Bonus Content

EPISODE 8: DETENTION — INTERVIEW WITH ESTRELLA SáNCHEZ [english version]

“Hello, my name is Estrella Sánchez. I am from Mexico—from Veracruz, Mexico. Well, I live in Acworth, Georgia. And well, I am a defender of human rights for the community of sexual and gender diversity, particularly what is known as LGBTQIA+, particularly transpeople and gender-nonconforming people. Well, preparing a little bit, I like to share a saying: ‘They may bind my hands and my feet, but never my mind and my heart, nor my soul nor my spirit, which are weapons to exist and resist.’

Why do I say all this? Because since I have identified as a transwoman, because that is what I am, a transwoman, immigrant, indigenous person, I was undocumented some days ago. Recently I won my case before one of the judges who has denied more than 99% of asylum cases in the state of Georgia, one of the states in the South that is most categorized as being racist. And well, yes, it is clear that there are not enough resources in different contexts that accommodate these types of communities that have been stigmatized, marginalized, segregated, and everything in our surroundings, political and cultural, that house us. 

Yes, I was detained before being referred to Immigration [Customs & Enforcement]. I want to share that I was detained by police days before, some time before, precisely because they criminalized me for representing the aforementioned identities. And as a consequence of all this, I did not know I had to present myself in court. And in court, they did not provide me an interpreter, which resulted in what is known as Failure to Appear in court.  Afterwards, when they searched for me—they found me, because I did not appear in court, and that is when my odyssey began. 

And I remember when I arrived at the detention center in Dekalb County, a regular jail, well, they humiliated me. The doctors laughed; they didn’t know where to place me, to place me with the women or with the men, enough that they forced me to undress in order to identify my genitalia. And that was completely humiliating besides being discriminatory, and it made me remember of other times, of other terrible experiences I’ve had, so much so that I began to cry, and I closed myself in my depression and anxiety, while they laughed and mocked me. After they discovered that I was a transperson born with a male sex, they laughed, and I remember they said, ‘it’s a guy, it’s a guy’. So they placed me in the cell that had men. And that’s how it was. In three detention centers—I was also in the Atlanta City Detention Center. The same thing happened, as I would be in the different detention centers, they would force me to undress to know who I was, when they already had a reference from different penal processes, different processes from other jails, that I had already come with that history—that genetic history—that gender history. And they wanted to investigate me by force, who I really was.

And I remember also that when I arrived at the Irwin County Detention Center, which is one of immigration detention centers that houses both women and men, they delayed a lot in placing me in a cell. In fact, they almost didn’t place me in any cell. It was very strange, like, for two or three days. For the 15 days I was there, I was in segregation. In detention centers, there exists two types of segregation: disciplinary segregation and administrative segregation. Administrative segregation is for persons who are going through some medical emergency or persons who are labeled as having health problems. And for people who do not obey and do not comply with protocols, rules, regulations of detention centers, prisons, jails, they place us in disciplinary segregation. In order to assign this, they have a directive board to assign how long the punishment will be for this person who failed some rule or broke some protocol or internal law. And well, sometimes, it happened to me so often, that when the area for administrative segregation was full, they would place in disciplinary segregation. When they would place me in disciplinary segregation, the staff and custodians who worked at the time for CCA [Corrections Corporation of America], they were watching me. They would punish me sometimes not giving me to eat, and when they would give me food to eat, they would throw it on the floor, and various times, I would find hairs in the food, unhygienic things. They would only give me an aluminum sheet in extremely cold temperatures to cover myself. And if you showered, you only showered one day of the week of seven days. They would assign your schedule so you would bathe in the same clothes. A dirty, unhealthy place, in all of its conditions that I feel that a human being could not live in, resist under those conditions. And yes, those were my terrible experiences, both in the Irwin Detention Center and the Stewart Detention Center.”

Episode 9: resistance — interview with estrella sánchez [english version]

“Well, if we’re going to talk about activism, I think it’s something that already comes within my family. I didn’t know, right? What was activism. My grandparents were some of the founders of one of the most important organizations that still continues in Oaxaca that’s called Organizacion Chinanteca. They did not have anything organized; they only dedicated to defending their lands, civil communities to defend their properties, defend the sun, the earth, nature, and their cultures, their Chinanteca cultures. And when they started to build a hydroelectric company, they were stripped of their lands, and so, they moved to another area that’s in between the border of Veracruz and Oaxaca. 

And that is where my father grew up. And he kept doing that work. I would always criticize him, ‘why do you help the people? Why, if they mock us and call us indios pata rajadas [pejorative term used by non-indigenous people to refer to indigenous people: ‘cracked-feet Indian’]’ I never ever imagined that that was social activism. And always running from the labor of my father, all free, he even continues doing it. So, from there where I saw my father began to support these communities. And that is what I remember also that I was persecuted in my land. My godmother, who is a political person, was also—they killed her. For the same, because she very much supported indigenous people. And well, when they killed her, I had to flee because she protected me. And I fell in the hands of a colonel. A colonel is someone who has a high military ranking in Mexico, I don’t know of other countries. And he sexually abused me. And that also forced me, motivated me - more than anything, forced me to flee from my people, from my culture, from my family. And it is how I arrived to the United States. 

When I arrived to the United States, I also fell into the hands of human traffickers. It has to do with prostitution. The person who brought me from Mexico told me I could work and study, since that was my aspiration in Mexico. I remember also—I say I began my activism in Mexico, because I was also community instructor with CONAFI, since I was the only person who spoke the Chinanteco language and Spanish, they sent me to a village too, where they spoke that language. And at the same time from that moment, I suffered discrimination as much from my coworkers as from community tutors as they were called, yes, who were our supervisors. And also they did not accept me as a transwoman. And all of that also motivated me to not stay in Mexico. And yeah, subsequently I arrived at Mississippi, and I fell in love with a person who, according to them, was going to support me. They did not support me. I suffered from domestic violence by him. And because all of that, I saw everything that was happening around me, when I left the immigrant detention center. And over everything, more than anything, the rejection by those projects, those organizations, for being a transwoman, that’s what most motivated me.

Like something has to change in Georgia, because we don’t have many rights as LBGTQ Latinx people, especially undocumented immigrants that are not working. Many organizations and many projects are known, but there is no language justice. We are talking about the prevention of HIV, for example, right? In issues of health, in issues of criminalization. The majority of lawyers here speak English many times. And the people who speak Spanish don’t believe in other gender identities other than the binary. That is what is interesting, right. So, there is a great lack of educating; there is a great lack of empowering the community and to visibilize, more than anything, non-binary communities, because we exist and here we are. And we’re not here to be promiscuous, to abuse minors, like how many religious ideas foment in our community to blind us. And so we are fighting against religion, we are fighting against the policies of politics, that we are constantly suffering attacks from for being a non-binary community. We are suffering—all of that brings consequences that families don’t accept their children, right, according to how they wish to discover themselves and their true identity. And so, all of that encapsulates many necessities. And I’ve always said the search for resources for those necessities must be worked on further. And it's for everything that has happened.

Do you want to hear some words in Chinanteco?

[Chinanteco - self-translated below]

Thank you very much to all the people who have listened to us, and thank you for learning everything that happened and everything I’ve lived. And well, I hope it serves you.”