Roxsana Hernández Rodriguez, 33, died in ICE custody after arriving in the US with a migrant caravan.

US immigration officials deleted surveillance footage of a transgender asylum-seeker who died while in custody last year, according to internal emails reviewed by BuzzFeed News. Attorneys say the evidence was crucial in a pending wrongful death lawsuit.

Attorneys representing Roxsana Hernández family in a potential lawsuit said that under federal rules, ICE is required to preserve evidence, including electronic information, if it reasonably anticipates it will be part of litigation. The lawyers maintain that ICE should have anticipated being sued over the 33-year-old’s death.

Andrew Free, an attorney working on Hernández’s case along with the Transgender Law Center, said the video would have provided evidence of Hernández's state of health and what condition she was in while in US custody.

"ICE and CoreCivic have consistently denied wrongdoing and stated that they in effect provided Roxsana with all the health care she needed," Free told BuzzFeed News. "The video would be essential and frankly irreplaceable evidence of whether that was true."

ICE said it does not comment on pending litigation.

“That said, absence of comment should not be construed as agreement with or stipulation to any of the allegations,” ICE said in a statement to BuzzFeed News.

In an Aug. 22, 2018, email, an analyst in ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility asked for a CD of the video surveillance. The footage was of Hernández’s time at the Cibola County Correctional Center (CCCC) in Milan, New Mexico. The emails were obtained through a public records request.

“The requested video is no longer available," said a supervisory detention and deportation officer in an Aug. 28, 2018, email. "The footage is held in memory up to around 90 days. They attempted to locate and was negative.”

Hernández was in the custody of ICE at a private prison operated by CoreCivic when she died in 2018 at a hospital in Albuquerque. CoreCivic, previously known as Corrections Corporations of America, is one of the largest private prison companies in the US and operates under contracts with ICE.

Lynly Egyes, legal director at the Transgender Law Center, said CoreCivic and ICE should have anticipated there would be a lawsuit because Hernández’s family requested an independent autopsy that was performed on June 8, more than a month before the Aug. 28, 2018, email.

"That autopsy alone made it clear there was interest in this case," Egyes told BuzzFeed News. "When a detainee death review is conducted, it's important to keep track of all the documents to understand why someone died, and for that reason alone, they should've been keeping all of this evidence."

In a statement CoreCivic said it didn't receive notice Hernandez's family was considering a lawsuit until Nov. 26, 2018, said Brandon Bissell, a spokesperson for the private prison company.

"Counsel is well aware of the technical limitations of digital equipment used in detention facilities and could have easily requested that any digital images, if any, be preserved," Bissell said. "He did not do so."

Bissell also said there was no indication of willful action by CoreCivic to delete video content, as digital camera equipment is not capable of retaining images beyond 90 days at Cibola.

"Whatever digital images that might have existed had been long overwritten," Bissell said. "This process of holding and overwriting digital images is standard practice in detention facilities."

The Honduran native died in ICE custody on May 25, a little over two weeks after she requested asylum, on May 9, at the San Ysidro port of entry that connects San Diego to Tijuana. Hernández had traveled to the border as part of a caravan of Central American immigrants in the spring of 2018 that drew the ire of President Trump. The New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator said her cause of death was multicentric Castleman disease due to complications of AIDS.



In November 2018, the Transgender Law Center and Free filed a notice of wrongful death claim, which they said was the first step in attempting to hold parties responsible in Hernández’s death. A lawsuit hasn’t been filed.