ICE is treating trans immigrants with a new level of cruelty

Arely Westley, an undocumented transgender woman who grew up in New Orleans, spent six months in an immigration detention center in her youth. I didn’t want anyone else to have to experience the cruelty, confusion and isolation of detention.

After her release, community organizers helped her find safe housing, inspiring her to fight for other trans immigrants navigating the system alone. Westley met with trans detainees in immigration centers across the state to connect them with lawyers, raised funds for the police station, and campaigned to close facilities that had a history of abuse.

In 2024, she was honored for her work by the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights, recently renamed the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Center for Human Rights, and earned its annual human rights award. At the ceremony, Westley spoke about how she survived human trafficking, as well as her horrific experiences while in detention.

When Donald Trump returned to the White House last year after campaigning on a platform that denigrated trans people and immigrants, Westley was working as a campaign manager at BreakOut!, an organization that helps Black and Latinx trans youth. She was in the process of obtaining a special visa for trafficking survivors and had undergone gender-affirming surgeries. Her home was a place where she felt safe and could be surrounded by her 10 dogs, two cats, bunnies and chickens.

She wasn’t particularly worried when she got a call last January from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in New Orleans. By phone, and in a reminder text message reviewed by News themezone, Westley’s supervisor told him that they recognized his role as a community leader and wanted to offer him more lenient supervision. Westley had been granted a Supervision Order in 2024, which operates similarly to parole and allowed him to live in the US while he awaits final deportation orders and an update to his visa, shortly after winning his award.

But when Westley showed up at the office, officers handcuffed her. Over the next few months, she was detained in a Louisiana facility where she says she was denied access to medical care, spent long periods in solitary confinement, and was subjected to verbal abuse and transphobic harassment. She said medical staff at the facility told her they did not know how to care for her and that she is still recovering from several infections that were not treated during her detention.

Sarah Decker, senior staff attorney at the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Center for Human Rights and Westley’s attorney, said people living under an Order of Supervision were “very easy targets” during the early days of the Trump administration’s deportation campaign. (Westley presented… and lost (a case questioning ICE’s use of “arguments” to get her to return to the New Orleans field office).

Westley, now 33, was born in Honduras, but in November, a The judge ordered that she be sent to Mexico because her country of origin is very dangerous for trans people. He hardly knew anyone when he arrived in Mexico.

“I represent everything Trump hates,” Westley said by phone. “I’m an immigrant, I’m a trans person, and I’m an activist. I think I was the perfect target for his administration.”

Illustration: Grace Russell for News themezone

The Trump administration has made it more dangerous to be a trans immigrant in ICE custody over the past year. Although trans immigrants have historically faced discrimination during detention, the president’s promises of mass deportation and rollback of basic trans rights have been met with brutal force.

Over the past six months, News themezone spoke to about a dozen people, including detainees, attorneys and advocates, and reviewed more than 1,000 pages of court documents, medical records and emails to uncover new levels of cruelty toward trans immigrants. Three said they were subjected to severe medical neglect, harassment and solitary confinement for weeks at a time, which the United Nations considers rape. a form of torture. All said they felt they were abused solely for being transgender.

“The Trump administration is taking a very aggressive and violent approach toward immigrants, and that has escalated. We can’t really quantify that because of the lack of transparency, but we know that Trump is targeting immigrants and trans people, and that is emboldening bigots everywhere,” said Dale Melchert, senior attorney at the Transgender Law Center, a nonprofit law firm.

It is difficult to fully explain the abuses trans immigrants face under the Trump administration. ICE abruptly stopped providing data on the number of transgender people detained, despite Congress requires the agency to publish those statistics. Previously, advocates were allowed more access to detention centers where they could visit trans detainees and meet regularly with an LGBTQ+ liaison within ICE to raise concerns. But that access has been restricted during Trump’s second term, and three agencies of the Department of Homeland Security The centers in charge of supervising immigration have been closed.

“Now we only find out about the damage after the fact,” Isa Noyola, director of the Border Butterflies Project, a group that helps LGBTQ+ asylum seekers on the US southern border, told News themezone. “We will never know the depth of the damage that occurs inside detention centers.”

People detained by ICE can be held for weeks, months or years, depending on their immigration status, legal proceedings and criminal history. Detention centers are supposed to be non-punitive, and facility standards indicate that detainees must have access to legal representation and medical care.

At the start of his second term, Trump dismantled the few safeguards put in place under President Barack Obama (and continued by President Joe Biden) to protect LGBTQ+ immigrants from sexual assault and medical neglect during detention. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order declaring that sex was binary and immutableand ordered immigration detention centers to house people according to the sex assigned at birth, regardless of the gender marker on their documentation.

DHS, which oversees ICE, removed all mention of trans people from its detention standards and replaced any references to gender with references to biological sex. ICE removed an Obama-era memo on transgender care from his website, which laid out best practices for health care, housing, clothing and bathrooms. An investigation by the office of Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) found more than 1,000 reports of human rights abuses over the past year, including 206 reports of medical negligence.

News themezone has identified at least 10 contracts between ICE and private prison companies that have eliminated trans care requirements, citing Trump’s executive order on sex. ICE has spent millions outsourcing immigration detention to private prison companies such as CoreCivic and GEO Groupboth accused of mistreating transgender detainees.

“We will never know the depth of the damage that occurs inside detention centers.”

– Isa Noyola, director of the Border Butterflies Project

Liza Doubossarskaia, a lawyer with Immigration Equality, an LGBTQ+ immigration rights group, said it has become more difficult for trans asylum seekers in particular. find lawyers and winning their cases since Trump returned to office.

She talked about a trans woman who was detained by ICE while she was in the hospital receiving surgery. Doubossarskaia said officers made fun of her because she had lost teeth in a car accident. The woman has since been deported to a Latin American country hostile to trans people and Doubossarskaia has lost contact with her.

“Things were already bad, but overall they are getting worse without really strong protections,” Doubossarskaia said.

As ICE’s budget expands, so does the scope of its surveillance and data collection activities, including those involving trans people. Department of Homeland Security proposed a rule last year that would require immigrants to submit DNA testing to prove their “biological sex” in order to receive certain immigration benefits.

Illustration: Grace Russell for News themezone

Within the first weeks of Westley’s detention at the all-female South Louisiana ICE Processing Center (SLIPC) in Basile, her health began to deteriorate.

He developed a painful cough that he couldn’t get rid of. after being denied the daily medications and supplements he needed to manage a chronic illness, Decker, his attorney, wrote in emails to ICE at the time. Westley also did not receive her estrogen hormone therapy, even though her body was no longer producing sex hormones on its own. Being denied hormone therapy, especially after surgeries to stop naturally produced sex hormones, can cause a variety of health problems, including severe gender dysphoria, anxiety, depression, cognitive problems, and changes in bone density.

In May, Westley developed what appeared to be an infection at the site of her vaginoplasty, a surgery she had undergone the previous year to build a vagina. As part of post-operative care, Westley needed to insert dilators at least twice a week. He said he was denied access to his dilators for the first month; Once the staff finally gave her these tools, Westley was moved into solitary confinement to perform the dilations in a more sterile and private environment. Spending any amount of time alone in a cell made Westley feel claustrophobic. Her chest tightened and she felt like she couldn’t breathe, which made the dilation process even more uncomfortable.

At one point, he remembers going to the bathroom and seeing his underwear filled with discharge. He felt extreme pain. Medical staff told her they “were not equipped to address her medical needs and did not understand post-vaginoplasty medical care,” according to an email Decker sent to ICE field office bosses in New Orleans. Decker emphasized that the discharge could be a symptom of a “life-threatening infection.”

Westley said a doctor refused to treat her but asked her uncomfortable questions about her vaginoplasty. In June, another doctor referred Westley to an outside gynecologist, a transgender care provider and an oncologist to follow up on a colon cancer screening she had previously undergone, according to Decker’s emails. But when she was deported in November, Westley said, she had not been taken to any of her outside medical appointments.

ICE has not paid any of its third-party health care providers since October, and the agency said it will not begin processing claims until April of this year. The agency’s failure to pay medical bills has caused some medical providers to stop seeing people detained, Popular information first reported, citing an anonymous source. Another administration source said News Atlanta News that this has resulted in some detainees being denied essential medical treatment.

With fewer suppliers and a record number of detaineesmedical negligence in detention centers is expected to worsen. Immigration advocates worry that for trans immigrants, who may require more complex and consistent medical care, such neglect could be fatal.

In a statement to News themezone, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin did not answer specific questions about the allegations of trans detainees, but broadly denied allegations of medical neglect in ICE custody. “This is the best medical care that many aliens have received in their entire lives,” he said. However, he acknowledged that the detainees are not given hormonal therapy. “We are NOT wasting American taxpayer money to provide hormone therapy to illegal aliens seeking to change their sex,” he said.

Thousands of miles away from SLIPC, in Arizona, a 37-year-old Iranian trans woman named Melissa faced almost identical barriers to receiving medical care for complications due to her vaginoplasty, which she had received more than a decade earlier. (Melissa is being identified by a pseudonym to protect her privacy.)

While detained in an Arizona detention center, Melissa said she experienced vaginal bleeding and discharge for two months and did not receive her hormone therapy for four months. Detention center staff acknowledged that she “would benefit from being transferred to a facility that provides these services,” according to medical records reviewed by News themezone. But Melissa was placed in medical isolation, a form of solitary confinement, twice when she tried to advocate for medical care, according to her lawyer, Sahar Jalili Pawelski.

ICE agents made fun of her dilating tools and threw away her clothes, Melissa said. He was given hydroxyzine, an antihistamine often used to control anxiety and insomnia; she took it, not knowing what it was or how much it would make her sleep.

“He was so out of it that he slept 24/7. Sometimes I didn’t know if it was day or night,” Melissa told News themezone in Farsi. (Jalili Pawelski translated).

Melissa had waited years to obtain asylum in the United States, after the so-called “Muslim ban” during Trump’s first term delayed her plans. Five days after Trump was inaugurated for the second time, Melissa was finally at the US border. She had left Iran after being beaten by police and abused by transphobic family members.

While waiting in line at the processing center, she noticed officers waving at her and shouting English words at her that she did not understand.

“They say you have to go to the other row because they’re not sure if you’re a man or a woman,” one woman translated into Farsi. “They suspect your forehead.”

At first, Melissa was confused. Then she felt humiliated and started crying. Her birth certificate said “female” and she had undergone gender-affirming surgeries while still in Iran. But an immigration official deemed her forehead too masculine, which meant she was removed and placed in solitary confinement.

Illustration: Grace Russell for News themezone

Solitary confinement is widely used throughout the immigration detention system. Sometimes trans people are placed in solitary confinement to “protect” separating them from other detainees, but it can also be used as punishment.

Melissa was later transferred to another facility, Otay Mesa in California, where she was again placed in solitary confinement. Three days into her stay, she said she was taken to a room with center officials who began questioning her: Had she ever raped a child? Did he want to be with men or women? Did he want to hurt someone?

“Of the 1,100 people I’ve worked with in detention centers, this is the first time I’ve heard something like this. It’s never been this invasive or this recent,” Jalili Pawelski said.

“I feel like his mere presence made them feel uncomfortable,” he added.

Melissa has since won her asylum case and is staying with a host family in New Mexico. But DHS has not yet issued him an I-94, a form that demonstrates his ability to remain in the country. Without it, Melissa can’t work or get a driver’s license.

“I don’t know where to go, I don’t know what to do. The stress breaks me down more and more every day,” she told News themezone.

Luis Renteria González, a 37-year-old transgender man, alleged that he was sexually harassed and abused while detained at SLIPC in Louisiana. He was forced to work in an “unregistered” work program at the facility, according to a federal lawsuit filed by attorneys from the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center, the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana and the National Immigration Project.

Between 2023 and 2025, Rentería-González said staff recruited him to be part of a night work program. A guard assistant forced him to do hard manual labor without protective equipment. Once, she said, he used an industrial-grade chemical to strip the facility’s floors and burned her shoes and feet. He said the director mocked him and other trans men, saying, “Do you think you’re a man? You’re going to work like a man.”

After Rentería-González shared her experiences with the guardian Last year, he said he suffered retaliation: He was placed in solitary confinement for 40 days and did not receive adequate medical care. While in isolation, he said, he had difficulty accessing phones and talking to his children, his mother and his lawyer for just a few minutes at a time.

“It’s not easy here, you know? It’s never been easy, but under this administration, I feel like things are a lot harder for us,” Renteria-González said, speaking from SLIPC.

“I feel like a lot of the words that Trump has used to refer to people like us have encouraged officers to treat us in any way and have no respect for people like us,” he said.

Rentería González has since been deported to Mexico, a country he barely knows. His family brought him to the United States when he was 5 years old.

All of the trans immigrants said they are still struggling to cope with the trauma they experienced.

After a bacterial infection she had contracted while in detention devastated her feet, Westley said a doctor in Mexico had to remove six of her toenails. She is still recovering from the vaginal infection, which has made dilation difficult, and she is concerned that her vaginal canal has partially closed and will no longer function properly.

Far from her friends, her boyfriend and her mother in New Orleans, Westley lives life in a new country. She said she mostly stays in a rental property and gets food delivered, as she worries about her safety in a city known for its high levels of violence against trans people. Westley hopes to return to the United States, but knows it may take a long time. In the meantime, she continues her advocacy work and is making plans to create a kind of sanctuary home to support trans immigrants who are deported to Mexico.

“I FaceTime with my animals every day,” she added. “That’s what keeps me strong.”

Joseph Heller contributed translation of this story.