An ICE spokesperson claimed in a statement to USA Today that it “recognizes the unique, long-term health care management needs of detainees who identify as transgender and wants to ensure transgender detainees have access to every resource available at ICE’s disposal.” But this flies in the face of accounts from transgender people who have been detained at the Cibola County Correctional Center, which is operated by private prison profiteer CoreCivic.

“In April, 2019, seven organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, investigated Cibola and reported that the center had inadequate medical and mental healthcare, abuses related to solitary confinement, discrimination and verbal abuse, and inappropriate meals, among other issues,” a number of groups said in a complaint last year. Later in 2019, nearly 30 transgender detainees at Cibola “called for an investigation into poor medical services—including HIV care—and mistreatment at the facility,” the groups said.

Cibola is also the notorious facility where asylum-seeker Roxsana Hernández was jailed before dying while in ICE custody in 2018. ICE officials, clearly told to preserve key evidence around her case, deleted it anyway. “We are alarmed by reports that ICE failed to preserve surveillance footage related to the death of Roxsana Hernández,” members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, as well as several House committee chairs, wrote to the Homeland Security inspector general. “This video footage would have shown Ms. Hernandez’s final days in ICE detention before she was transferred to the hospital and died.”

It’s important to remember that vulnerable populations, like transgender asylum-seekers, don’t have to be detained in the first place. Releasing them to sponsors and community organizations is the best option. Instead, they are shuffled from facility to facility, which could not only make it harder for attorneys and advocates to gain access to them, but continue to expose them to harm. “ICE is not meeting even its own standards for the care and safety of transgender people in its custody,” said National Immigrant Justice Center senior attorney Tania Linares Garcia, who is also among those calling for their release.