Trans woman is ‘murdered’ after being deported from US to El Salvador

Trans woman Camila who was reportedly murdered in El Salvador

A trans woman was reportedly murdered just months after she was deported from the US to her native El Salvador.

The woman, known as Camila, was admitted to a hospital in San Salvador— the capital of El Salvador—on January 31 after being attacked, reports US-based LGBT+ news source Washington Blade.

She was deported to her home country approximately four to five months before her death.

Trans woman is murdered after being deported to El Salvador months before

Salvadoran trans rights group Asociacion Aspidh Arcoiris Trans reported Camila’s death on social media.

“In our country the lives of transgender and transgender people are totally invisible and before we die in the hands of our #murderers, they are our own families and society,” the group posted on Facebook on February 7.

The organisation added that trans people in the country are killed by “rejection, indifference and exclusion by the simple fact of being who we are.”

LGBT+ activists told Washington Blade that Camila had travelled to the US in one of the migrant caravans last year, after she received threats in her home nation.

It is unclear how Camila was killed.

Camila is reportedly second trans murder victim in El Salvador in February

She was found near the municipality of Soyapango, just outside of San Salvador.

“She migrated to the US because of threats that she had received, but she was deported because they didn’t believe her,” Aislinn Odaly’s, a LGBT+ rights advocate, told the Washington Blade.

Trans woman Lolita, a murder victim in El Salvador

Trans woman Lolita was murdered in El Salvador earlier in February. (Asociacion Aspidh Arcoiris Trans)


Camila is reportedly the second trans woman to have been murdered in El Salvador in February.

Another trans woman, called Lolita, was hacked to death with a machete in Sonsonate on February 8, according to Asociacion Aspidh Arcoiris Trans.

“She migrated to the US because of threats that she had received, but she was deported because they didn’t believe her.”

—Aislinn Odaly’s, LGBT+ activist

El Salvador’s National Civil Police and the country’s attorney general have not recorded the two deaths as murder or as hate crimes, reports Washington Blade.

Ambar Alfaro, project coordinator at Asociacion Aspidh Arcoiris Trans, told the Washington Blade: “We want justice and that these cases are investigated and the reformed penal code procedures to be applied when those who are responsible are found.”