Photo Credit: Cornell University Law School LGBT Clinic and Transgender Law Clinic

A new report from the Transgender Law Center and the Cornell University Law School LGBT Clinic details the human rights violations faced by Mexican transgender women. The authors strongly suggest that immigration judges take into account the specific conditions faced by Mexican transgender asylum seekers when they decide their cases. Currently there are no specific protections against discrimination for transgender women in the country. Only in Mexico City can transgender citizens change their gender markers and name on official documents, but even there the process takes a long time and a prohibitive $7,000 (USD). Data and testimony from Mexican transgender women fill the pages with descriptions of the police abuse, employment discrimination, citations, extortion and harassment for walking while transgender, lack of health care, rejection and abuse by family and community members and other violations that make their home country “a living hell.” The report also points out the high level of violence faced by transgender women in the country; Mexico is second only to Brazil in the number of transgender women murdered violently last year.

The report seeks to reverse a trend by some immigration judges that use the fact that Mexico effectively has marriage equality and that Mexico City has passed protections for transgender people as signs that call into question the claims of persecution. What the data and accounts make clear is that 1) judges shouldn’t conflate advances for lesbian and gay couples wishing to marry with rights for transgender women, 2) the system should take into account the backlash towards LGBT people and how transgender women have been made more visible as a result and therefore bear a brunt of that backlash.

A section of the document also addresses the abuses and challenges that transgender women have long decried once they are detained in the United States and await decisions on their asylum cases. As has been widely reported, although transgender migrants represent only 1 out of every 500 detainees they represent 1 out of every 5 of the confirmed cases of sexual assaults that occur in detention.

Before the groundbreaking decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2015 in the Avendano-Hernandez v. Lynch case, judges routinely failed to take into account the specific nature of discrimination that transgender women in Mexico and other countries endure. Advocates hope that now with that precedent and with this report that documents the actual condition of transgender women in Mexico, transgender asylum seekers will be heard, released and granted asylum not detained, doubly victimized and deported back to a country that is unsafe for them.

GLAAD reached out to professor Guillermo de los Reyes who has served as an expert witness in some of these cases for a reaction to the report:

“What I can say is that it is important that the precariousness and vulnerable position that transgender people live in Mexico be known and understood, especially that of transgender women. In my experience as an expert, we have had to work hard to show that despite the changes that have been made relating to marriage equality in Mexico, the country still has not made any advances that impact the lives of transgender people. For them it is still a matter of life or death, not just about whether their rights are acknowledged. That’s why I have dedicated these years to demonstrating the actual reality [transgender women face.]”

You can read the full report here.