Over a dozen groups call for release of LGBTQ people and people with HIV from immigration detention

More than a dozen groups are calling for the release of LGBTQ people and people living with HIV (PLWHIV) from federal immigration detention, including those in Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection custody, stating in an official complaint that detainees have been “outright denied” access to adequate medical and mental health care, resulting in “irreparable harm,” and in some tragic instances, death.

“The widespread abuse and mistreatment of LGBTQ, PLWHIV individuals in ICE custody is well documented,” the complaint says. “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has already received countless reports of LGBTQ, PLWHIV individuals’ experiences with verbal, sexual and physical violence, medical negligence, inhumane housing conditions, and overuse of solitary confinement in both public and private detention centers.”

This negligence has been deadly. The groups state that this past March a complaint was lodged against the Otero County Processing Center, a for-profit detention facility in New Mexico, that detailed “rampant discrimination and violence” against LGBTQ individuals. But just months later, transgender asylum-seeker Johana Medina died after being in Otero’s custody. She had reportedly “pleaded for medical help” for weeks, and had been kept jailed even though she had passed her initial asylum interview.

“Even after this complaint was received and after Johana Medina’s death,” the groups continue, “ICE continues to deny transgender women and gay and bisexual men at Otero basic health care and provides misinformation on how to access hormone therapy.” In fact, following the ICE deaths of Medina and Roxana Hernández, another transgender asylum-seeker, the agency shamelessly tweeted propaganda photos of transgender detainees reading and getting their hair done. 

A detainee later said she was coerced into participating in that propaganda campaign. “One inmate told [an immigrant rights advocate] that officers threatened to take away her food when she didn't want to participate in news media pictures at the facility beauty salon.”

Transgender people are also extremely vulnerable to abuse while in federal immigration detention. “From 2009 to 2013, 1 in 5 substantiated allegations of sexual assault in ICE detention facilities had a transgender victim,” the Center for American Progress reported in 2017. “In addition to sexual assault, LGBTQ people in detention face verbal and physical abuse; prolonged solitary confinement; and the withholding of critical health care needs, such as hormone therapy or HIV medication.”

ICE has jailed a record number of transgender people, “by the department’s own count, 300 individuals ... since October of 2018 alone,” and in prisons “privately operated by either CoreCivic, the GEO Group, or LaSalle Corrections,” the Transgender Law Center said. In 2017, GEO Group had three detainee deaths at its Adelanto facility in California in the span of just three months. More recently, CoreCivic has been sued for $40 million, after Mariee Juárez fell seriously ill while jailed there, and later died. She was just 19 months old.

“In light of the substantial evidence of ICE's inability to safely house and adequately care for LGBTQ, PLWHIV individuals in its custody, we call for ICE to exercise its parole authority and release all LGBTQ, PLWHIV individuals on their own recognizance,” the groups said. “We also urge the Office of Inspector General to work with the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties to immediately conduct a systemic investigation into the provision of medical and mental health care to LGBTQ, PLWHIV individuals in ICE and CBP custody.”

“Each individual who shared their experience in immigration prison for this complaint described horrifying abuse that was entirely preventable,” Lynly Egyes of the Transgender Law Center told The Washington Post. “The experiences of these individuals are not the exception, they are the norm for LGBTQ migrants and people living with HIV in immigration prisons. Because of that, we call for the immediate release of all LGBTQ migrants and people living with HIV.”

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