Roxsana Hernandez, 33, who died in ICE custody Friday after arriving in the US with the Central American migrant caravan.

A transgender woman who was part of the caravan of Central American migrants that arrived at the US border earlier this month died in custody Friday from what appeared to be cardiac arrest.

Roxsana Hernandez, 33, died in the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at a hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She had been taken to another hospital in New Mexico more than a week earlier with symptoms of pneumonia, dehydration, and complications associated with HIV.

Hernandez asked for asylum at the San Ysidro port of entry on May 9, according to Pueblo Sin Fronteras, which organized the caravan. The group said she was first detained by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in holding cells known as "iceboxes" because of how cold they are.

In addition to being cold, Pueblo Sin Fronteras said, Hernandez lacked adequate food and medical care and was held in a cell where the lights were turned on 24 hours a day. On May 16, she was then taken to a transgender unit at the Cibola County Correctional Center, a federal prison facility in Milan, New Mexico, that contracts with ICE.

The following day Hernandez was admitted to Cibola General Hospital and was later transferred via air ambulance to Albuquerque's Lovelace Medical Center, where she remained in the intensive care unit until she died on May 25. The preliminary cause of death was cardiac arrest, according to ICE.

In an interview with BuzzFeed News last month, Hernandez said she had fled Honduras in part because of the discrimination and violence she faced for being transgender.

Four months before joining the caravan, Hernandez said, she was walking home when MS-13 gang members started screaming "We don't want you in this neighborhood, you fucking faggot" at her before gang-raping her.

"Four of them raped me and as a result I got HIV," Hernandez told BuzzFeed News. "Trans people in my neighborhood are killed and chopped into pieces, then dumped inside potato bags."

Standing in front of a church in Puebla, Mexico, playing with a silver cross around her neck, Hernandez said that gangs had continued to threaten her and told her she had to leave the area where she lived in Honduras.

"I didn't want to come to Mexico — I wanted to stay in Honduras but I couldn't," Hernandez said. "They kill trans people in Honduras. I'm scared of that."

Hernandez said she was able to put some money together to head to Guatemala. Her plan was to return to the US, from which she had previously been deported three times. She had some family in the US but said they did not accept her because she was trans.

From Guatemala she went to Mexico, where she eventually linked up with the caravan of 1,200 to 1,500 migrants heading north.