Before The Gate Was Shut

I have to wonder with Trump’s decree to limit the number of people who can enter the U.S. seeking asylum,

The Trump administration announced last week that it will accept a maximum of 45,000 refugees into the US in the fiscal year beginning October 1. That number is less than half the total of the last years of the Obama administration, when the government set its refugee “ceiling” to at least 100,000 refugees in the last two years. The Trump administration’s newly announced levels are, in fact, the most restrictive limit the United States has set in the 70-year history of refugee resettlement.

One person made it before the door was slammed shut.

SPLC wins asylum for transgender woman who received death threats in Guatemala
SPLC
October 03, 2017

A transgender woman who was beaten and threatened with death when she refused to collect extortion money for a Guatemalan drug cartel, was raped and tortured by Guatemalan police, and received death threats from her coworkers because of her gender identity, has been granted asylum in the United States, the SPLC announced today.

“Guatemala is a country widely recognized as hostile to LGBT people, and we’re glad the judge saw that our client’s life was at serious risk if she were to return,” said David Dinielli, deputy legal director for the SPLC, which is representing the woman.

Identified in court documents as S.A.C., she fled from Guatemala in October 2016 because she feared for her life. Once she crossed the U.S. border in early December 2016, she turned herself in to U.S. Border Patrol. She has been detained at Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia – an immigrant detention center for men – for over nine months.

She was beaten, raped, and forced to service drugs loads…

Unable to maintain employment in baking, designing accessories, sewing and other activities because of anti-LGBT discrimination in Guatemala – and suffering harassment as well as death threats from her coworkers in those jobs – S.A.C. turned to sex work. While she was a sex worker, Guatemalan police raped her, she said in court documents.

She was also targeted by members of the drug cartel (narcos), who beat and threatened to kill her if she did not perform sexual favors for their clients and collect extortion money from businesses. She believed the narcos posed a real threat after learning that they killed one of her transgender friends.

“I decided to leave Guatemala because of the threat to my life and the other persecution I experienced at the hands of the drug cartel,” she said in a court statement.

Her ordeal is not over.

Finding a job and housing is really hard for an immigrant and it will be magnitudes higher for a trans woman who is also an immigrant.