González writes: "Advocates are calling on U.S. immigration authorities to stop holding transgender migrants seeking asylum in detention centers after a transgender woman died while in custody at a facility in New Mexico."
Roxsana Hernandez, 33, who died in ICE custody Friday after arriving in the US with the Central American migrant caravan. (photo: Luc Forsyth)
30 May 18
dvocates are calling on U.S. immigration authorities to stop holding transgender migrants seeking asylum in detention centers after a transgender woman died while in custody at a facility in New Mexico.
The 33-year-old woman from Honduras, identified by advocates as Roxana Hernandez, was part of the caravan of Central American migrants that traveled to the U.S. border through Mexico.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the detainee was being held in the transgender unit at the Cibola County Detention Center in Milan, New Mexico, when she began suffering from complications related to HIV.
She was hospitalized at Cibola General Hospital and then airlifted to Lovelace Medical Center, ICE said in a written statement. She died Friday at the center, and the preliminary cause was cardiac arrest. ICE identified the detainee as Jeffry Hernandez in its statement.
Organizers from Pueblo Sin Fronteras questioned whether Hernandez received adequate medical care while in custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and then ICE.
Hernandez presented herself to U.S. border officers at the San Ysidro port of entry on May 9 and asked for asylum, after traveling with the caravan more than 2,000 miles, the group said in a statement.
During her first week in custody “her body and spirit deteriorated quickly,” the statement said.
“Once she was transferred to the immigrant prison in Cibola, New Mexico, U.S. immigration authorities finally recognized (despite her having been in government custody for over a week) that she needed medical attention,” the statement said.
Advocates say immigration authorities do not do a good job of protecting transgender migrants from abuses or providing them with medical care while in custody seeking asylum. They are fleeing persecution and violence in their home countries when they arrive in the U.S., advocates say.
“It is alarming that transgender communities continue to face transphobic violence outside and inside of detention walls," says Flor Bermudez, legal director at Transgender Law Center. “This is why TLC’s Trans Immigrant Defense Effort (TIDE) has organized to demand the liberation of transgender women from detention and the end of all detention and deportations. ICE has shown time and again it is incapable of protecting transgender women in detention. Transgender people should not be detained by ICE at all."
