World
Shelters for LGBTQ asylum seekers on Mexico-US border ‘overwhelmed’
Nearly 50 people living at Jardín de las Mariposas in Tijuana
Editor’s note: International News Editor Michael K. Lavers was on assignment for the Washington Blade in Mexico, Honduras and El Salvador from July 11-25.
TIJUANA, Mexico — Marvin is a 23-year-old gay man from Dulce Nombre, a municipality in Honduras’ Copán department.
He left Honduras with a migrant caravan on Jan. 13, 2020, in order to escape the discrimination he said he would have suffered if his family and neighbors knew he is gay. Marvin spent eight months in the custody of Mexican immigration officials until they released him last November.
He was in the Mexican border city of Tijuana in April when a cousin told him his younger brother had been murdered. Marvin, who is currently living at Jardín de las Mariposas, a shelter for LGBTQ asylum seekers in Tijuana, began to sob when the Blade saw a picture of his brother’s body in the morgue in San Pedro Sula, Honduras’ second-largest city.
“He didn’t mess with anyone,” said Marvin.
Marvin is one of 47 people who were living at Jardín de las Mariposas when the Blade visited it on July 12. The shelter’s maximum capacity is 40.
A lesbian woman who asked the Blade not to publish her name said she fled El Salvador in January after MS-13 gang members threatened to kill her because she could not pay them the money they demanded from her. She said members of 18th Street, another gang, attacked her son after he refused to sell drugs.
“They hit him very hard; very, very hard,” the lesbian woman told the Blade at Jardín de las Mariposas, speaking through tears.
Olvin, a 22-year-old gay man from El Progreso, a city in Honduras’ Yoro department, left the country in January.
He said he and his partner of three years lived together in Tapachula, a city in Mexico’s Chiapas state that is close to the country’s border with Guatemala, for several months. Olvin said gang members threatened them and they suffered discrimination because of their sexual orientation.
Olvin told the Blade he rescued his partner from an apartment building one night after he refused to sell drugs, and they ran to a nearby park. Olvin, who was crying when he spoke with the Blade at Jardín de las Mariposas, said he left Tapachula a few days later without his partner.
Olvin arrived at the shelter a few hours before the Blade visited. He said he wants to ask for asylum in the U.S.
“I want to live in a safe place,” said Olvin.
Kelly West is a transgender woman who fled discrimination and persecution she said she suffered in Jamaica.
She flew to Panama City and then to Mexican city of Guadalajara before she arrived in Tijuana on June 16. West said she and a group of eight other LGBTQ asylum seekers tried to “run over the line at the border” between Mexico and the U.S., but Mexican police stopped them.
“We had to run for our lives,” West told the Blade at Jardín de las Mariposas. “I even ran without my shoes. I jumped over a bridge.”
She said she and three of the other asylum seekers with whom she tried to enter the U.S. went to another shelter for LGBTQ asylum seekers in Tijuana, but it was full. West said the shelter referred them to Jardín de las Mariposas.
“I really like it here,” she told the Blade. “Here I can be who I want, I can dress how I want to. I can wear my heels, I can wear my hair. I can just be feminine everyday.”
Jaime Marín, who runs Jardín de las Mariposas with his mother, Yolanda Rocha, noted some residents were sleeping in a tent in the backyard because the shelter is over capacity.
“We’re overpopulated with a lot of residents,” Marín told the Blade.
Title 42, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rule that closed the Southern border to most asylum seekers and migrants because of the coronavirus pandemic, remains in place.
Vice President Kamala Harris and other administration officials have publicly acknowledged that violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity is one of the “root causes” of migration from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. The White House has told migrants not to travel to the U.S.-Mexico border, but Marín said the number of people who have traveled to Tijuana since President Biden took office has increased dramatically.
The previous White House forced tens of thousands of asylum seekers to pursue their cases in Mexico under its Migrant Protection Protocols program. The Biden administration on June 1 officially ended MPP.
“The process has been easier, which means they’re no longer staying months or years,” Marín told the Blade. “They submit their application, let’s say today, and they get a response for a date in two weeks. They’re basically in the United States within a month.”
Marvin hopes to use the picture of his brother’s body in the morgue and Honduran newspaper articles about his murder as evidence to support his asylum case. Marvin, however, has yet to find someone to sponsor him.
“My goal … is to go to the United States,” he said.
Marín told the Blade the two other shelters for LGBTQ asylum seekers in Tijuana are also at maximum capacity. Marín said U.S. immigration officials are also “overwhelmed” with new asylum applications.
“It might take a little bit longer than a month because of the number of people that are basically coming and we just have to increase the work we do as well because we are getting a lot more work too,” he told the Blade. “We are overwhelmed as well.”
Fire destroyed lesbian-run Mexicali migrant shelter on July 9
Centro Comunitario de Bienestar Social (COBINA) in Mexicali, a border city that is roughly 2 1/2 hours east of Tijuana, is a group that serves LGBTQ people and other vulnerable groups.
It runs three migrant shelters in the city, which borders Calexico, Calif., in California’s Imperial Valley. An electrical fire that destroyed COBINA’s Refugio del Migrante on July 9 displaced the 152 migrants from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and other countries who were living there.
Some of the shelter’s residents were living in COBINA’s offices when the Blade visited them on July 12.
“We need resources to rebuild the shelter, to buy wood, to buy everything that is needed,” COBINA President Altagracia Tamayo told the Blade.
The Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration has raised $2,600 for COBINA to use to buy clothes, food and diapers for the displaced migrants and their children. The ORAM funds will also allow COBINA to buy portable air conditioning units. (The temperature in Mexicali was 108 degrees when the Blade reported from there.)
Tamayo told the Blade that COBINA has been working with the U.N. Refugee Agency and the International Organization for Migration to assist the displaced migrants.
Jardín de las Mariposas moved into a new house in May. It is less than four miles from El Chaparral, the main port of entry between Tijuana and San Diego.
Alight, formerly known as the American Refugee Agency, recently worked with ORAM to install security cameras and purchase new furniture for Jardín de las Mariposas. They also painted the shelter and a mural, installed solar heaters on the roof, planted plants and renovated the backyard.
This work is part of Alight’s “A Little Piece of Home” initiative that works to improve shelters for migrants and refugees along the border.
“This is beautiful because they are helping us and not letting us down,” Marín told the Blade. “They’re basically giving us hope to continue this fight that we have.”
Belarus
Belarusian lawmakers approve bill to crackdown on LGBTQ rights
Country’s president known as ‘Europe’s last dictator’
Lawmakers in Belarus on Thursday approved a bill that would allow the government to crack down on LGBTQ advocacy.
The Associated Press notes the bill would punish anyone found guilty of “propaganda of homosexual relations, gender change, refusal to have children, and pedophilia” with fines, community labor, and 15 days in jail.
The House of Representatives, the lower house of the Belarusian National Assembly, last month approved the bill. The Council of the Republic, which is the parliament’s upper chamber, passed it on Thursday.
President Alexander Lukashenko is expected to sign it.
Belarus borders Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Lukashenko — known as “Europe’s last dictator” is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Kazakhstan is among the countries that have enacted Russian-style anti-LGBTQ propaganda laws in recent years.
Vika Biran, a Belarusian LGBTQ activist, is among those arrested during anti-Lukashenko protests that took place in 2020 after he declared victory in the country’s presidential election.
Kenya
Kenyan advocacy groups launch LGBTQ voter mobilization campaign
As Kenya prepares for next year’s August general election, local queer rights groups have joined Gen Zers in also mobilizing their members to register as voters.
The groups’ drive began ahead of the electoral commission’s official launch of a one-month nationwide mass voter registration on March 30, targeting 6.5 million new voters to bring the total to more than 28 million.
The groups — led by the Initiative for Equality and Non-Discrimination (INEND) and Galck+ — note that politics is not optional, but rather it is “our responsibility” to use the ballot to put an end to bad leadership and discriminatory laws against them.
“Voting is one of the most powerful ways we exercise our autonomy and remind the State that our human rights are not ‘Western imports’; our struggles for housing, employment, safety, and dignity are fundamentally Kenyan issues,” INEND states.
It reminds queer individuals that the nation entrusts them with an identity card at age 18 as a recognition of their ability to make decisions, follow laws, and take responsibility for the country’s future.
INEND also notes that despite this honor, LGBTQ people get kicked out of their homes due to homophobia, are discriminated against at work, and face violence in public places due to the punitive laws that the same State legislates.
“As queer Kenyans, our vote matters,” INEND states. “Our voice belongs in the democratic and governance conversations, and true democracy includes everyone.”
Some voter mobilization initiatives the queer lobby groups have been using include ‘Queering the Ballot’ Podcasts on civic participation, dubbed ‘Your Vote is Your Future’. The topics explored include how laws shape their lives, the relationship between lived experiences of common citizens, discrimination fatigue, distrust in government systems, and voter apathy.
The groups through the mobilization drive hope to create a queer voting bloc to actively participate in restructuring and reconstructing the existing governance system they argue has been a problem for them. They maintain the queer community navigates a system that was not built for them from its questioning of their right to exist, yet the Kenyan Constitution clearly states that no citizen should be discriminated against based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
The Court of Appeal next month will hear a case challenging the constitutionality of provisions in Kenya’s Penal Code that criminalize consensual same-sex relationships among adults. The appeals court postponed the case after adjourning on Feb. 4, its first substantive hearing since the High Court judgement in 2019.
“Change requires more than pointing fingers. It requires reflection, action, and showing up, especially at the ballot box as LGBTQ Kenyan citizens and declaring that this is our country, our business, and we can no longer watch from the sidelines,” INEND states.
The group notes that they want a governance system that embraces queer people as they go about their daily lives without any form of homophobic discrimination, harassment, or arrests. Queer people are therefore urged to pick the right leaders who listen to them in Kenya’s six elective positions, from the president down to the local government representatives, as their decisions while in power affect them.
“It is very irresponsible for any human being, even around the world, to assume that they don’t have political responsibility. It is easy and sounds fancy to say ‘I don’t like politics,’ but it does not make one good as it makes one abandon their political responsibility as a citizen,” INEND states.
The groups are also concerned with the existing homophobia among Kenyans, especially whenever they join them in street protests against the government’s punitive measures or advocating for change. However, they maintain that the LGBTQ community won’t be left behind despite being marginalized in society, yet they are the most affected group when the government raids people’s pockets for taxes.
“Now we are moving from the margins to the centre of this political conversation early enough to ensure that our community sees the sense because if we live in a country that doesn’t work, we will be the most affected,” INEND states.
INEND, with the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and Galck+, last November launched the second Queering the Ballot Campaign and the 2024 Situation Report on queer participation in Kenya’s democracy.
The report surveyed 14 of the country’s 47 local governments, whose key findings affirm that queer Kenyans are not outsiders to democracy but its heartbeat.
“The title ‘Our Vote, Our Future: LGBTQ+ Inclusion in Democratic and Governance Processes’ in Kenya is an ode to the spirit of the queer movement in Kenya; unshaken in the face of adversity, determined in its pursuit of justice, and unrelenting in demand to be seen, heard and counted in democratic and political processes,” reads the report forwarded by former Chief Justice Willy Mutunga.
The report calls on Parliament, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, the County Assemblies, and every Kenyan to make inclusion not symbolic but systemic.
Vice President JD Vance and his wife, second lady Usha Vance, will visit Hungary next week.
An announcement the White House released on Thursday said the Vances will be in Budapest, the Hungarian capital, from April 7-8.
JD Vance “will hold bilateral meetings with” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The announcement further indicates the vice president “will also deliver remarks on the rich partnership between the United States and Hungary.”
The Vances will travel to Hungary less than a week before the country’s parliamentary elections take place on April 12.
Orbán, who has been in office since 2010, and his Fidesz-KDNP coalition government have faced widespread criticism over its anti-LGBTQ crackdown.
The Associated Press notes polls indicate Orbán is trailing Péter Magyar and his center-right Tisza party.
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