PHOENIX — Sheily Quinonez is living her truth in Phoenix. She proudly told 12News his pronouns are she/him. But it wasn’t always this way.
Quinonez was born in Guatemala. She knew from a young age she was gay.
“You are basically a secret," Quinonez said. "Kind of like the one no one wants to talk about.”
VERSIÓN EN ESPAÑOL: Migrantes LGBTQ+ enfrentan dificultades únicas en busca de una mejor vida en EE. UU.
She said life as a queer person in Guatemala could be dangerous as LGBTQ+ members were sometimes, “…bullied, harassed and raped.”
Though homosexuality is legal, there are currently no legal protections for LGBTQ+ communities in his native country.
That’s one of the reasons Quinonez wanted to come to the U.S. and crossed when she was 16 years old. Right away she said life in the U.S. wasn’t exactly as she had dreamed. First, being detained and put in a temporary holding facility for juveniles by ICE in Texas, before eventually being let go and making his way to Arizona.
About that time Quinonez said, “It was very rough. It was a lot of discrimination towards how I looked.”
This is just one of the unique struggles for LGBTQ+ community members when they cross into the country.
According to the Williams Institute at UCLA, there are roughly 267,000 undocumented LGBTQ+ migrants living in the U.S.
And there have been controversies surrounding how ICE handles detention for LGBTIQ+ members, including a disproportionate amount in solitary confinement, that officials say were for the migrants’ safety.
There have been calls to address the inequities in the holdings.
Many migrants, post-detention, may not know where to turn for resources and that’s where organizations like Trans Queer Pueblo in Phoenix can help.
“What the United States and our government and policy makers law makers do here, is affecting Latin America and I think it’s all connected,” said Sonix Flores.
Flores is a coordinator with Trans Queer Pueblo whose pronouns are they/them. They said, the organization offers many resources for LGBTQ+ migrants, like legal advice, a post-detention place to stay and even health care.
“We also provide hormones so if you’re an undocumented person who is Trans and you’re looking for resources, we offer those service,” they said.
That help can be a lifeline since sometimes LGBTQ+ migrants may not have family to rely on.
“We have less connection to like- let’s say like family members because sometimes again, transphobia, homophobia that exists in the United States and Latin America,” Flores said.
Going on to explain sometimes Queer people can lose touch with relatives who may not approve of their identity. To pay it forward, Quinonez is helping with a letter writing program to LGBTQ+ migrants stuck in detention centers like she was years ago.
Earlier April 2023, Democratic lawmakers introduced a bill to have border agencies meet certain criteria in order to detain vulnerable migrants which do include LGBTQ+ communities.
“I once needed or wanted that kind of support. Even just a letter would’ve made me feel a lot better,” she concluded.
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