Roxsana Hernandez was first mentioned in our post about queer discrimination in Central America and political refugees on Transgender Remembrance Week. New details surrounding Roxsana’s death have emerged and raise larger questions about the protocols of detention espoused by the U.S Customs and Border Protection. Flagrant violation of U.S-sponsored international law is the new norm.

Initially, ICE reported that Roxsana was dead due to a cardiac arrest. They confirmed that she had been picked up at the San Isidro entry at San Diego and then sent to a holding facility for transgender people in New Mexico where she died nine days later. The Transgender Law Center, who paid for a private autopsy, is now representing her family.

Roxsana, as the autopsy suggests, more than likely died of complications relating to withholding of water and HIV, but also revealed that Roxsana’s body was covered in bruising along her back and abdomen consistent with severe trauma as well as bruising along her wrists consistent with tight shackles. In other words, she was beaten, denied water, denied medical care, and cuffed tightly.

Humanitarian Fiasco

This demoralizing death at the hands of a government agency is yet another byproduct of the Trump Administration’s toxic vitriolic sentiment toward trans-people. It is also an indication that Roxsana’s treatment may be common practice in these detention centers. Her brutal death was negligent at best but murderous at worst in the hands of the United States government.

The American Immigration Council reports that individuals that are detained at the border are routinely subjected to extreme temperatures, water and food deprivation, basic hygiene item denial, and denial of medical treatment. Individuals that have been subjected to these abuses are being represented by them. There has even been a ruling that requires facility officials to get consent before giving children psychoactive drugs, which was a common practice until it was exposed.

A Complicated Issue

While this is a complicated situation at the border without a solution that will please both sides of the argument, humanitarian considerations are due. In the court of public opinion there are the people, like me, who stress that humanitarian considerations should be consistent with international law and there are those who feel that if these migrants come to the border when the United States has said they are not welcome, then they deserve whatever hand they’re dealt when they get here.

And though everyone is entitled to their opinion the United States has already published a binding protocol for the status and protections of refugees via the United Nations, a protocol titled, Convention and Protocol for the Status of Refugees (CPSR) all the way back in 1950. After two amendments, the CPSR expanded the definitions of refugees and outlines humanitarian standards by which they should be approached and managed.

So let’s ask ourselves this question, “was Roxsana and those in the migrant caravans refugees”? CPRS says, yes.

“ A refugee, according to the Convention,

is someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin

owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.

Roxsana Hernandez was a refugee who was denied humanitarian protections that the United States was instrumental in defining in 1950. You can argue, if you’re an asshole, that many of those migrants came here not because they were fleeing persecution but because they just want to come to the United States and invade. Okay, but Roxsana Hernandez, by virtue that she was experiencing persecution for being a transgender woman and because of her “membership of a particular social group” was a refugee. The CPRS also denotes that one could be a refugee if the fear of a return to a country of origin is substantial and even if immigration laws are violated in the country where they seek asylum.

Crime Against Humanity

Water and food are a given one would think. The CPRS states that refugees who are detained are to be granted access to a judge and if the detention of a refugee occurs that they should be, at the minimum, given treatment that is equal that of others detained in similar circumstances. Food and water is that minimum. Therefore, the death of Roxsana Hernandez is a violation of international law and is a crime against humanity.

The GEO Group receive upward of 184 million per year from their management of these detentions sites in conract bids with the government. A Federal Judge in Washington state ordered The GEO Group to release financial data related to the wages being paid to refugees who are detained in their Tacoma location. They had been unwilling to divulge their financials under the premise that it was irrelevant to the case. Financial statments would be used by the court to estimate the value of work that has been performed. Get ’em, Washington State Federal Judge!

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren has sent notice that she intends to investigate GEO’s detention practices. The purpose is to determine if international detention standards are being practiced. Roxsana’s murder is proof that they are not. Suicide within their facilities indicate they are not following international standards of detentions.

Roxzana Deserves Justice

Roxsana Hernandez’s death has implication for migrant queers and Dreamer queers who may end up in detention. Was she the first queer-person subjected to this inhumane treatment under GEO’s custody? I’d wager that she is not alone. Let’s face it, this could be you one day. Human mass migrations are nothing new, and the circumstances under which people flee are widely varied. In Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala there is gang violence and political strife that is leaving people no other option but to flee. Let’s not be so naive and think that just because we’re in America that conditions would never warrant fleeing. Let’s not be so naive as to think that we could never be in Roxsana Hernandez’s is shoes.

Her death could have been prevented. I struggle to believe, but ultimately must believe, that either the security personnel that The GEO Group hires are utterly lacking empathy, or that there were some people who felt compassion for Roxsana during the beatings and withholding of water and did nothing. I’m willing to say that the latter is true. Someone could have come forward to say, “this is wrong,” and didn’t. I’m hopeful that Roxsana’s murder will be a symbol for the notion that Trump’s approach to these arrivals that he calls, “caravans,” leads to crimes against humanity. This makes Donald Trump the perpetrator of such crimes. Let justice be served in the name of Roxsana Hernandez’s bruised and water-deprived body.