Because of DACA Franky Needs To Come Out More Than Once, For More Than One Reason

 Frncisco Bautista "Franky"

Francisco Bautista’s birth certificate from his native Mexico has an ambiguous ‘X’ marked in the middle of the two boxes that identify his gender. Right in the middle. No male nor female.

“How do they know? The universe is so funny,” said the 26-year-old. Franky, as he calls himself, identifies as a gender fluid person.  He has a feminine look — women's shoes and a blouse —and switches from English to Spanish when ordering panqueques and jugo de naranja, pancakes and orange juice, at a Denny’s in Oak Lawn.

Being different, Franky faced hopelessness, fear, and shame as he struggled with his identity. Those challenging years have been followed by optimism, confidence, and joy as he’s learned to accept who he is. But Franky lives in two worlds. He’s one of a small group of LGBT people who grew up as unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. He is a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipient. Now that safety net allowing many children of immigrants to stay in the U.S. may be taken away. Where once it was hard for him to come out in the macho culture he was raised in, now he is struggling with his feeling of belonging here, and his uncertainty over whether he will ever be accepted as an American.

When President Donald Trump announced the end of the Obama administration’s program to shield some children of unauthorized immigrants from deportation, it was “one of the saddest days of my life.”

“DACA gave me some hope,” he said. “I thought I was never going to be able to grow up until I could start working and providing for myself.” 

Now Franky feels lost in the tug-of-war between saving DACA and Trump’s demand for a border wall in exchange. “I just see we are political toys," he said. "I don’t want to keep my life on hold.” 

The Williams Institute, which researches sexual orientation and gender identity issues out of the University of California at Los Angeles, estimates that about 36,000 LGBT people are beneficiaries of DACA. The Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, estimates that 267,000 immigrants who identify as members of the LGBT community are unauthorized.

"DACA has helped this community to come out of two closets," said Sharita Gruberg, associate director of the CAP LGBT Research and Communications Project. "A community that has been historically invisible because of its immigration status and sexual orientation. For many, DACA gave them the first form of visibility and identification.”

As with all DACA recipients, Deferred Action has meant for Franky the possibility of financial stability, access to schools and jobs and, of course, not being deported. But LGBT youths are at additional risk of returning to countries about which they know very little and where gender discrimination and violence against gays and transgender people can be a serious problem.

Sasha Moreno, an immigration attorney who has represented transgender people looking for asylum in the U.S., said she’s constantly quoting reports to immigration judges about harassment and torture against the LGBT community in countries such as  Guatemala, Mexico and El Salvador to highlight the dangers of deporting these kids.

“Mexico has a good amount of LGBT-friendly laws, but it also has the second-highest rate of transgender woman deaths in the world,” Moreno said.

Moreno noted that because DACA recipients entered the U.S. many years ago, and because the bar to qualify for asylum is within one year of arrival, they can’t apply for asylum based on the threat of persecution.

A bittersweet relationship

In an early interview, last fall in Oak Lawn, Franky talked about growing up while discovering his gender identity.

He was born in Matamoros, a city in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas directly across the border from Brownsville.

He remembers the smell of the plátano and fruity trees at his aunt’s house. His father traveled to and from the U.S. to work as a day laborer. When they got together, they would go to the bazaar to see the chicks on sale there, traditionally dyed different colors to amuse the children.

“I was so in love with those animals that I became a vegetarian,” he said while eating a veggie omelet.

He and his two brothers were brought to Texas by his father when he was 5 years old, leaving their mother behind. Franky hasn’t seen her since.

He went to school in Prosper, a small town north of Frisco where there “was nothing but white people."

“Having brown skin and being gay and undocumented, I wanted to fit in so bad, making sure my English wasn't broken, or speaking without an accent,” he said.

He mostly had girlfriends at the time, but he was often alone and enjoyed playing a keyboard, solo, in his room. In high school, he said, he wasn’t doing much but “getting high” on marijuana.

Franky said he never fit into the “Latino macho Mexican culture” at his home. It wasn’t surprising that he and his father clashed.

“I knew I was gay since I was 12 and when I told my father, he was concerned,” Franky said. “As I was always wearing skinny jeans and a tight shirt, he used to have clothes ready for me, saying I need to dress as my brother.”

Franky left home when he was 12 and began a life of couch-surfing. His relationship with his father was bittersweet. They couldn’t show their love for each other except in small, but meaningful ways.

His father bought him his first cell phone and after Franky left home. “Every Friday he would say, ‘Come over, I have some money for you for the week,’” Franky said.

“He didn't know how to be a dad, he didn't teach me things about life, but he was always there. He did his best,” Franky said.

When Franky saw other American fathers, “I was jealous” of the closeness of other families. It seemed like this was how they were supposed to be.

But Franky recognized his father had a rough pathway, working day labor jobs all his life as an immigrant.

A few years later, when his father was ill, it was Franky who helped him, giving his dad money from his first job for medical treatment.

Back from the brink

As a teenager on his own, Franky was adrift but finding himself.

“I went into drugs,” he said. “Starting with alcohol, then weed, people offered me ecstasy, cocaine and finally meth. ... Those were really rough years couch surfing here and there.”

But eventually, he did find comfort in Oak Lawn, the heart of gay Dallas. He said he felt safe walking around in his Daisy Dukes and high heels.

His life changed the day that a friend invited him into a 12-step program. “Daniel — he saved my life,” said Franky.

Daniel Shipman, 44, is a tall, white gay man, but he’s also a masculine Texan to the core. He works in real estate and also helps people recover from addictions through the 12-step program. He became Franky’s sponsor.

“I would have adopted Franky but I met him after he was 18,” Shipman said. “I learned through him that being undocumented is a tremendous struggle, a constant worry about being found out, feeling less than everybody else in the room. It doesn't matter how beautiful, smart, talented you are, you are not equal because you don't have papers.”

Shipman recognizes that his own masculine look and his U.S. citizenship helped shield him from “any kind of discrimination.” He felt Franky’s pain and took him under his wing for almost three years until DACA was implemented in 2012 and Franky got his DACA permit and his first job.

Shipman made sure Franky graduated from high school, made it to his 12-step meetings and helped him get an apartment and a car.

“He set me up for success,” said Franky.

But so did DACA. Before DACA, he said, “being an illegal child really handicapped me.” He had trouble focusing at school “thinking I could be deported or going to jail at any moment.”

Kamal Essaheb, director of policy and advocacy at the National Immigration Law Center, said that fear is well founded.

"The termination of the DACA by the Trump administration is the latest in a series of attacks against LGBT and immigrant people,” Essaheb said.

He noted the "arbitrary detention of hundreds of LGBT immigrants" in U.S. prisons. And he pointed to repeated attacks on protections for transgender people in the armed forces or when choosing public restrooms.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics has found that more than one-third of transgender people held in prisons experience sexual violence.

Losing a father and a dream

Franky has now lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years. He said one of his brothers, Allen, was deported in 2012 and the other, David, was adopted in 2001 by an American family and is now a U.S. citizen.

His father died about two years ago. In the end, he was on dialysis and fighting cancer.

He died in Mexico. Franky couldn’t say goodbye to him. But Franky says he’s grateful that his dad brought him to this country and shaped a better future for him; he remembers the cellphone and the weekly cash when he was couch surfing.

Today, Franky waits tables at a nice hotel. He’s been clean for five years, has two dogs and wants to start a YouTube channel about makeup tutorials. He recently joined the Cathedral of Hope, the LGBT-friendly church where he was baptized.

“The taste of being independent is such a great gift, I don't want to lose it,” he said. “DACA is a glimpse to the American Dream for me. It's the closest I have been.”

Franky’s DACA permit expires in March 2019. Lately, he has felt anxious about not being able to fulfill his dream of becoming a flight attendant and seeing the world.

During his first interview, Franky was getting ready to dress up in a costume from the Rocky Horror Picture Show for a Halloween party. He was going to be “just a sweet transvestite from Transexual, Transylvania.”  

But a few months later, for another interview, he showed up at Denny’s again, wearing a light jacket, jeans, and no makeup.

For a gender fluid person, explained therapist Michael Salas, “the internal experience of what gender is at a certain point of time can vary. ... The fluidity means the person doesn’t feel always as the stereotypical male or female, and it is very defined by the experience on that point. They are sorting out their identity so they passed through periods in which they might feel like one way or another, including feeling the need of becoming a transgender person.”

His DACA status threatened, Franky feels alienated again. He's gender fluid, but the tension is always there.

“I feel like I have to be a boy now,” he said. “I have to be strong for whatever comes.”

Franky at his keyboard. He's been taking piano lessons. . Ben Torres/Special Contributor(Ben Torres/Special Contributor)

Franky at his keyboard. He's been taking piano lessons. . 

Ben Torres/Special Contributor (Ben Torres/Special Contributor)


Dallas News
by Jenny Manrique




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