crowned a San Diego woman who would be Trans Fronteras’ “ambassador” for the next year and likely visit New York in the coming months.
“We are all one community. We have to be united and empathetic with everyone,” Guaman told the group of a couple dozen leaders from San Diego’s LGBTQ+ community, including the heads of Grupo Transgenero 2000.
Fryda Reyes Zenteno, a 26-year-old woman from Mexico and one of the New York queens, grew emotional when she addressed the gathering. She recalled the women she had known in Mexico City who were now dead.
“There came a moment that I said, ‘I don’t want to die like that,'” she recalled in an interview.
Hernandez helped buy her plane ticket to New York, where she met Guaman and became part of the network. The community gives her hope, she said.
“That brings me joy,” Reyes Zenteno said to the San Diego crowd, “because I know that there is still a little bit of sun for us that maybe tomorrow will make us shine.”
She is still waiting to find out if she will get asylum, if she will be another one of Guaman’s success stories.
Staff photojournalist Ana Ramirez contributed to this report.
