MATAMOROS, Mexico _ As has happened so often in her life, Mayela Villegas once again faced the threat of violence.
It was a late afternoon in September and she was alone. Hundreds of other asylum-seekers camped at the foot of the U.S.-Mexico border bridge were resting before volunteers arrived with dinner.
Suddenly, a fellow Central American migrant appeared at her tent, growling threats.
"I don't want any problems," said Villegas, a slight figure with long brown hair and red lipstick.
"What problems?" the woman said. "The only problem would be how to take a knife and gut you. You wouldn't be the first or the last. You're worthless _ annoying. You'll never compare to me because I have a vagina and you don't."
Villegas is transgender. She had stayed at the bridge in hopes of obtaining asylum in the United States to escape such threats.
The Honduran woman threatening her was dating a member of a Mexican drug cartel. Villegas tried to appease the woman by acknowledging she had powerful friends, even as Villegas secretly recorded their encounter on a cellphone.
"Yes," the woman snarled before leaving for her nearby tent. "You know how this is going to end."
Studies show LGBTQ migrants are among the most vulnerable, more likely to be assaulted and killed: 88% were victims of sexual and gender-based violence in their countries of origin; two-thirds suffered similar attacks in Mexico, according to a 2017 study by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
Non-Mexican migrants seeking asylum must now await U.S. immigration court hearings south of the border under the Trump administration's Remain in Mexico program. A Homeland Security spokeswoman said asylum-seekers may be removed from the program and allowed into the U.S. if they are "more likely than not to face persecution or torture in Mexico."
Some transgender migrants have indeed been released or placed in detention in the U.S. But many more LGBTQ asylum-seekers have been placed on waiting lists or returned to Mexico for months. Dozens of LGBTQ asylum-seekers in Ciudad Juarez, Matamoros and Tijuana said in interviews that U.S. immigration officials told them they were not exempt from Remain in Mexico.
Villegas, a 27-year-old hairdresser from El Salvador, first sought refuge in the U.S. five years ago. She entered the country via Tijuana, but was deported. Two years later she returned, only to be deported again by a judge who didn't believe she was Salvadoran or transgender, according to court documents she keeps with her.
Villegas said she and a transgender friend were kidnapped in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula by men who stripped and raped them repeatedly. Villegas, who dropped out of college to help support her family, managed to escape and return home, only to be assaulted and forced into prostitution by Salvadoran gang members. She reported the attacks to the police and to Amnesty International, testifying at a human rights conference. But after receiving a death threat from the gang in May, she headed north again, hoping to join her aunt, a legal resident in Houston. Villegas said her family accepted her as transgender. Her aunt, a fellow hairstylist, would help her find work and made room for Villegas in her suburban home. But the aunt, who is conservative, also would call her by her male name, pressure her to attend church and criticize her if she wore flashy dresses or anything too feminine.
In Matamoros, Villegas waited three weeks before she was allowed to cross the border bridge to Brownsville, Texas, and claim asylum. Customs and Border Protection agents could see from her identification that she was transgender. When she asked if there were exceptions to Remain in Mexico for trans migrants, "They said that would happen at my court hearing."
She was sent back to Mexico the same day. Her immigration hearing in Brownsville wasn't until Dec. 9.
"I could die before that," she said.
Migrants bathing in the nearby Rio Grande in September found the torso of a man whose limbs and head had been cut off. Villegas thought about her own death a lot.
"Where will I be buried?" she wondered aloud. "Will my mother know?"
