Advocates Look to ICE to Address Violence Against LGBTs In Immigration

LGBT advocates look to Sarah Salda�a, the next head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to use her authority to address the increasing crisis of physical and sexual violence against vulnerable lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and HIV-positive individuals trapped in immigration detention centers. Immigration Equality and advocates across the country hope the incoming director will set a new course toward more humane treatment.

"We hope to work closely with Salda�a and ICE as we advocate for the implementation of new policies that protect vulnerable LGBT and HIV-positive immigrants," said Caroline Dessert, Executive Director of Immigration Equality. "In detention, LGBT immigrants are often exposed to the same persecution they fled in the first place. Community-based alternatives to immigration detention are effective. Solutions to prevent sexual and psychological harm to LGBT immigrants trapped in detention have been in the hands of the decision-makers at DHS and ICE for years. With new leadership comes a new opportunity for this inhumane and dangerous practice to be corrected."

Toward the end of December 2014, a large coalition of more than 115 LGBTQ, immigrant rights and allied social justice organizations sent the attached joint letter calling on the White House to immediately act to release LGBTQ people from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities.

As witnessed for years by Transgender Law Center in our work, detained LGBTQ immigrants and especially transgender women continuously experience horrific rates of homophobic and transphobic abuse, sexual violence and rape, torture through solitary confinement, and denial of necessary medical care including life-saving HIV medication.

Trans women are the survivors of an astonishing one out of every five substantiated complaints about sexual assault in ICE custody. In light of the President's recent executive action on immigration, which largely excluded LGBTQ immigrants by basing relief from deportation entirely on legally recognized romantic and parental relationships, the White House must act immediately to stop ICE's violence against our transgender immigrant community members.

"Sarah Salda�a will step into an agency that has already recognized some populations simply do not belong in detention centers pending a court date," said Harper Jean Tobin, Director of Policy for the National Center for Transgender Equality. "We hope she will act on the overwhelming evidence that LGBT people -- many of them asylum-seekers and torture survivors -- are one of those populations. Ultimately, responsible leadership will mean working with Congress to roll back ICE's costly reliance on mass detention."

Olga Tomchin, an Immigrant Detention attorney and Soros Justice Fellow at Transgender Law Center, has worked with more than a dozen individual transgender immigrants detained who have all survived unbearable detention conditions.

"Many clients have given up on their asylum cases while detained and accepted deportation to their home countries where they faced extreme violence, rather than continue being abused by ICE," said Tomchin. "ICE has shown over and over that they are incapable of detaining transgender people with even minimal levels of dignity and safety. Thus the only solution is to release transgender immigrants."

Former Transgender Law Center client Barbra Perez declared based on her own experiences that LGBTQ immigrants held in solitary confinement were subject to ridicule and torture, saying, "We are systematically broken down by a system trained to demean, exploit, and deport human beings like cattle!"

"I fled Mexico to try to be safe in the United States as a trans woman. However, at the hands of ICE, I experienced constant transphobic harassment and abuse that is still to this day difficult for me to emotionally and mentally overcome," said former Transgender Law Center client Victoria Villalba.?

Villalbla demanded President Obama act humanely and release all LGBTQ people from immigration detention, adding that, "the realities that my community faces daily around various forms of violence are constant. ICE is holding trans immigrants under violent conditions and is exposing them to more trauma the longer they keep them. Releasing my community from detention is only the first step towards our collective liberation."

"President Obama could easily stop these terrible abuses at the hands of the federal government by directing DHS to classify LGBTQ immigrants as too vulnerable to detain," noted Transgender Law Center Program Manager Isa Noyola.

As the Transgender Law Center continues to advocate for the rights of immigrants, they invite everyone to join the Not One More Deportation/#Not1More campaign and affirm our commitment to the broader immigrants rights movement while advancing the rights of transgender and gender non-conforming communities.