Democrats Go Trumpian | A Deadly Dilemma for Trans Migrants

Joana, a trans woman from El Salvador, plays and replays the WhatsApp voice message, almost as if trying to go back in time. The voice is that of Camila, her best friend. In the recording, Camila, also a trans woman, says she will go back to the “streets” one last time to earn enough money to buy a couple of bus tickets to neighboring Guatemala. From there, they would cross the Suchiate River to Mexico and then find a way to the U.S., where they would claim asylum. A week later and after a relentless search, Joana this February found Camila’s dead body in a hospital in San Salvador. It showed signs of brutal violence.

Camila had been deported from the U.S. a few months earlier. She was one of a growing number of trans people from Central America hoping to escape death in their homeland by seeking asylum in the U.S., only to be detained for months before being sent back to the targeted violence they were trying to flee.

Much has been written about Donald Trump’s hostile and complete takeover of the Republican Party. But if this week’s debates are an indicator, Trump has also led to the transformation of the Democratic Party.

Candidates are emboldened by the siege the Trump presidency has laid at their doors. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have set the contours of the policy debate, running on ambitious proposals: Medicare for All, free college and a tax on wealth and investments — damn the political capital it would take to pass and implement them. Moderate candidates, once seen as battleground-state boons, are now viewed as afterthoughts handing out breadcrumbs from the sidelines.

That aspirational-versus-achievable contrast raged again on the second night of debates. The front-runner, former vice president Joe Biden, faced an onslaught of critics saying his plans were hardly ambitious enough. Sen. Kamala Harris, who designed and implemented a re-entry program for nonviolent drug offenders and bias training for police officers, was called an opponent of criminal justice reform. Biden questioned why Julian Castro wasn’t talking about family separations at the border four years ago, an odd statement considering Castro was secretary of Housing and Urban Development at the time. And Castro turned it back on Biden, asking why Biden hadn’t stepped in as vice president.

For more than nine months I taught the high school equivalency course full time inside California’s High Desert State Prison for male felons. My students were sex offenders, ex-gang members and ex-cops — people who couldn’t be in the general prison population. The hours were long and difficult, security was crucial and I was always closely watched, along with the prisoners. I kept catching viruses from the inmates and struggled through long days inside the prison. I was constantly sneezing and blowing my nose, always holding a tissue in one hand.

I never expected to find something valuable there. Certainly not someone.