Crossing Mexico to the US Border Is Already Risky. Try Being a Transgender Migrant Amy Stillman - GlobalPost
go to original February 17, 2016

A family watches as a transgender person applies makeup in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. (Edgard Garrido/Reuters)

Dayanara Lisbet and Rubi Bracho were standing outside a fast-food restaurant in Mexico when suddenly a car pulled up beside them. Inside were four men wearing Mexican migration officials’ uniforms and ski masks.

Lisbet, 18, and Bracho, 21, two transgender women from Central America, claim that the men kidnapped them and drove them to a remote location, where they were beaten and raped.

“They told us if we said anything that they would kill us,” said Lisbet, from across a restaurant table in Tapachula, a sleepy border city in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. “The situation is very bad for trans[gender] women, but it is even worse if you don’t have papers.”

A spokesperson for Mexico’s National Migration Institution, INM, refused to comment because the alleged incident occurred outside of its facilities.

As Pope Francis traveled to Chiapas and other parts of Mexico this week, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) immigrants like Lisbet and Bracho were crossing into the southern Mexican state illegally from its porous border with Guatemala.

Migration has been a key focus of the pontiff’s Mexico visit, with Francis addressing the millions “of sons and daughters of the Church” who live in exile “journeying to the north in search of new opportunities" in a speech to Mexican bishops over the weekend. He will conclude his trip on Wednesday with a Mass for migrants in Ciudad Juarez, a violence-wracked city on the Mexico-US border.

Read the rest at GlobalPost

Related: Priests Running Shelters Hope Pope Francis Will See Migrant Crisis in Mexico (Mexico Voices)

Related: Women Journey to Mexico to Put Focus on Immigration During Pope Visit (NBC News)

Mother of Disappeared Daughter Sees Hope in Pope's Visit (NBC News)

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