The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency have confirmed that it is currently housing 45 transgender women at a detention center in Texas.
This brings the overall amount of “self-identified transgender individuals” currently being held in ICE custody across the country to 111, nearly double the average of 68 that was reported at the end of the 2018 fiscal year.
This alarming news arrives just a few months after the death of a Honduran transgender woman who died in ICE custody. A private forensic pathology revealed that 33-year-old Roxsana Hernandez Rodriguez had “deep hemorrhaging of the soft tissues and muscles over her ribs.”
The pathologist also concluded that Rodriguez likely died from “severe complications of dehydration that was complicated by HIV after she was transferred to the hospital from ICE’s Cibola County Correctional Center in New Mexico”.
ICE has denied all allegations that this was as a result of physical abuse. In a released statement they said that Rodriguez was taken to hospital “with symptoms of pneumonia, dehydration, and complications associated with untreated HIV”.
The statement further added that the agency “takes very seriously the health, safety, and welfare of those in our care, including those who come into ICE custody with prior medical conditions or who have never before received appropriate medical care”.
According to ICE spokesperson Dani Bennett, in addition to access to hormone therapy, health, and dental care, the agency has also been exploring with “less restrictive housing options for LGBTI individuals” over the past decade.
Gillian Branstetter, media relations manager for the National Center for Transgender Equality, however, said in an interview with Broadly, that there has been a 185% increase in the number of trans detainees, which makes it nearly twice the size of what it was at the end of the Obama regime.
Source: Pride Source
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