Transgender woman seeking U.S. asylum in migrant caravan dies in ICE custody

Daniel Gonzalez | The Republic | azcentral.com

Advocates called on U.S. immigration authorities Wednesday 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.

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, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said

She was hospitalized at Cibola General Hospital and then airlifted to Lovelace Medical Center in Albuquerque, ICE said in a written statement. She died Friday at the center, and the preliminary cause was cardiac arrest.

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ICE identified the detainee as Jeffry Hernandez in its statement.

Organizers from the immigrant-rights group Pueblo Sin Fronteras, which translates to town without borders, questioned whether Hernandez had received adequate medical care while in custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and then ICE.

Hernandez presented herself May 9 to U.S. border officers at the San Ysidro port of entry near San Diego 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.

Immigration authorities don't do a good job of protecting transgender migrants from abuses or providing them with medical care while in custody seeking asylum, advocates say. They already are fleeing persecution and violence in their home countries when they arrive in the United States.

“It is alarming that transgender communities continue to face transphobic violence outside and inside of detention walls," says Flor Bermudez, legal director at the Transgender Law Center. “This is why TLC’s Trans Immigrant Defense Effort 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," she said. "Transgender people should not be detained by ICE at all."

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