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After having worked 16 years as a psychologist in Mexico, one day in 2010, Lorena Kouroisma, was living in the basement of a huge house on the outskirts of New York City, which I did not know how to get there or how to get out. In that mansion, where they paid 400 per week to clean, he realized the vulnerability of women who, like her, leave their country to look for a better life elsewhere.
The basement room of the mansion where Kouroicas worked as an intern had no door to the street, just a window. That morning, one of the two adult children of the family who hired her, went down in underwear and opened the refrigerator where they left a glass of milk for breakfast. “I felt fear and wondered what I went down. If my food was only there,” he says. “I think I worked by cleaning houses just over a year, because you work inside and eat when they are hungry, you sleep when they are sleepy. That is, there is a very abusive issue.”
Fortunately, for this smiling woman with short and gray hair who is 39 today, those days in which she felt so vulnerable, shortly after arriving in the United States, today are just a memory. Now, fifteen years later, he tells him sitting in front of the two screens of his computer, where he can see his busy agenda as executive director of Mixteca, a non -profit organization in Brooklyn that provides therapeutic support to immigrant families in New York, and that, among other objectives, seeks to end the abuse of migrant women.
In the midst of the campaign undertaken by the administration of Donald Trump that has sown the fear in the immigrant population with the threat of mass deportations, Kouroisma puts special efforts to accompany women and mothers single immigrants who crossed the border in recent years and that are part of the 35,640 families who remain in the shelters of the city, according to data from the municipal control.
Since 2022, when the Texas government began sending buses with migrants who had just crossed the border to the state of New York, many single women and mothers arrived in Mixteca to ask for pregnancy tests, diapers or milk, among other essential objects. Today, some attend alternative therapies sessions, as they suffered sexual violence on the trip from their countries, and even within the shelters, once in New York. According to Aldonza Balbuena, 26, Mixteca Mental Health Coordinator, violence in this population is very present, as well as high levels of stress due to the unstable political climate.
In Mexico, Lorena Kouroisma had built a career as a psychologist of women survivors of gender violence after studying a degree and two masters at the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). But he decided to move to obtain financial and personal security. As a psychologist, he only earned $ 300 per month for his work, and in the streets the street harassment was always present. “I think all of us who migrate have forced migration,” he says. “Although it is not so violent or so difficult, if the economic resources are concentrated in a single country, there is a bit of forced in our decision to migrate.”
Invisible violence
Despite being a highly qualified professional, upon his arrival in the United States the psychologist says that he only found bed beds to clean extremely dirty houses. Following several experiences that made her feel vulnerable for her status as a migrant woman, Kouroisma gestured a project as a companion of survivors of violence in the Bronx to document the different forms of violence that women suffered by looking for work in the United States.
For her, the condition of immigrant mothers who have arrived in recent years is even more worrying than the one she knew upon her arrival, especially among those who are in the shelters offered by New York City, where they share space with other people. “Young women who continue to live in shelters have told us that they try to open the doors when they are bathing or who feel unprotected by the cameras controlled by security agents,” he said. “There is a 3 -year -old girl who always comes to Mixteca for her painting classes. She lives in a shelter. The other day she said she was sad. The things that live there, in reality, we don’t know them.”
In addition, in recent years, many women have migrated with their children to a country where they had no support networks to accommodate them or help them get a job, and now deal with the closure of the shelters, after the mayor, Eric Adams, announced the closure of 54 of them until June. “There is no one from my town, someone who tells me” ‘Ven to here, I am going to ask the lady to whom the house cleaned if she has another and give it to you. ” They don’t have that bond. That is another complication so that they can find work and, despite the fact that some of them have employment authorization, they cannot find it, ”says Kouroicas.
Beware of identity
85% of people accessing psychological therapies services provided by Mixteca – where about twenty people work – are immigrant women who receive individual counseling, workshops to heal traumas, prevent domestic violence, and tools for raising their children. “It is also a space in which we can talk about violence, but not only from who is usually the victim, but also from the male part,” says Balbuena.
In trauma healing workshops, teachers focus on creative activities, such as tortillas or corn planting. “Thus, the defenses go down and it is not so threatening to talk about mental health issues because there is a huge stigma that prevents our community from accessing its services,” adds the coordinator.
After having worked two years in Mixteca, the young psychologist says that the alternative therapy proposals of kouroicas and her team always seek to hug the Latin American. Romero-Méndez, who is also coordinator in Mixteca, says that women already bring therapeutic tools that inherited from their mothers and grandmothers, which are part of their healing experience. “Why do I talk about using Palo Santo or Copal, that’s not mental health?” He asks. “For example, we have a group of women led by a shaman, where cultural elements are intertwined with mental health and generates spaces that genuinely attract their attention and allows this part of identity to resonate.”
That emotional support is especially relevant at the moment. Kouroisma is aware that women who play the doors of Mixteca are in a very difficult position because they must continue working to support their children, although in the streets they run the risk of being deported to the countries of origin of which, in many cases, they fled. Therefore, your organization has open doors with a clear message: “Here we can also fight.”
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