source: nacla

The Ursula detention center in McAllen, Texas. The photo comes from a 2019 Truthout article titled "They Are Concentration Camps — and They Are Also Prisons," which was republished in NACLA.

Valentina survived years of brutal abuse in Honduras before she fled to the United States with her two young children. A few months ago, she found herself wearing an orange jumpsuit and locked up in a U.S. detention facility. After months of being separated from her children and awaiting her hearing, her asylum claim was denied. Valentina is now being deported back to the place she fought so hard to escape from. 

Valentina’s story is tragically common—and increasingly so. Though it is well-known that gendered violence is a central driver of women’s migration from Central America, the legal recognition of gender-based persecution is under attack—again. 

While the Trump administration has made no secret of waging war against the asylum system writ large, a series of recent measures reveal just how depraved its war on migrants—and women—has become. In addition to revoking the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) of thousands of Hondurans, launching massive ICE raids across the country, and restricting refugee admissions to historic lows, the administration has restricted legal pathways to obtaining asylum specifically for women like Valentina. Where, in the past, women with similar stories, like Paola—another Honduran woman who fled from the country as a victim of gender-based violence—were granted asylum, avenues for obtaining a protected legal status are closing.

Attacking “Particular Social Groups” 

U.S. law grants asylum to people who have suffered past persecution and/or face a risk of future persecution based on their nationality, race, religion, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. As there is no specific protection based on gender, the category of a particular social group (PSG) is the legal basis for many women’s asylum claims. 

According to Hollie Webb, an attorney with Al Otro Lado—an organization that provides legal and humanitarian support to migrants—PSG is an extremely fragile category. “That’s where every administration has attacked first,” she said. But, while PSGs were contentious under former Presidents, the Trump Administration has accelerated the attacks.

During Trump’s first administration, Attorney General Jeff Sessions attacked gender-based asylum claims with a precedent setting decision, which stripped away recognition of domestic and gang violence as legitimate grounds for asylum. While the decision was overturned and asylum protections for victims of gender-based violence were restored by Attorney General Merrick Garland in June 2021, they’ve come under renewed attack. 

Another decision this week further undermines asylum by establishing Honduras and Guatemala as third-safe countries

On July 18, 2025, a Board of Immigration Appeals decision established that victims of sex-based persecution  “are unlikely to qualify for asylum because sex alone does not meet the definition of a particular social group.” Then, on September 2, 2025, a separate decision made by Attorney General Pam Bondi further undermined claims for asylum protection based on any of the following PSGs: “Honduran women,” “Honduran women unable to leave a relationship,” “Honduran women who have demonstrated resistance to Honduran society’s acceptance of male domination,” and “Honduran women with views of women’s autonomy.” 

Another decision this week further undermines asylum by establishing Honduras and Guatemala as third-safe countries, meaning Honduran women like Paola or Valentina could now be barred from even seeking asylum and removed to Guatemala, while other vulnerable women from around the region can be removed to Honduras.

While immigration judges must still evaluate cases individually, the likelihood of Honduran women winning their asylum claims plummeted with these precedent setting decisions eliminating the PSGs commonly used by Honduran women asylum seekers.

A Gross Misunderstanding 

These rulings reflect a gross misunderstanding of violence within Honduras, where “private” and “personal” violence is intimately tied to wider systems of inequality, organized crime, and impunity. 

In the September 2 decision on the Matter of S-S-F-M-, AG Bondi emphasized that asylum protection is for persecution that must be “inflicted either by the government of a country or by persons or an organization that the government was unable or unwilling to control,” and seemed to conclude that domestic violence would not meet this bar. Yet, research explicitly links gender-based violence in Honduras to security forces, who both perpetrate forms of gendered violence and systematically fail to offer protection to women. 

Moreover, research by Honduran women’s organizations finds that over 50 percent of Honduran femicides occur in contexts of organized crime. In Honduras, organized criminal groups operate with impunity or outright state protection. These criminal groups have a hyper-masculine culture which often glorifies, or even requires, gendered violence by members. 

Honduras has the highest rate of femicide in Latin America

Everyday forms of violence and gendered victimization in Honduras are enabled by criminal-state cooperation and a total lack of state protection that has been worsened by hyper-neoliberalism. This toxic cocktail of entrenched impunity and austerity—which has been exacerbated by U.S meddling in its politics and training of its human-rights abusing security forces—has created a harrowing situation with gendered implications.   

Honduras has the highest rate of femicide in Latin America. In the past two years, 617 Honduran women suffered violent deaths and the National Emergency System in Honduras received 72,100 reports of domestic violence. The impunity rate for murder is 87 percent and an astounding 95 percent for femicide. These numbers reflect that the Honduran government is both unable and unwilling to control perpetrators of gendered violence. 

“Personal” or “private” violence in Honduras thus needs to be understood in the socio-political context of the country, as the cases of Valentina and Paola demonstrate. 

Valentina’s Story

At 12-years-old, Valentina witnessed her brother’s murder. After failing to pay an extortion fee to the gang that controlled the urban area where her impoverished family lived, her brother was shot to death by gang members in their home. Three years later, Valentina’s father died. Without any male relatives left, the now female-only family was increasingly vulnerable to gang violence.

A few years later, Gabriel, took Valentina to his house, raped her, and claimed her as his property; Gabriel was a member of the same gang that killed her brother. In Honduras, young women who refuse the advances of gang members are frequently killed, as are their relatives.

For the next several years, Gabriel verbally, sexually, and physically abused Valentina. He called her a “whore,” threatened to kill her, and frequently beat her, especially when she dared go to church. He raped her habitually.

Gabriel also demanded Valentina give him all the money she earned selling baleadas and other foods. While the US immigration system often treats women asylum seekers as economic migrants trying to game the system, research shows that economic factors are often deeply interconnected to the gendered, violent criminal control many of these women face.

When Valentina was six months pregnant with their second child, Gabriel broke her foot. Unable to walk, heavily pregnant, and with a small baby to protect, Valentina had never been more desperate to escape, nor felt more trapped.

When her second son was almost two years old, Gabriel brutally beat Valentina in front of their children. The next morning when he went out to do an errand, Valentina fled with the two toddlers, riding buses for 13 hours to the other side of Honduras. Gabriel threatened Valentina’s mother for information and told Valentina he would find and kill her. 

Gabriel is part of a gang that operates throughout Honduran territory and collaborates with state actors. Researchers have explained that Honduran organized criminal groups “extend ‘domestic’ abuse beyond the home; even when women tried to escape, men’s gang associates tracked them down and threatened them.” Valentina’s story is just one illustration of this dynamic.

Paola’s Story

Paola grew up in a rural part of the Colón department with her maternal grandparents. Her grandfather worked on a nearby farm, and Paola would often bring him breakfast. One morning as she walked along a deserted part of the road back to her grandparents’ home, Paola was stopped by a man known as “Denis.” 

Denis worked as a bodyguard for a local drug-trafficking group. That morning, Denis intercepted Paola, flashed his gun and a knife at her, and raped her on the side of the road. Afterwards, Denis told Paola that if she dared to report him, her and her grandparents would suffer immense consequences. Paola knew going to the police would be futile. The trafficking organization that Denis worked for operates with the protection of local politicians and security forces, as many traffickers in Honduras do.  

Research on the migration of Central American mothers stresses that their motivations are tied to the goals of protecting their children

A few months later, Paola realized she was pregnant from the rape. Paola and her grandparents knew she had to leave before Denis found out about the baby, who would be living proof of his sexual violence. She boarded a bus, leaving in hope of finding safety in the United States. 

Research on the migration of Central American mothers stresses that their motivations are tied to the goals of protecting their children, as reflected in both Valentina’s and Paola’s stories. While Paola safely reached the United States, Valentina and her kids were kidnapped and held captive for two months during their journey through Mexico, leaving Valentina further traumatized. Trauma, kidnappings, and sexual violence are all horrifyingly common experiences for women asylum seekers. 

Death Sentence Deportations 

U.S. asylum laws have a long history of excluding Central Americans, who are generally perceived by the state as “undeserving” of political asylum. Despite the clear role of the U.S. government in fostering and exacerbating the conditions which drive violence in Honduras and motivate migration, only 29.1 percent of Honduran asylum claims were approved in 2024. From 2001 to 2021, Honduran asylum cases were approved at the second lowest rate of any country in the world.

Though it is undeniable that Valentina has suffered immensely, in the eyes of the state, she has not suffered “legally legitimate suffering.” The U.S. asylum system separates people into groups of worthy and unworthy, based on whether one has faced harm specifically due to their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a PSG. And which PSGs qualify for asylum is shrinking. 

Paola, whose asylum case was decided months before the decision on the Matter of S-S-F-M, was granted asylum and she no longer lives in constant fear of deportation back to Honduras or being killed by Denis.

Valentina, whose case was decided in the aftermath of that decision and who fits all the PSGs that decision has now claimed are not valid for protection, was denied asylum. At the time of writing, she remains separated from her children and is being deported to Honduras in the coming days. Gabriel called her mother to say he knows Valentina is in an immigration detention center in the United States and that he will be waiting to kill her when her deportation flight arrives. 

The names of the protagonists have been changed to protect their identity.

Laura Blume is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Faculty Affiliate in the Gender, Race, & Identity (GRI) program at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). She has done extensive ethnographic research on violence in Honduras, which is the basis of her forthcoming book, The Art of Trafficking: How Politics Shape Narco-Strategies and Violence in Central America. 

Anna Storm is a PhD student in the department of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Reno. She previously earned a Master of Arts in Gender, Race, & Identity from UNR. Given concerns about the risks of retaliation, she is publishing under a pseudonym.