Atlanta immigrant, trans woman and activist ready to give back

Most weekdays, Jennifer Arellano can be found inside a hair salon tucked beside a Colombian restaurant off Buford Highway. Her average client is likely unaware of the sacrifices she has had to make to be in that position, scissors in hand. Working. Safe.

Abuse and threats of violence have been among the few constants in her life.

Arellano has been targeted because of her identity as a trans woman in Mexico, where she is from, on the road with coyotes through the southern border, and as a new immigrant in Atlanta, where she arrived in 2007 with no documents and no money.

“I used to not be able to sleep at night. I would just get up to check the door, the windows, make sure everything was closed.”

Through it all, she says she never considered dulling her spirit, or her shine. Even when securing her own livelihood in Atlanta proved a challenge, Arellano began giving back, helping others stave off hunger and taking on LGBTQ activism work. Earlier this year, she became the first Atlanta-based Mexican national to amend her gender marker on her birth certificate, in a ceremony that took place at the Mexican Consulate.

Visibility has come at a cost, but she wants to be a source of strength and an example for others – an example she says could be particularly needed in Georgia’s Hispanic community.

“I want to be me. I want people to say, ‘Wow,’” she said. “I want people to know that we can make positive change, that we can fight for our ideals, that we can help. And that’s what I’ve dedicated my life to … Anyone can leave a mark, no matter who you are.”

Credit: Miguel Martinez

Credit: Miguel Martinez

From Cancun to Atlanta

Arellano is not new to hair styling. The 53-year-old worked as a stylist in the Mexican tourism hotspot of Cancun.

But when a rash of kidnappings and killings hit the hub of that city’s trans community – a neighborhood dubbed ‘la Calle de las Sirenas’ or ‘Mermaid Alley’ – Arellano decided to pack her bags and try to seek shelter in the U.S.

She described the journey as one fraught with dangers. She had a gun drawn on her. Smugglers held her against her will at a safe house for a month. Once in the U.S., she was briefly detained by immigration enforcement in a male-only facility.

The challenges didn’t stop when she made her way to Atlanta, where an acquaintance of hers lived. She spent her first years sleeping in friends’ or coworkers’ apartments, sometimes on the floor. She put in 12-hour workdays cleaning offices and houses.

After finding work as a stylist, she was slowly able to save up enough money to achieve her goals, including top surgery and an apartment of her own, which she currently shares with three dogs.

Credit: Miguel Martinez

But hard times never stayed away for long. In 2021, Arellano suffered a physical assault that landed her in the hospital. She told Atlanta Spanish-language press that her attacker targeted her because of her gender identity. Since settling in Atlanta, she has attempted suicide twice, a lived experience that echoes the research into trans individuals’ mental health, which shows poorer outcomes across that community, and especially for trans people of color.

“It’s society that makes you self-destruct. There’s stigma. And you’re always fighting against something. It makes you depressed,” she said. “All of us [trans women] have lots of stories. If theirs aren’t the same as mine, they’re similar enough.”

Fortified rather than broken by the setbacks she has faced, Arellano turned to activism and grew into a leader within the LGBTQ, Hispanic community. She joined panels to discuss and call out transphobia. She spoke out in Univision coverage against a controversial Georgia transgender sports bill, which could pave the way for the banning of transgender students from public high school sports.

“At the end of the day, it makes me happy,” she said. “I arrived here with so much fear … I went through things I didn’t deserve to go through. But it’s given me strength, and it’s made me feel like I can move forward and help other people too.”

She is also a history-maker.

At the ceremony inside the Mexican Consulate that granted her an amended birth certificate – the first of its kind in Atlanta – Arellano shed tears of joy.

“I wanted to print out thousands of copies of that certificate and just scatter them around Atlanta, so that everyone would know that I’m a trans woman, and that my name is Jennifer Arellano. Let the whole world know about it. I was so emotional. It felt like a big achievement.”