Coming out in Uganda was a death sentence — the U.S. border was a trap
CIUDAD JUÁREZ, MEXICO — Margaret didn’t know what was going to happen when she approached the bridge between Juárez and El Paso, but she knew she couldn’t wait anymore. Six months since fleeing her home after being raped and repeatedly beaten for the crime of being a lesbian, the 20-year-old Ugandan was barely holding onto the last shreds of hope.
Story continuesStill, there was a chance. A chance that Margaret would be let into the U.S., a chance she’d be able to make her case to an American judge that she deserved asylum, a chance that, finally, she would be free. In her hometown, the small city of Entebbe, Margaret could find no refuge, and even at home she would find no support. Margaret said her mother called her a “disgrace” and demanded she never speak about the subject again. Even among her friends at school she learned to keep her secret, worried teachers would discover her identity. “I just had to shut up about it,” Margaret says. “If they found out about it, I would have been expelled, so I just hid it because I cared about my studies.
When Margaret arrived at the festival, she had no reason to think she was in danger, and for the next three days everything went well. Though she says there were people there who many suspected were government or military spies, the festival went off without a hitch. But, according to Margaret, the party would come to an abrupt end. Part way through the evening of March 2nd, gunshots were heard outside, warning shots from members of the police who had been summoned by the neighbors. “They shot bullets in the air outside of the house, and then kicked down the gate to get in…everything was confusion,” Margaret says. “When they came in, they were hitting us with batons.
For most, the journey starts somewhere in northern South America, in countries like Brazil or Colombia, where migrants can fly from their home country without a visa. From there, the vast majority will move north over land, often by foot, traveling for months at a time through Central America and Mexico.
After first flying to South Africa, she went to Brazil, then Argentina, before finally landing in Mexico City. Once there, she informed Mexican immigration officials that she was going to the United States to ask for asylum. She was taken into custody and held in detention before ultimately being released with her temporary travel documents. Officials took her to a bus station, where she booked her trip to Juárez.
Under U.S. immigration law, any person who is on American soil can apply for asylum — whether or not they cross the border at a point of entry. Traditionally, most asylum seekers have come to these official border crossings, since it’s simply a matter of walking up to the first American official you see and asking them for help.
But within months of coming to power, the Trump administration began taking extraordinary — and extra-legal — steps to halt immigration to the country, legal or otherwise. Those efforts have only escalated within the past 18 months, ranging from new checkpoints inside Mexico manned by armed Americans to a new policy to deport anyone who comes to the U.S. through Mexico, regardless of the merits of their asylum claim.
Whether it’s working to deter significant numbers of migrants is unknown. What’s clear is that those who won’t give up, like Margaret, are waiting for months to even ask for asylum, even as they start to lose hope. Margaret rarely ventures outside its high, barbed-wire-topped walls and steel gate, and when she does, it’s only for quick trips to the corner store or to church. Gang killings are routine in the area, and criminals who prey on migrants would spot her dark black skin from a mile a way.
In August, a chicken-pox outbreak hit the Buen Pastor. The shelter tried its best to contain the outbreak, moving the infected into a small room away from the main chapel where residents sleep. But with temperatures well into the hundreds for much of the month, the sick kept a window connecting the two rooms open, hoping for some measure of relief. Margaret, who sleeps between two pews below the window, tried to warn the ministers running the shelter that the disease was airborne.
BY THE TIME NANCY ORETSKIN ARRIVED at Buen Pastor on the morning of September 12th, the pressure and uncertainty had become too much for Margaret. When we had first met weeks earlier in late August, the strain on Margaret was already written across her face, a dark resignation in her eyes barely contained by her bravery and a still-resolute faith in God, who — since she realized she was a lesbian seven years before — had remained silent despite her prayers.
Despite the many hurdles DHS has thrown up to asylum, Oretskin hoped that the often haphazard way the new rules are enforced could work in Margaret and Kodi’s favor. While traditionally asylum cases have always been extremely difficult for Mexican and Central American migrants to win in the El Paso immigration court, in the past some of the DHS officers and immigration judges have been slightly more sympathetic to people from African nations.
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