Trans woman battles in court to avoid deportation from U.S.: 'I'd rather die than go back'
Estrella Santos-Zacaría and her attorneys worry she wouldn’t be safe as a trans woman in her native Guatemala, but also fear she could be deported to a third country.
Estrella Santos-Zacaría says there’s one thought that often terrifies her, whether she’s at home, at work or with her friends: being deported to her native country of Guatemala.
“I told my lawyer: ‘You know what I think most? I’d rather die than go back there. I don’t want to leave,’” the transgender woman said in an interview with Noticias Telemundo from Los Angeles, the city where she has lived for the last year and a half.
“In the place where I lived, they don’t accept me,” said Santos-Zacaría, 36.
Santos-Zacaría’s story gained media attention in 2023 when the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in her favor, giving her another chance to argue that U.S. immigration officials were wrong in rejecting her bid to fight deportation on the grounds she’d face persecution in Guatemala.
Santos-Zacaría has testified in public legal documents that she was raped and threatened with death as a teenager in her native country.
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