Trump deports trans woman to African nation where she’s at risk
Deported to Central African Republic, a trans woman who lived openly in Miami is hiding again
The following Associated Press article has been slightly re-edited:
In Miami, Daniela Fuentes styled hair for clients and performed in drag at a nightclub called Azúcar. She wore her blond wig in public and dressed as the woman she had known herself to be since adolescence in Cuba.
Now, more than 6,000 miles away in the Central African Republic, she wears men’s clothes, lowers her voice and tries not to draw attention to the breasts she developed after beginning hormone treatment as a teenager. As part of U.S. efforts to deport people to countries other than their own, authorities sent her on Aug. 29 to a place where she has no ties and where advocacy groups have reported arbitrary detention, torture and other rights violations of sexual and gender minorities.
“Everything is difficult here because I have to hide who I am,” said Fuentes, a 32-year-old transgender woman living on a compound she rarely leaves, sharing a room with four Cuban men also deported from the U.S. “I don’t know this place, the people or the language, and I have no idea what will happen to me.”
In the Central African Republic, people speak French and Sango. One of the world’s poorest countries, it is a place with a history of conflict that the U.S. State Department advises American travelers to avoid. It is one of at least 12 African nations that signed agreements to accept “third-country” deportations, a policy the U.S. Supreme Court last month allowed to continue, at least temporarily.
Although the Central African Republic has no anti-LGBT laws, it marginalizes transgender people and provides them little to no legal protections. Fuentes dons her wig only in the privacy of her bathroom. She described disguising herself as protection, first in U.S. detention and now in a country she first heard of when she was already headed there on a deportation flight.
“My whole life, my whole identity, was taken away from me,” Fuentes said.
Public records say a judge ordered Fuentes to leave the U.S. but offer no other information. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials did not reply to emailed questions.
Tens of thousands of people have been deported to ‘third countries’
Fuentes’ compound in the capital, Bangui, is an apartment complex where the government houses male deportees.
Fuentes said she can leave but that officials have advised her and others to avoid doing so — they have no identification, which could lead to issues with the police. It also means they can’t work, she said, and she’s waiting for travel documents that would allow her to leave the country. The International Organization for Migration, an agency associated with the United Nations, has provided food, and the migrants say they’ve crowd-sourced for donations to buy groceries.
The U.S. — via agreements often not made public — has deported about 25,000 people to more than two dozen countries that aren’t their own, the vast majority to Mexico, according to a tally by Third Country Deportation Watch, a partnership of Refugees International and Human Rights First. The U.S. has not released numbers or details.
From January 2025 to August 2026, more than 500 were sent to countries in Africa, according to a Human Rights Watch report published Oct. 8 — including at least 12 people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender and were deported to places that criminalize same-sex relations or public same-sex romantic conduct. Some advocates say the number is likely higher.
“These are not bureaucratic errors or isolated incidents,” said Bridget Crawford, of the group Immigration Equality. “They are the predictable result of policies that purposefully abandon our legal and moral obligation to protect LGBTQ+ immigrants fleeing persecution.”
The U.S. government says the policy is lawful and that receiving governments provide assurances deportees won’t be persecuted or tortured.
Living as a woman since age 18
Fuentes grew up in La Lisa, on Havana’s outskirts, and said she understood from childhood that she was different. She began living as a woman in adolescence and started taking hormones at 18.
She ran a salon from her home, coloring and cutting hair. She said she was harassed because of her gender identity and attacked at least twice, leaving scars on her arm and head. Police also questioned her about operating a private business, she said — though housefront businesses are common in the area.
In 2023, Fuentes sold her home and left amid a deepening economic crisis and a crackdown on dissent — even as Cuba, one of Latin America’s most progressive countries for LGBTQ+ rights, adopted new inclusion laws. Making her way to the U.S., she said, she presented as a man traveling through Central America; she believed it was safer.
After seven months in Mexico, she said, she entered the U.S. through Texas via CBP One, a President Joe Biden-era online appointment system that allowed migrants to live in the country for two years on humanitarian grounds. Then she went to Miami.
There, she began living openly as a woman again. She found work styling hair and performed at Azúcar. Though she lacked permanent legal status, Fuentes said Miami offered something she’d rarely experienced: the freedom to move through daily life as herself.
That ended when officers encountered her outside a motel. Fuentes said they learned she had missed an immigration court hearing in Texas. She said she asked that the case be moved to Florida but received no response. The Trump administration eliminated the CBP One program. Refugees’ appointments were canceled.
Fuentes said she was taken into custody and later placed in immigration detention with men. Officials confiscated her wig and gave her a male detainee’s uniform, she said.
