Campaign Action
Sixty advocates protested outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) building in New Mexico this week, demanding answers regarding the death of Roxsana Hernández while in their custody. Hernández, a 33-year-old transgender woman who was a part of the so-called “caravan” of Central American asylum-seekers, died in an Albuquerque hospital on May 25 due to cardiac arrest, ICE claimed in a statement.
But what isn’t clear are the conditions that Hernández was under during her detention. ICE said she “was admitted to Cibola General Hospital with symptoms of pneumonia, dehydration and complications associated with HIV,” but was she was being treated prior to going to the hospital? “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,” according to research.
Advocates want justice for Hernández, as well as the release of the estimated 60 people detained in the privately run Cibola County Correctional Center’s transgender unit. "We often face a lot of isolation and misgendering," said Gabriela Hernandez of the New Mexico Dream Team. "And so we see a lot of transgender women in the male detention centers. And so the sexual assaults are much much higher."
The deplorable conditions facing LGBTQ immigrants in ICE detention are well documented. According to a devastating report from the Center for American Progress, “LGBT people in ICE custody are 97 times more likely to be sexually victimized than non-LGBT people in detention,” and while Cibola has a transgender pod, “that facility’s contract with ICE does not include a requirement that it comply” with a memo from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on trans detainees.
Hernández never wanted to leave her home country of Honduras in the first place, but was forced to after she was raped by gang members. As a result of that assault, she contracted HIV. "We don't want you in this neighborhood, you fucking faggot,” they told her. "I wanted to stay in Honduras but I couldn't," she later said. "They kill trans people in Honduras. I'm scared of that." Hernández fled here for sanctuary. Instead, she lost her life.
Just days after Hernández’s death, another migrant woman, 20-year-old Claudia Patricia Gómez González, was shot in the head and killed by a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent. In the hours that ensued, Border Patrol lied about the circumstances around her killing, first claiming she ambushed an agent with “blunt objects,” and then dropping any mention of that and canceling a press conference. “I want justice,” her mother sobbed from Guatemala. “Why did they do this to her? They should have just sent her back home … why did they do this? They killed her.”
"We are out here to demand explanations,” the New Mexico Dream Team continued. “Because every single time, ICE has not explained how or why this keeps happening. The conditions are pretty bad. And being transgender, LGBTQ, undocumented, it’s even worse."