Women and LGBTQ Deportees Face Compounded Dangers Upon Return

The following article by Binh X. Ngo was posted on the Center for American Progress website August 10, 2018:

The Latinx transgender community marches through a heavily immigrant neighborhood to fight against discrimination on July 9, 2018, in Queens, NY. Credit: Andrew Lichtenstein, Getty Images

The Trump administration has led an aggressive anti-immigrant campaign that will have dangerous ramifications for vulnerable populations—especially women and LGBTQ immigrants. Many are being returned to Latin American countries such as Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala that are rife with dangers—including gender-based violence, domestic abuse, and gang violence—without stable enough institutions to protect them.

Administrative changes to asylum law and policy are making it significantly more difficult for asylum-seekers to establish claims—especially for those fleeing severe domestic abuse or gang violence. The Trump administration’s moves to shrink the grounds for asylum will ultimately re-expose many women and LGBTQ people to dangers that originally compelled them to flee.

The administration also systematically scrapped temporary protections for large groups of immigrants by rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and terminating Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for nationals of, among others, certain Latin American countries. Although multiple courts have put the DACA rescission on hold, the fate of the program remains in limbo as the cases work their way through the courts. Of the more than 620,000 DACA recipients from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, about half are women and girls. Ten percent of all DACA recipients surveyed by Center for American Progress in 2017 identify as LGBT. Meanwhile, as TPS designations begin expiring in 2019, large numbers of TPS holders—approximately 110,000 of which are Salvadoran and Honduran women and girls—will soon lose their status. Whether they are asylum-seekers or longtime residents of the United States with TPS or DACA, all may soon have to return to countries in which they will be critically unsafe.

View the complete article here.