*TRIGGER WARNING*
Mexican Transgender Women Deported to Life of Peril (http://newamericamedia.org/2013/08/mexican-transgender-women-deported-to-life-of-peril.php)
Amy Lieberman, Aug 27, 2013
The second time Deborah Alvarez was deported from the United States in 2005, after she was detained for prostitution solicitation tickets, she knew she would have to stay in Ciudad Juarez for a while.
Alvarez wanted to go back to the country where she felt she could freely walk down the streets wearing a dress or a skirt without anyone hassling her, as her family once did.
But the possibility of crossing the Texas border and winding up getting detained, trapped in an immigration confinement facility and housed with hundreds of men, was unthinkable for Alvarez, a transgender woman.
Alvarez hadn't lived in the Mexican border city since 1984, when she headed to neighboring El Paso, Texas, at the age of 13. But even after all those years, she knew life for her wouldn't be any different in Mexico.
In 2007, rubber bullet wounds to the thigh landed Alvarez in the hospital after she was shot in a violent raid in her home by a now defunct police unit called Milipol, which targeted transgender sex workers for dressing like women, then illegal. Local media reported on the incident at the time.
So wait a minute. Ms Alvarez, who entered the United States illegally multiple times, has convictions for prostitution, jumped bail, and has considered arranging a sham marriage, wants us to let her back into the country?