Many of the tens of thousands of asylum seekers waiting at the U.S.-Mexico border are women and girls fleeing extreme forms of sexual and gender-based violence. Two out of three women killed in Central America are murdered solely because of their gender, a pattern of violence known as “femicide.” Those who resist forced prostitution and/or becoming sexually enslaved by gangs risk being killed. In all too many cases, the police are unwilling to protect women; in some cases, the police themselves are the perpetrators.
These are the stories of three women and one girl who were targeted for sexual and gender-based violence and yet still endure impunity for these crimes. We have changed their names and hidden their faces for their protection.
Jimena lived in Honduras with her two-year-old son and her husband, Julio, and was pregnant with her second child. Julio worked in a private security firm; because he knew how to handle firearms, the gangs repeatedly pressured him to join them – but he always refused. One day, gang members severely beat Julio. If he did not join the gang, they warned, they would kill him.
A few days later, two armed men showed up at Jimena’s home when she was alone. They threw her on the kitchen floor face down. As she fought back, one of the men kneeled by her head and held her down by the shoulders, while the other man raped her. The whole time she was terrified of losing her baby. Before leaving, the men told Jimena that unless Julio joined the gang, they would kill the whole family.
“I had bruises on my shoulders where they held me down,” she said. “I had pain in the abdomen for three days and in my stomach throughout the pregnancy; it hurt to sit down.”
Jimena, Julio, and their son immediately fled to a different town. But two months later, while Jimena’s cousin stood in front of their house, two men drove by on a motorcycle and shot him nine times, killing him instantly. Jimena and Julio knew the gang had found them and that their lives were in imminent danger. Terrified, they left that day for Tijuana. "If I had told anyone," Jimena said, "the gang members would have found out and killed me. If I had told the police, this would have happened to me. They would have laughed."
“If I step on Honduran soil," Jimena told PHR, "they will kill us. And they will not care that I have a child.”
For 16-tear-old Adriana from El Salvador, pregnant and trapped in an abusive relationship with her boyfriend, Pedro, the violence came in beatings so severe that she lost the twins she was carrying. Pedro, whose brother was a gang leader, controlled Adriana’s every move, threatening her with lurid descriptions of brutality if she disobeyed him, preventing her from going to school, and cutting her off from her family.
“He would always tell me that he would kill me if I did not go with him. He would not let me be with anyone else…. He told me that he would kill me and bury me.”
When Adriana's mother, Josefina, told Pedro that she was taking her daughter back and was prepared to go to the police, Pedro retorted “You do not know what you are saying. It appears that you do not love your family because they will all be gone if you open your mouth,” implying that his brother’s gang would retaliate. Josefina told PHR's Dr. Sural Shah that Pedro warned her "blood would flow" if she or Adriana tried to denounce the gang.
Adriana and her mother went into hiding in a nearby town, but soon started getting threats via social media. The gangs, Josefina said, "control everything and know where everyone is at all times. I had not told anyone where we were, but he knew where we were."
In October 2018, Adriana and Josefina fled El Salvador, arriving in Tijuana in February 2019 to seek asylum in the United States. When Adriana was examined by PHR’s Dr. Shah, she showed signs of PTSD. She has difficulty sleeping and has nightmares about her experiences. She and her mother have blocked all communication with family and friends in El Salvador out of fear of being tracked down by the gang.
Fear of being pursued and harmed, even while they wait for their chance to cross into the United States, was something PHR’s doctors heard from all the asylum seekers we spoke with in Tijuana.
Natalia, speaking here to PHR’s Dr. Mary Cheffers, was so afraid of being found by her abusive husband, Alejandro, asked PHR not to use use her real name, exact age, city of origin, or other identifying details. Her husband, who told Natalia he was involved in drug trafficking and that she could not take action against him without repercussions, repeatedly beat Natalia and her children, threatened her with a gun, and, one night, broke into her home and raped her.
Natalia filed repeated complaints with the police, but nothing ever happened. One day, Alejandro seized Natalia on the street, and, in front of her children, dragged her to nearby train tracks and held her on down on the rails to wait for a train to come by. She fled to a distant town with her children, but, a few weeks later, Alejandro drove up to her with another man.
“I found you, bitch,” he said. “You thought you would escape so easily from me? I already have someone who will buy you and your dirty children. You are going to see how you will suffer when they open up your kids.”
"Do not even think of doing anything, because the government is with us [...] you will not escape," her husband threatened her. "I will kill you."
Alejandro had made arrangements to sell Natalia's and her children's organs to traffickers. Natalia knew she would never get help. That night, she and her children fled to Tijuana.
In many places, police and other government authorities not only fail to protect their citizens from violence, they sometimes are complicit in it.
As a transgender woman in El Salvador, Juana had often been harassed by police officers, who would pull her long hair, demanding that she cut it before the next time they saw her, or force her to do squats to “teach her to be more of a man.”
One day, Juana was at a water park with a friend, when she was accosted by two police officers, who forced her into their car.
She thought they were taking her to the station, but instead …
"They forced me to have sexual relations with them in the car."
When Juana threatened to report them, the officers replied, "We hope you do. Then it will be worse for you next time." Realizing that she would never be safe in El Salvador, Juana fled to Tijuana to try to secure asylum in the United States.
Juana’s experience is sadly not unusual: nearly 90 percent of LGBTI asylum seekers and refugees from Central America report some form of sexual and gender-based violence in their countries of origin. Even so, Juana, who screened positive for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), only volunteered information about her sexual assault toward the very end of her clinical evaluation by PHR’s Dr. Ben McVane.
Like many of the other asylum seekers we spoke to, Juana avoided and distanced herself from discussing the trauma she had endured, a common coping mechanism for those suffering from PTSD.
But like all the other migrants PHR spoke with, Juana bears clear signs of trauma.
With no other recourse to protect themselves in their home countries, asylum seekers like Adriana, Jimena, Juana, and Natalia deserve the chance to present their case for protection in the United States.
