Victims of violent cartels tell BBC they now hide from US authorities

She had promised her daughter a trip to Disney World in Florida – but what had originally been planned as a holiday became an escape route from ‘terror’.

Gabriela, not her real name, is from Guayaquil, Ecuador, where she led what she calls a “normal middle-class life”: she worked at a television channel for 15 years, she had a mortgage and her daughter attended private school.

When she read headlines about violence rising in Ecuador – gangs battling over cocaine trafficking routes, homicides soaring, and extortions spreading – she assumed the extortions were aimed at “millionaires”.

Then came the first threat: a phone call warning her to pay a gang or be shot. The caller knew her workplace and her license plate.

Around the time of their planned Disney World holiday, her daughter’s grandfather was kidnapped.

Her family was asked to pay tens of thousands of dollars and received videos showing his fingers being cut off. He was eventually murdered, his finger left in a bottle as a taunt – a case reported by the BBC.

Fearing that Gabriela would not be safe in Ecuador, her partner told her to take their daughter on the trip and not come back.

Now, Gabriela is one of millions in the US with pending asylum claims. While exact figures are not available, many applicants from Latin America say they have been driven out by cartel violence, which has soared in several countries, including Ecuador.

But immigration law experts say it is getting harder for them to plead their case in the US.

US asylum law recognises five grounds for asylum protection, based on the Refugee Convention drafted after World War Two. They are persecution based on: race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership of a particular social group.

The current US Citizen and Immigration Service says asylum may “only” be granted to those fleeing persecution based on one of those five groups, but cartel violence does not fit neatly into any of these categories.

This law is the subject of “much, much interpretation”, according to Kathleen Bush-Joseph of the Migration Policy Institute.

During US President Donald Trump’s first term in office, his administration made it harder for people to seek asylum from gang violence or domestic violence – two categories that at face value appear to be about crimes between individuals, but in many countries, are connected to systemic issues of justice and corruption.

Trump’s attorney general raised the bar on those claims, issuing a directive that “the applicant must show that the government condoned the private actions or demonstrated an inability to protect the victims”.

That can be difficult. Gabriela says that reporting threats in a country like Ecuador, can be risky. “If you’re lucky enough and they catch the criminal, it’s likely he’ll get out the next day and try to kill you in revenge.”

While the Biden administration repealed this legal interpretation, the law remains unchanged and those fleeing the cartels feel in limbo.

Donald Trump has also made criminal cartels a target of his immigration policies – designating some as terrorist organisations and deporting those he claims are affiliated to them, in some cases without providing evidence.

Ms Bush-Joseph says it is too early to tell how this will play out in the courts but it could go “both ways” for those fleeing cartel violence.

It could categorise some of them as victims of “terrorists”. But there are concerns that those who have been forced to pay extortions could also be accused of having provided “material support” to these groups – even if it was coerced.

Gabriela agrees with Trump that cartel members are “terrorists” and thinks that therefore his government should recognise her and others as victims: “I would like the president to grant asylum to those fleeing violence from these terrorists.”

Mario Russell, the executive director of the US-based Center for Migration Studies, believes the legal definitions of who can claim asylum should be updated.

He says that for now, most victims end up claiming asylum on political grounds, by arguing cartels have so much social and political power they act “as if they were the governing entity”.

“The problem is these people are suffering violence and persecution, and by persecution we mean horror. There’s a fear for their life.”

Gabriela says that at her asylum interview – for which she has not yet been given a date – she plans to ask for political asylum. She argues that due to the fact that some police officers and judges in Ecuador are corrupt and have ties to the gangs, she did not feel she would have been protected from the threats gang members made against her in her home country.

Mr Russell says about 70% of all asylum claims are already being rejected. What has changed under the Trump administration, he says, is the increased detention of migrants who are in the country irregularly but seeking asylum.

A record 60,000 people are now in detention while awaiting to present their cases, data shows.

It “changes this equation”, Mr Russell says, because they can “no longer live their lives relatively peacefully” as they wait for a decision on their claim. Detention, he adds, is “leveraged” as a way of encouraging people to give up and voluntarily accept deportation.

President Trump’s latest executive orders have expanded deportations and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) arrest powers, including suspending entry for many undocumented migrants.

The result, says Ms Bush-Joseph, is an environment where judges face “immense pressure” to deny cases not deemed legally sufficient.

Straightforward political cases may be approved quickly, but cartel cases are hard and often rejected at first review, she says. These applicants must “fight for protection” while facing some of the “highest risks of deportation”, she adds.

For applicants like Gabriela, this means effectively living in lockdown. “We have been afraid since President Trump took office,” she says.

She has a work permit while her asylum claim is outstanding and works long shifts of manual labour in a US factory. “Our life consists of work, home, work, nothing else. I don’t want to expose us to another trauma.”

“It’s stressful, not being able to go out, to relax, to forget our traumas,” she says, adding that she fears being reported and arrested.

She is anxious about following the speed limit, fearing any mistake could justify deporting her or rejecting her claim. She answers everyone politely, even when she has experienced racism.

Gabriela’s fears are shared by Maria, a lesbian from the Ecuadorean city of Durán, which is ranked as one of the world’s most violent. A gang also tried to extort her by sending her threatening text messages.

She filed a complaint at the Prosecutor’s Office in Ecuador, but a week later, criminals pulled her off her motorbike, warned her to pay up, and said: “Because you think you’re a man, you think nothing’s going to happen to you.”

Maria sold the bike and fled to the US, where she is now working as a dishwasher in New York.

She told US immigration officials about the complaint she filed in Ecuador but her asylum hearing is not scheduled until 2028 and for Maria, that means she “can’t enjoy life”.

“You must hide, you don’t know when a raid might happen,” she explains.

There is a backlog in the US of about four million asylum cases waiting to be heard, and for many like Maria, the process takes years.

Luis, a taxi driver who fled Durán for the US after gangs tried to extort drivers from his co-operative, is another one.

“I never thought of emigrating. But so many of my friends were killed,” he says of those who refused to pay.

According to immigration law firm Spar & Bernstein, rather than helping the cases of people who fled gang violence, the US government’s designation of some cartels as terrorist groups could in fact result in some applications being found inadmissible.

Individuals who paid smugglers to help them reach the US, or those who “worked in a cartel-controlled town and paid protection money”, could be seen as having links to the very groups they are trying to escape from – and see their asylum claims rejected.

US Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Matthew J. Tragesser says US asylum law protects a “very limited number of persecuted aliens”.

He also blames backlogs on “fraudulent and frivolous” claims made under the Biden administration and says new legislation would increase asylum fees to reduce fraud.

“A pending asylum claim does not make aliens immune from enforcement,” he adds.

Americans meanwhile appear split on Donald Trump’s immigration actions. Pew Research polling from June found 60% disapprove of suspending most asylum applications; 54% oppose increased raids. But support is very divided along party lines.

Most (65%) support legal paths for undocumented immigrants to stay, while 23% worry they or someone close could be deported.

Gabriela, Maria, and Luis insist those fleeing cartel violence are misunderstood. They accept why criminals might be deported but believe law-abiding immigrants “paying taxes” deserve to stay.

“We want what everyone wants: work, live in a state of law and order, and to no longer live in terror, not knowing if you or your child will return home.”