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.”



Africa
Suspension of US aid forces PEPFAR-funded programs in Africa to close down
Funding freeze is ‘matter of life and death’

The suspension of nearly all U.S. foreign aid has forced a number of programs that the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief funds in Africa to shut down.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Jan. 24 directed State Department personnel to stop nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending for 90 days in response to an executive order that President Donald Trump signed after his inauguration. Rubio later issued a waiver that allows PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue operating after bowing to pressure.
A message on the U.S. Agency for International Development’s website notes “all USAID direct hire personnel will be placed on administrative leave globally, with the exception of designated personnel responsible for mission-critical functions, core leadership, and specially designated programs.” The announcement is scheduled to take place on Friday at 11:59 p.m. ET.
One of the PEPFAR-funded healthcare programs in Kenya still impacted by the funding freeze, despite Rubio’s waiver, is the Fahari ya Jamii (“joy of the community” in Swahili) initiative that began in 2022. The University of Nairobi was jointly implementing the project.
The Sh4.2 billion ($32,558,139.52) project sought to coordinate and manage high quality, cost-effective, and accessible HIV services in Nairobi, neighboring Kajiado County, and other parts of Kenya. Fahari ya Jamii was scheduled to end in May 2026, but it has closed indefinitely because of a lack of U.S. funding.
More than 700 staff, mostly healthcare workers, on Jan. 31 were placed on unpaid leave for three months, or until Washington decides whether to unfreeze funding. More than 150 Fahari ya Jamii clinics that offer HIV treatment to at least 72,000 people on antiretroviral drugs have also shut down.
The initiative’s target groups include children, adolescents, and adults living with HIV; young people, men, and women at risk of HIV; and key populations that include men who have sex with men and female sex workers. Fahari ya Jamii since 2022 has offered HIV tests to more than 257,500 people, connected 94 percent of those who tested positive to treatment, distributed condoms and lubricants, and disseminated safter sex messages to their target groups.
Faith Ndung’u, advocacy manager for Kenya’s Health NGOs’ Network (HENNET) said the Trump-Vance administration should have used a humane approach to engage with countries that benefit from U.S. funding, instead of abruptly suspending it.
“We are feeling the magnitude of the suspension in the health sector because these are lives; these are people,” said Ndung’u. “When such an abrupt decision is made, we are talking about more than one million people living with HIV being affected.”
HENNET is an umbrella group with 112 members from local and international NGOs, faith-based organizations, and research institutions that focus on health-related issues in Kenya’s 47 local governments.
“This is now a wakeup call for Kenya and Africa to invest in the health sector by funding it more not to be in a similar crisis when a donor pulls out or forfeits his commitment,” Ndung’u said.
Local governments that also rely on USAID to run PEPFAR programs have suspended their U.S.-funded activities and phased out the stand-alone comprehensive HIV care centers by integrating treatment and care into general health care services. This move has forced hundreds of health care workers to go onto unpaid leave and wait for further guidance.
Pema Kenya, a Mombasa-based queer lobby group, said the decision to suspend funding means “uncertain times” for the LGBTQ community and Kenyans at large who depend upon U.S.-funded groups for their health care.
“Many queer organizations rely heavily on USAID funding for vital services such as HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, mental health support, and legal aid,” Pema Kenya stated.
Pema Kenya noted the suspension of U.S. aid could severely cripple queer organizations and leave vulnerable people with limited access to crucial resources.
“This would be a significant setback in the fight against HIV/AIDS and other health crises disproportionately affecting the LGBTQ+ community,” Pema Kenya stated.
GALCK, a coalition of 16 Kenyan LGBTQ rights groups, was even more blunt.
“This isn’t just a policy decision; it’s a matter of life and death,” it said in a statement.
OUT and Engage Man’s Health — two South African organizations that provide HIV services to MSM, transgender people, sex workers, and other vulnerable groups through PEPFAR — have also been impacted by the U.S. funding freeze.
OUT and Engage Man’s Health, which provides HIV services to MSM, announced on Jan. 27 that it will stop offering services “until further notice” due to a lack of funding. The organization asked its clients to seek services from the nearest public health facilities.
“We deeply value our clients and remain committed to safeguarding your health,” said the announcement. “We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and disruption this may cause. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide further details at this time.”
Kenya and most other African countries have said a permanent suspension of U.S. aid will adversely impact progress made in the health sector, particularly the fight against HIV/AIDS. Botswana and some other nations on the continent that use their national budgets to purchase antiretroviral drugs, have assured their citizens the supply of these medications will not be interrupted.
Mexico
Trump executive orders leave LGBTQ migrants, asylum seekers in limbo
Suspension of US foreign aid may force shelters to close

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 that would have allowed him to enter the U.S. at a port of entry.
His CBP One appointment was at 1 p.m. PT (4 p.m. ET) on Jan. 21 in the Mexican city of Tijuana that borders San Diego. Marlon at around 11 a.m. PT (2 p.m. ET) on Jan. 20 learned his appointment had been cancelled.
President Donald Trump took office less than two hours earlier.
“We’re stuck,” Marlon told the Washington Blade on Jan. 31 during an interview at Posada del Migrante, a migrant shelter in the Mexican border city of Mexicali that Centro Comunitario de Bienestar (COBINA), a group that serves LGBTQ people and other vulnerable groups, runs.

The Trump-Vance administration’s immigration policies have left Marlon and many other migrants and asylum seekers — LGBTQ and otherwise — in limbo.
Daniela is a 20-year-old transgender woman from Tijuana who has lived at Jardín de las Mariposas, a shelter for LGBTQ migrants and asylum seekers in the city’s Obrera neighborhood, for a month. Jardín de las Mariposas is roughly six miles south of the Mexico-U.S. border.
She told the Blade on Jan. 29 during an interview that she was raped in Hermosillo, the capital of Mexico’s Sonora state, four months ago. Daniela said her roommate and five other people later tried to kill her when they “were drunk and on drugs.”
Daniela, like Marlon, had a CBP One appointment, but it was cancelled once Trump took office.
“I am completely alone both in Tijuana and elsewhere,” said Daniela. “I think the United States is a better option to be able to start over.”
Stephanie, a 25-year-old from El Paraíso, Honduras who identifies as a lesbian, arrived in Tijuana last July and lives at Jardín de las Mariposas.
She told the Blade her family is “very religious,” and she is the “only one in my family who is a member of the (LGBTQ) community.” Stephanie said a cousin in Louisiana agreed to allow her to live with her once she entered in the U.S., but she refused once she saw she had cut her hair.
“I felt a bit of freedom once I arrived here in Mexico … and I decided to cut my hair because it was very long,” recalled Stephanie. “One day she did a video call and she saw my short hair and she was like I cannot receive you; I cannot receive you because what example are you going to be to my son.”
Trump, in addition to shutting down the CBP One app on Jan. 20, issued several immigration-specific executive orders after his inauguration. They include:
• Declaring a national emergency on the Southern border
• Suspending the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program
• Ending birthright citizenship under the 14th amendment. (U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, who Ronald Reagan appointed, in a Jan. 23 ruling that temporarily blocked the directive described it as “blatantly unconstitutional.”)
Trump has reinstated the Migrant Protection Protocols program, also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy that forced asylum seekers to pursue their cases in Mexico.
State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce on Tuesday said Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele during his meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio “agreed to take back all Salvadoran MS-13 gang members who are in the United States unlawfully,” and “promised to accept and incarcerate violent illegal immigrants, including members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, but also criminal illegal migrants from any country.” The Department of Homeland Security in a press release notes Tren de Aragua members were on the first U.S. military “flight of criminal aliens” that arrived at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba on Tuesday.
Jardín de Las Mariposas Director Jamie Marín on Jan. 29 told the Blade that Trump’s policies have sparked “a lot of fear.”
She said some of the shelter’s residents who had their CBP One appointments cancelled have either returned to their countries of origin or have found another way to enter the U.S., including with the help of smugglers who are known as “coyotes” in Mexican Spanish. Marín said Jardín de las Mariposas is working with those who have decided to stay in Tijuana to help them secure identity documents and employment.
“Our goal was to be a temporary shelter to move to the United States,” she told the Blade. “Now it’s almost becoming like we’re going to become a permanent shelter until we find another solution for them.”

Susy Barrales is president of Casita de Unión Trans, a trans support group that she founded in Tijuana in 2019 after she was deported from the U.S.
She told the Blade during a Jan. 30 interview at her office, which is a few blocks from the border, that two migrants who the U.S. deported arrived at Casa de Unión Trans the day before without medications. Barrales, like Marín, said the Trump’s immigration policies have sparked concern in Tijuana.
“He is doing this political campaign,” said Barrales in response to the Blade’s question about Trump’s policies. “I think it is something political, a political strategy that he wants to do, as a way to slow down immigration. This is why he makes these types of racist comments against migrants and against the community.”
Situation along 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 has had a direct impact on Mexican organizations that serve LGBTQ migrants and asylum seekers.
Casa Frida works with upwards of 300 LGBTQ asylum seekers and migrants in Mexico City and in the cities of Monterrey and Tapachula. Sixty percent of Casa Frida’s annual budget comes from U.S. government grants — specifically from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the State Department, and its Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.
Casa Frida Director Raúl Caporal on Monday told the Blade the U.S. on Jan. 24 suspended funding for five of his organization’s initiatives.
A poster inside COBINA’s offices on Jan. 31 contained a QR code that brought migrants to a WhatsApp page that had information about how they could “migrate informed and legally.” The State Department partnered with Partners of the Americas, a Washington-based NGO, on the initiative.
Maky Pollorena, a Mexicali-based activist who volunteers with COBINA, told the Blade the WhatsApp page stopped providing information on Jan. 24. Pollorena also said COBINA and the majority of migrant shelters in Mexico’s Baja California state of which Mexicali is the capital have lost between 50 and 70 percent of their funding.
“All of us who are in Baja California’s border strip are tense,” said COBINA President Altagracia Tamayo.

Marín noted Jardín de las Mariposas’ funding does not come from the U.S. government, but rather from the Transgender Law Center and other NGOs that include AIDS Healthcare Foundation. Baja California Gov. Marina del Pilar Ávila’s administration donated the building in which Jardín de las Mariposas is located. The International Organization for Migration, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, and the Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration are also support Jardín de las Mariposas.
Despite this lack of dependence upon U.S. government funding, Marín said the Trump-Vance administration’s policies could prove deadly.
“These decisions from the Trump administration are going to cost a lot of lives for the LGBT community, not only here,” she said. “It’s also going to cost a lot of lives in the United States.”
Mexico
Mexican group that serves LGBTQ migrants may close without US funding
60 percent of Casa Frida’s annual budget comes from Washington

Editor’s note: International News Editor Michael K. Lavers is on assignment in Mexico to cover the impact that President Donald Trump’s immigration policies are having on LGBTQ migrants and asylum seekers.
MEXICO CITY — The Trump-Vance administration’s decision to freeze nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending for at least 90 days could force a Mexican organization that serves LGBTQ migrants and asylum seekers to close.
Casa Frida works with upwards of 300 LGBTQ asylum seekers and migrants in Mexico City and in the cities of Monterrey and Tapachula.
Casa Frida Director Raúl Caporal on Monday told the Washington Blade during an interview at his Mexico City office that 60 percent of his organization’s annual budget comes from U.S. government grants — specifically from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the State Department, and its Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.
Caporal said the U.S. on Jan. 24 suspended funding for five Casa Frida initiatives that specifically focused on “organizational strengthening, humanitarian assistance, financial inclusion, digital security” and fighting human trafficking.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the same day directed State Department personnel to stop nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending for 90 days in response to an executive order that Trump signed on Jan. 20. Rubio last week issued a waiver that allows the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during the funding freeze.
“All of these (Casa Frida) services are now extremely limited and compromised because the suspension was immediate,” Caporal told the Blade.
He said Casa Frida has already laid off several staffers. Caporal also told the Blade the U.S. funds that remain in Casa Frida’s bank account may have to be returned to Washington.
“That implies many problems,” said Caporal. “It’s not only the continuity of our services, but it also puts the organization’s future at risk.”
Casa Frida has already laid off several staffers. Caporal told the Blade that he and his colleagues are working with the European Union, foreign governments, local officials, and private donors to find additional funding sources.

The waiver that Rubio issued notes it does not apply to “activities that involve abortions, family planning conferences” and “gender or DEI ideology programs, transgender surgeries, or other non-life saving assistance.”
Caporal said there is a chance the White House could extend the funding freeze in order to “review which international cooperation projects align or coincide with the current administration’s political interests.”
“We are quite certain that much of this aid is going to return,” he said. “But (Trump) since the campaign has made it very clear that nothing, not a single dollar for the LGBT community, or for sexual rights, reproductive rights, women, migrants.”
“It is therefore very possible that projects that have more to do with eliminating inequality gaps, poverty, urban development, etc., will return,” added Caporal. “But we are not waiting for these projects to be reactivated.”
Casa Frida is among the global LGBTQ organizations dependent upon U.S. support that have been left scrambling. The Blade is in touch with several of them that may have to curtail programming or even close if they cannot secure alternate funding sources.
The Blade will update this story.
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