Victims of violent cartels tell the BBC that they are now hiding from the American authorities

She had promised her daughter a trip to Disney World to Florida – but what had been initially planned as a vacation has become a way to escape “terror”.

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

When she read the big titles on violence in equator – the gangs that fight on the cocaine traffic lanes, the homicides that skyrocketing and the extortions propagating – it assumed that the extensions were intended for “millionaires”.

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

At the time of their global Disney holidays planned, his daughter’s grandfather was kidnapped.

Her family was invited to pay tens of thousands of dollars and received videos showing that her fingers are cut. He was finally murdered, his finger left for a bottle like a mockery – a case reported by the BBC.

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

Now Gabriela is one of the millions in the United States with allegations of pending asylum. Although the exact figures are not available, many candidates in Latin America say they were driven out by the violence of the cartel, which has climbed in several countries, including the equator.

But immigration law experts say that it becomes more difficult for them to plead their case in the United States.

The American asylum law recognizes five reasons for protection against asylum, on the basis of the refugee convention written after the Second World War. They are a persecution based on: race, religion, nationality, political opinion or belonging to a particular social group.

The current services to American citizens and immigration says that asylum can “” only “be” to those who flee the persecution on the basis of one of these five groups, but the violence of the cartel does not perfectly correspond to any of these categories.

This law is the subject of “a lot, a lot of interpretation”, according to Kathleen Bush-Joseph of the Policy Institute migration.

During the first term of US President Donald Trump, his administration made people more difficult for people to request the asylum for gang violence or domestic violence – two categories which, at their nominal value, seem to concern crimes between individuals, but in many countries, are linked to systemic questions of justice and corruption.

Trump’s prosecutor general raised the bar of these complaints, issuing a directive that “the applicant must show that the government has tolerated private actions or has demonstrated an inability to protect the victims”.

It can be difficult. Gabriela says that the declaration of threats in a country like the equator can be risky. “If you are lucky and they take the criminal, it is likely that he will be released the next day and try to kill you in revenge.”

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

Donald Trump also made criminal cartels a target of his immigration policies – by appointing certain terrorist organizations and deporting those he claims to be affiliated, in some cases without providing evidence.

Ms. Bush-Joseph says it is too early to say how it will take place in the courts, but it could go “in both directions” for those fleeing the violence of the cartel.

He could classify some of them as victims of “terrorists”. But it is feared that those who have been forced to pay extensions can also be accused of having provided “material support” to these groups – even if it has been forced.

Gabriela agrees with Trump that the members of the cartel are “terrorists” and thinks that, consequently, her government should recognize her, as well as the others, the victims: “I would like the president to grant asylum to those who flee the violence of these terrorists.”

Mario Russell, Executive Director of the Center for Migration Studies, based in the United States, believes that the legal definitions of who can claim asylum should be updated.

He says that for the moment, most victims end up claiming asylum for political reasons, arguing that cartels have so much social and political power that they act “as if they were the govering entity”.

“The problem is that these people suffer from violence and persecution, and out of persecution, we mean horror. There is a fear for their lives.”

Gabriela says that during her asylum interview – for which she has not yet received a date – she plans to request political asylum. She argues that because of the fact that certain police officers and judges of the equator are corrupt and have links with the gangs, she did not think that she would have been protected from the threats that the gang members were against her in her country of origin.

Mr. Russell says that around 70% of all asylum complaints are already rejected. What has changed under the Trump administration, he says, is the increased detention of migrants who are irregularly in the country but in search of asylum.

A record of 60,000 people is now in detention while waiting to present their cases, according to the data.

This “changes this equation”, says Mr. Russell, because they can “no longer live their relatively peaceful life” while they are waiting for a decision on their complaint. Detention, he adds, is “exploited” as a way to encourage people to abandon and voluntarily accept deportation.

President Trump’s latest decrees have expanded the deportations and arrest powers of American immigration and customs (ICE), in particular by suspending entry for many undocumented migrants.

The result, says Ms. Bush-Joseph, is an environment where the judges face “immense pressure” to refuse units not judged legally sufficient.

Simple political cases can be approved quickly, but the cartel’s cases are difficult and often rejected during the first review, she said. These candidates must “fight for protection” while facing some of the “highest risks of deportation”, she adds.

For candidates like Gabriela, this effectively means living in locking. “We have been afraid since President Trump took office,” she said.

She has a work permit while her asylum request is underway and works long changes in manual work in an American factory. “Our life is made up of work, house, work, nothing else. I don’t want to expose us to another trauma.”

“It’s stressful, not being able to get out, to relax, to forget our trauma,” she said, adding that she is afraid of being reported and arrested.

She is anxious to follow the speed limit, fearing any error could justify the deportation or the rejection of her complaint. She politely responds to everyone, even when she has experienced racism.

The fears of Gabriela are shared by Maria, a lesbian from the Ecuadorian city of Durán, who is classified as one of the most violent in the world. A gang also tried to extort it by sending it threatening text messages.

She filed a complaint at the Ecuador’s prosecutor’s office, but a week later, the criminals withdrew her from her motorcycle, warned her to pay and said, “Because you think you are a man, you think nothing will happen to you.”

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

She told us to the immigration officials of the complaint she had filed in Ecuador, but her asylum hearing is not planned before 2028 and for Maria, that means that she “cannot enjoy life”.

“You have to hide, you don’t know when a raid could happen,” she explains.

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

Luis, a taxi driver who fled Durán for the United States after the gangs tried to extort the drivers from his cooperative, is another.

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

According to the Immigration law firm Spar & Bernstein, rather than helping cases of people who have fled the violence of the gangs, the designation by the United States government of certain cartels as terrorist groups could in fact cause inadmissible requests for demand.

The people who paid the smugglers to help them reach the United States, or those who “worked in a city controlled by the cartel and paid protection money”, could be considered links with the very groups from which they try to escape – and see their rejected asylum complaints.

The spokesperson for the services of Citizenship and Immigration Services of the United States Matthew J. Trageser says that the American asylum law protects a “very limited number of persecuted foreigners”.

He also blamed the arrears of “fraudulent and frivolous” complaints made under the Biden administration and affirms that the new legislation would increase asylum costs to reduce fraud.

“An asylum application does not make foreigners safe from the application,” he adds.

The Americans seem to be separated on the immigration actions of Donald Trump. The June Pew research survey revealed that 60% disapprove of the suspension of most asylum applications; 54% oppose an increase in raids. But support is very divided according to parties.

Most (65%) support legal paths so that undocumented immigrants remain, while 23% are concerned about their closure for them or someone could be expelled.

Gabriela, Maria and Luis insist that the violence of the fleeting cartel are poorly understood. They accept why criminals could be expelled, but believe that “paid” immigrants who deserve to stay.

“We want what everyone wants: to work, to 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.”