Dear Friend, 

I speak with LGBTQ asylum seekers in immigration detention almost every day. They describe to me the abuse and neglect they endure at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the mistreatment they face from other detained people. Detention is fundamentally unsafe for people who are LGBTQ or living with HIV, so they must be released immediately. 

Next week at the ICE building, Immigration Equality and partner organization Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement will demand that the Biden administration end trans detention. Due to ICE’s negligence, three detained trans women living with HIV—Roxsana Hernandez, Johana Medina, and Victoria Arellano—have died. It didn’t have to be this way. Sign the petition to end trans detention, and we’ll deliver it directly to ICE.

Each day trans people spend in ICE custody, their lives, health, and dignity are in peril. In detention, trans women are routinely called by their male names and placed in the men’s section while trans men are placed in the women’s section. They are humiliated, harassed, and abused by detained people and ICE officers alike. In response to trans people’s dangerous and volatile situations, ICE may put them in solitary confinement “for their own protection.” The cruelty must stop. 
 
Earlier this month, Pablo Sanchez-Gotopo, an immigrant from Venezuela living with HIV, died in ICE custody. Sanchez-Gostopo showed symptoms of COVID after six months in detention. We know firsthand that ICE has been unable or unwilling to protect detained people from the virus. As an immunocompromised person, he was even more at risk of contracting COVID, and he should never have been detained. Add your name to protect people who are trans or living with HIV from the life-threatening conditions of immigration detention.   

Thank you for your support, 

Liza Doubossarskaia, Staff Attorney 
Immigration Equality