From left to right: Iris Samantha Hilton, Alexa Smith, and Escarle Lovely talk together in Escarle's room in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on March 29, 2019.
On Feb. 21, 2019, from left to right, Alexa Smith Rios, Lulu, Nahomy Rodriguez, and Pamela Dubon stand on the corner where they work in downtown San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Due to high levels of transphobia, discrimination, and stigmatization, the majority of trans women in Honduras and Latin America are relegated to sex work with lack of access to employment options and basic human rights. As sex workers with no legal protections, they're at greater risk of violence and abuse, and are less able to protect their health. “They should let us be free and give us life opportunities. We don’t have work opportunities – I’d love to have a business,” said Alexa.
On March 15, 2018, in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, a drunk man spending time at the apartment building with other residents where Alexa Smith Rios lives, disturbs her. She eventually pushed him away in frustration.
Pamela Dubon dances in a nightclub in downtown San Pedro Sula on March 9, 2018. In 2019, Pamela migrated to Guatemala after an incident with a client who refused to pay her. After smashing his phone to the ground, the client, along with a friend, beat her up, dragging her several blocks nearly naked to a corner where people sell drugs so they could call gang members to the scene. Shortly thereafter, however, she was able to escape when police arrived. She immediately fled Honduras because the gang would have killed her, she said.
On March 16, 2018, Alexa Smith Rios, Nahomy Rodriguez, and Pamela Dubon get ready for work in the apartment building where they live together in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Because many trans women are rejected by their families at a young age, oftentimes they’ll live together, even sharing one room.
On March 16, 2019, Alexa Smith Rios prays at an altar with candles and tinctures for good fortune and protection in her room in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Every night before going to work on the streets, she asks for protection from la Santa Muerte, or "Our Lady of Holy Death," a female folk saint in Mexican and Mexican-American folk Catholicism that Alexa learned about when migrating to Mexico.
A detail of Alexa's altar in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on March 2, 2019, in which a miniature statue of la Santa Muerte is placed on top of US dollar bills. The saint, who personifies death and is thought to bring protection and a safe delivery to the afterlife, is popular among the LGBTQIA community as many are pushed to the margins of society where they consistently face life-threatening challenges.
On March 6, 2018, Alexa Smith Rios, right, and Nahomy Rodriguez, left, walk toward the corner where they work in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. On the streets trans women often experience abuse, sexual assault, threats, theft, and extortion from gang members, clients, and police.
On April 30, 2019, Alexa Rios Smith, waits on a stretcher with her friends and family outside a hospital in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, after breaking her leg running from a client who tried to assault her. Though her friends tried to take Alexa to a public hospital first, personnel turned them away saying they were dressed inappropriately. "I want to have a better life," she said about her desire to leave Honduras.
On May 7, 2019, Alexa Rios Smith says bye to her friend, Escarle Lovely, as she goes to the hospital for a check-up after receiving surgery on her leg from the assault injury.
On Dec. 19, 2020, Alexa Rios Smith sits in a river in Tapachula, her first stop in Mexico as she makes her way north. “Perhaps on the other side, I’ll have a better life and feel safer,” she said in hopes of seeking asylum in the U.S.
On December 20, 2020, in a room they share with other migrants in Tapachula, Alexa Rios Smith, left, her boyfriend Norlan Alexander Gonzalez Cruz, center, and Darwin Alejandro Lagos, right, listen to a voice message of a friend who is currently migrating.
On August 14, 2021, Alexa Smith Rios, left, looks back at nearby commotion as she walks with her boyfriend, Norlan Alexander Gonzalez Cruz, right, through the neighborhood where they live with other Central American migrants in Memphis, Tennessee.
On August 13, 2021, Alexa Smith Rios sits in the doorway of her bedroom in the home where she’s living with her boyfriend and other Central American migrants in Memphis. Alexa spends most of her days inside as she doesn’t always feel safe in her neighborhood because of violence and insecurity. Her and her boyfriend have also been fighting more often, she says, causing a great strain on their relationship.
Though having achieved her goal, Alexa Smith Rios, like many LGBTQIA migrants, has continued to come up against many issues related to housing and economic instability. From Texas to Tennessee to Louisiana, these tenuous circumstances have pushed her to move around the country in search of stability. She says although her time in the U.S. has been really hard, she says it’s nothing compared to the fear and uncertainty she faced back home. Here, on November 2, 2022, Alexa lays in her bed at a Motel 6 in Santa Ana, California.
“I was so close I could see the flag,” said Lulu about how close she was to the U.S. when she was arrested in 2019 while attempting to cross into the country. Deported back to Honduras, in San Pedro Sula she continues selling drugs, which she says she’s obligated to do by gang members.
On March 15, 2018, Nahomy Rodriguez looks out toward the street while getting ready for work at the apartment building where she lives with other trans women in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
On March 10, 2019, Andrea Gonzalez, a transgender activist from Guatemala gets ready for work in her Guatemala City apartment. While she works at a local LGBTQIA NGO, she’s also a sex worker. "It's a social imposition, it's not an option," said Andrea, referring to how trans women in Guatemala are relegated to sex work due to societal transphobia and stigmatization that limits their employment options.
On March 13, 2019, Kimberly, center, is supported by friends as she makes her way home from the hospital where she was receiving treatment for a gunshot wound in Guatemala City. Kimberly was allegedly shot by gang members for not paying the extortion for working on the streets.
On March 13, 2019, the grave of Tatiana Gonzalez, a trans woman from Honduras, who was allegedly murdered by gang members in Guatemala City. Tatiana had migrated to Guatemala from Honduras and traveled frequently between the two countries.
The bed of Pamela Dubon and Nahomy Rodriguez in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on March 8, 2018.
Left: On March 22, 2019, stiletto heels hang from power lines above the corner where many trans women work in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Shoes hanging from power lines can often indicate where drugs are available for purchase and many trans women throughout Central America are forced to sell drugs by gang members. Right: Dayana pulls a knife from her purse on March 16, 2019, in San Pedro Sula. After Dayana was sexually assaulted with a gun by a client, he drove up to her two nights later while she was working, asking her to get into his vehicle, insisting he’d pay her. He eventually drove off, but Dayana says she's traumatized from the experience and now carries a knife in her purse for protection.
On April 21, 2019, Kataleya Nativi Baca is reviewed by forensics at a police station in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. While Kataleya was already planning to migrate due to consistent threats and mistreatment from neighbors and family members, shortly before leaving, her brother beat her up, fracturing her collarbone. “I never imagined that apart from the gangs, I’d be rejected by my own brother. He felt so much condemnation, so much transphobia toward me—to not be able to accept his sister, his little sister, I was never a bad person to them.”
On May 12, 2019, Kataleya Nativi Baca, far left, crosses the Suchiate River between Guatemala and Mexico, on the first leg of her journey north toward the U.S.
On Sept. 6, 2019, Kataleya Nativi Baca looks out the bus window during her journey from Tapachula, Mexico, to Tijuana on the U.S./Mexico border.
Kataleya Nativi Baca waits in line to enter the Mexican Commission for Refugee Aid on Sept. 3, 2019, in Tapachula the day before leaving for Tijuana. “When I saw the letters of Tijuana I thought ‘Finally, I’m out of Tapachula!’”
From her apartment in Tapachula that she shares with other migrants, on Sept. 3, 2019, Kataleya Nativi Baca calls her sister and sister’s children who live in Honduras the evening before she leaves for Tijuana. “Tomorrow I’m going to be farther away,” she told them about her imminent departure.
On Sept. 8, 2019, Kataleya Nativi Baca, center, walks along the streets with family friends in Tijuana, the final destination before hoping to seek asylum in the U.S. “I was happy to see the United States flag.”
On Sept. 9, 2019, Kataleya Nativi Baca, center, looks toward the U.S. as she visits a beach next to the border wall with friends. That same day Kataleya was entered into the “metering process,” or calling of numbers to present an asylum case in the U.S. “Because of [Estrella] we found out about the numbers—I didn’t know anything,” said Kataleya about how she learned about this process from Estrella, a trans migrant she met while walking on the street in front of an LGBTQIA shelter in downtown Tijuana.
On Sept. 8, 2019, birds fly above lines of papel picado in Tijuana, Mexico.
Luis Energe Leiva Hernandez, a migrant from El Salvador, lives in the same complex in Tijuana as Kataleya Nativi Baca and here, on Dec. 13, 2020, holds the number they received together last year in September to present their asylum cases at the U.S/Mexico border. He keeps the number safe for them. A gay man, Luis says he was also persecuted in his home country.
On Dec. 9, 2020, an image of the El Chaparral San Ysidro border crossing in Tijuana, which is empty due to the indefinite U.S./Mexico border closure under Title 42, a public health policy first used by the Trump administration to turn back migrants without the opportunity to seek asylum.
On Dec. 13, 2020, in Tijuana, Kataleya Nativi Baca sits outside the complex where roughly 11 other families live, some of them also migrants. Grappling with lack of employment and an unstable relationship and living situation for months since COVID-19 closed the border, she says a big part of her wants to return to Honduras because she’d rather die in her own country.
But, she said her brother would not rest until the day she’s dead. “That’s the fear that I have, that I’d be walking right into the wolf’s mouth,” said Kataleya Nativi Baca, who rests on her bed in Tijuana on Dec. 6, 2020.
On Dec. 27, 2020, while at the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico that runs alongside Friendship Park in Tijuana, Kataleya Nativi Baca, her boyfriend, and friends saw migrants scaling the wall, running through the shadows toward San Diego.
Kataleya Nativi Baca looks toward the border wall in Tijuana on Dec. 27, 2020. Frustrated and disheartened by the border closure due to COVID-19 and inability to present her asylum case, Kataleya said watching people run through the metal grates of the border wall toward the U.S. made her want to do it, too. “In three steps, I’m there,” she said.
On Christmas Day in 2020, Kataleya Nativi Baca, center, holds a sparkler while her boyfriend Angel M. Mejia Ortiz, right, and their friend Ondina Flores, also Honduran migrants, watch at their home in Tijuana.
On Sept. 9, 2019, Kataleya Nativi Baca walks with Estrella Vega, right, and Luis Alberto Corrales Guido, left, who are also LGBTQIA migrants from Central America, after Kataleya and Luis received a number from officials at the El Chaparral Port of Entry border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico, as part of the “metering process” to seek asylum in the U.S. Despite obstacles Kataleya faced in Mexico, she persevered and on April 8, 2021, she crossed into the U.S. with the support of the Transgender Law Center that represented her claim to enter the country through a Title 42 exemption.
On August 7, 2021, in Houston, Texas, Kataleya Nativi Baca dances and sings to music while talking with someone on speaker phone at the apartment of José Luis Ramirez Garcia, a Honduran man she’d been talking to online for three years.
On July 28, 2021, Kataleya Nativi Baca, right, and fellow transgender migrant Nancy Santamaria, center, wait outside a home where they’ll look at a room for rent in Leesburg, Virginia.
The landlord where trans migrants Kataleya Nativi Baca, right, and Nancy Santamaria, left, currently live, who has hurled transphobic insults at them, said he’ll call the cops if they don’t leave by the end of the month. Though they’d only lived in a small room barely big enough for an air mattress that deflated overnight and that was infested with cockroaches for less than one month, being uprooted was traumatic. Here, on July 30, 2021, they clean out their room after packing.
In the early morning hours of July 31, 2021, Nancy Santamaria, left, straightens the hair of Kataleya Nativi Baca in her hotel room at the Red Roof Inn in Leesburg, Virginia, the night before Kataleya leaves for Houston. While they were planning on renting a new place together after being kicked out by their transphobic landlord, Kataleya decided to move to Houston to live with a Honduran man she’s communicated with virtually for years.
“I’m starting anew, I don’t want to keep moving,” said Kataleya Nativi Baca, who on July 30, 2021, stands at a cash-to-card kiosk at the Dulles International Airport where she hopes to buy a flight to Houston, Texas.
On August 1, 2021, Kataleya Nativi Baca does her makeup in the baggage claim area of George Bush Intercontinental Airport after traveling from Leesburg, Virginia, to Houston, Texas, where she plans on living with José Luis Ramirez Garcia, a Honduran man she’s known for three years online. Arriving the evening before, José didn’t show up at the airport and Kataleya was forced to sleep in the baggage claim area overnight.
On August 7, 2021, Kataleya Nativi Baca stares off into space at a party for a family relative of José Luis Ramirez Garcia, right, in Houston. Shortly after moving in with José, they started fighting frequently about his interest in various women and alcohol.
On August 8, 2021, a detail of the hands of Kataleya Nativi Baca, above, and José Luis Ramirez Garcia, below, as they pose for a portrait at the apartment complex where they live in Houston. After only a couple weeks of moving to Texas, Kataleya returned back to the East coast after fighting intensified between her and José.
On November 12, 2022, Kataleya Nativi Baca sits outside Walmart in Leesburg, Virginia, while waiting for an Uber driver.
On November 9, 2022, Kataleya Nativi Baca hangs Christmas decorations in the window of her room that she rents from a Honduran family. Despite consistent unstable living conditions from D.C. and Virginia to Texas and Baltimore since crossing into the U.S., Kataleya has lived with this family in Leesburg, Virginia, for more than one year.
On July 29, 2022, Kataleya Nativi Baca, center, grabs her belongings from the laundry room at her apartment complex in Leesburg, Virginia, while Anthony, front, and Dylan, back, play. Anthony and Dylan are the children of the woman who Kataleya lives with and rents her room from. “For me it’s a joy that they take me into consideration because being in a country that’s not your own country, where you’re alone without family, is not easy,” said Kataleya.
“I feel in peace and harmony. They’ve chosen me as part of the family,” said Kataleya about the Honduran family that she lives with, which includes Dylan, left, and Anthony, center. Here, on Nov. 6, 2022, they all sit together on Kataleya’s bed.
On November 13, 2022, Kataleya Nativi Baca, sits in a box in her apartment in Virginia that she’s preparing to send to her family in Honduras full of items from the U.S. While Kataleya’s life now in the U.S. has not been without hardship, she’s hopeful better things are coming as she continues with the asylum-seeking process. “For my future I want a dignified home, a family, and to succeed on my own. I just want to be happy, that’s the only thing I want.”
On Nov. 9, 2022, Kataleya Nativi Baca waits in line to receive donated goods from a local organization in Leesburg, Virginia.
On August 5, 2022, Kataleya Nativi Baca walks below a rainbow in Virginia.
Video of Kataleya’s journey featured on National Geographic’s Instagram, which has an audience of more than 250 million followers.
