Lorena Borjas was born on May 29, 1960 in Veracruz, Mexico, she studied public accounting in Mexico City. She immigrated to the United States in 1981, with the intention of making the transition to live as a woman. She initially shared an apartment in Queens with 20 transgender women who survived as sex workers. Lorena helped these and other transgender sex workers, initially helping Mexican trans women and finally working to help all Latin American trans women.

 

Lorena worked to protect transgender victims of human trafficking (which she had experienced herself), slavery and violence. She received women who had been excluded from their families in her own apartment until they were able to support themselves. She walked the streets looking for women who needed their help, providing them with condoms and food, and connecting these women with social services. She worked without pay to facilitate access to HIV testing and hormone therapy for transgender sex workers, including setting up a weekly HIV testing clinic in her home and exchanging syringes for women receiving hormone injections.

 

Lorena founded in 2008 the Lorena Borjas Community Fund, in order to be able to provide assistance on bail to LGBTIQ2 + defendants. Also since 2015, she was founder and vice-president of the organization Colectivo Intercultural TRANSgrediendo and assuming the role of Executive Director of this organization. 

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Lorena died alone in a hospital bed on Coney Island, in Brooklyn, NY at 5:20 am on March 31, 2020 at the age of 59, from the Coronavirus (COVID19); Lorena Borjas - the mother, guardian, hero and healer of the transgender community in Jackson Heights, Queens