Arely Westley, an undocumented transgender lady who grew up in New Orleans, spent six months in immigration detention in her youth. She didn’t need anybody else to should expertise the cruelty, confusion and isolation of detention.
After her launch, neighborhood organizers helped her discover protected housing, inspiring her to combat for different trans migrants navigating the system alone. Westley met with trans detainees in immigration services throughout the state to attach them with attorneys, raised commissary funds and campaigned to close down services that had histories of abuse.
In 2024, she was honored by the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Middle — just lately renamed the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Middle — for her work, incomes its annual human rights award. On the ceremony, Westley spoke about surviving human trafficking, in addition to her horrific experiences whereas being detained.
When Donald Trump returned to the White Home final yr after campaigning on a platform that denigrated trans individuals and immigrants, Westley was working as a marketing campaign director at BreakOut!, a company serving to Black and Latinx trans youth. She was within the strategy of acquiring a particular visa for trafficking survivors and had obtained gender-affirming surgical procedures. Her house was a spot the place she felt protected, and he or she could possibly be surrounded by her 10 canines, two cats, bunnies and chickens.
She wasn’t notably frightened when she obtained a name final January from the New Orleans area workplace of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Over the telephone, and in a textual content message reminder reviewed by HuffPost, Westley’s supervisory officer informed her they acknowledged her position as a neighborhood chief and wished to supply her extra lenient supervision. Westley had been granted an Order of Supervision in 2024, which features equally to probation and allowed her to dwell within the U.S. whereas awaiting remaining deportation orders and an replace on her visa — shortly after profitable her award.
However when Westley reported to the workplace, brokers handcuffed her. Over the following a number of months, she was detained at a Louisiana facility the place she says she was denied entry to medical care, spent lengthy stretches in solitary confinement and was subjected to verbal abuse and transphobic harassment. She mentioned medical personnel on the facility informed her they didn’t know the best way to take care of her, and he or she continues to be recovering from a number of infections that went untreated throughout her detention.
Sarah Decker, a senior employees lawyer with the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Middle and Westley’s lawyer, mentioned individuals dwelling beneath an Order of Supervision have been “very simple targets” throughout the early days of the Trump administration’s deportation marketing campaign. (Westley filed — and lost — a case difficult ICE’s use of “ruses” to get her to return to the New Orleans area workplace.)
Westley, now 33, was born in Honduras, however in November, a decide ordered her to be despatched to Mexico as an alternative as a result of her house nation is so harmful for trans individuals. She hardly knew anybody when she arrived in Mexico.
“I symbolize all the things that Trump hates,” Westley mentioned over the telephone. “I’m an immigrant, I’m a trans individual and I’m an activist. I believe I used to be the right goal for his administration.”
Illustration: Grace Russell for HuffPost
The Trump administration has made it extra harmful to be a trans immigrant in ICE custody over the previous yr. Although trans migrants have traditionally confronted discrimination in detention, the president’s guarantees of mass deportation and rolling again trans individuals’s fundamental rights have collided with brutal pressure.
Over the previous six months, HuffPost spoke with a few dozen individuals — together with detainees, attorneys and advocates — and reviewed over 1,000 pages of court docket paperwork, medical data and emails to uncover new ranges of cruelty for trans migrants. Three mentioned they have been subjected to critical medical neglect, harassment and solitary confinement for weeks at a time — which the United Nations considers to be a form of torture. All mentioned they felt they have been uniquely focused for abuse for being transgender.
“The Trump administration is taking a really aggressive and violent method towards immigrants — and that has escalated. We are able to’t actually quantify that due to the dearth of transparency, however we all know that Trump is concentrating on migrants and trans people, and that’s emboldening bigots all over the place,” mentioned Dale Melchert, a senior employees lawyer for the Transgender Regulation Middle, a nonprofit legislation agency.
It’s tough to totally account for the abuses trans immigrants face beneath Trump. ICE abruptly stopped providing data on the variety of transgender individuals held in detention, regardless that Congress requires the company to publish these statistics. Advocates have been beforehand allowed extra entry to detention facilities the place they may go to trans detainees and repeatedly meet with an LGBTQ+ liaison inside ICE to lift issues. However that entry has been curtailed in Trump’s second time period, and three Department of Homeland Security agencies tasked with immigration oversight have been shuttered.
“Now we solely hear concerning the hurt after the actual fact,” Isa Noyola, the director of the Border Butterflies Mission, a bunch that assists LGBTQ+ asylum seekers on the U.S. southern border, informed HuffPost. “We’ll by no means know the depths of the hurt occurring inside detention facilities.”
Folks in ICE detention might be held for weeks, months or years, relying on their immigration standing, authorized proceedings and prison historical past. Detention facilities aren’t speculated to be punitive, and facility requirements point out detainees ought to have entry to authorized illustration and medical care.
At the beginning of his second time period, Trump dismantled the few safeguards that have been established beneath President Barack Obama — and continued by President Joe Biden — to guard LGBTQ+ immigrants from sexual assault and medical neglect in detention. On his first day in workplace, Trump signed an government order that declared intercourse to be binary and immutable, and directed immigration detention facilities to deal with individuals based mostly on their intercourse assigned at start, regardless of the gender marker on their documentation.
DHS, which oversees ICE, eliminated all point out of trans individuals from its detention standards and changed any references to gender with references to organic intercourse. ICE deleted an Obama-era memo concerning transgender care from its web site, which established greatest practices for medical care, housing, clothes and bogs. An investigation by the workplace of Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) discovered over 1,000 reports of human rights abuses over the previous yr, together with 206 studies of medical neglect.
HuffPost has recognized a minimum of 10 contracts between ICE and personal jail corporations which have eliminated the trans care necessities, citing Trump’s government order on intercourse. ICE has spent millions outsourcing immigrant detention to non-public jail corporations reminiscent of CoreCivic and GEO Group, which have each been accused of mistreating transgender detainees.
“We’ll by no means know the depths of the hurt occurring inside detention facilities.”
– Isa Noyola, director of the Border Butterflies Mission
Liza Doubossarskaia, a employees lawyer at Immigration Equality, an LGBTQ+ immigration rights group, mentioned it has turn into harder for trans asylum-seekers specifically to discover attorneys and win their circumstances since Trump reentered workplace.
She spoke about one trans lady who was detained by ICE whereas within the hospital receiving surgical procedure. Doubossarskaia mentioned brokers made enjoyable of her as a result of she’d misplaced tooth in a automotive accident. The girl has since been deported to a rustic in Latin America that’s hostile to trans individuals, and Doubossarskaia has misplaced contact along with her.
“Issues have been already unhealthy, however usually they’re getting worse with out the actually strong protections,” Doubossarskaia mentioned.
As ICE’s funds expands, so has the scope of its surveillance and knowledge assortment actions, together with these involving trans individuals. DHS proposed a rule final yr that may require immigrants to submit DNA testing to show their “organic intercourse” in an effort to obtain sure immigration advantages.
Illustration: Grace Russell for HuffPost
Inside the first few weeks of Westley’s detention on the all-female South Louisiana ICE Processing Middle (SLIPC) in Basile, her well being started to say no.
She developed a painful cough that she couldn’t shake after being denied every day remedy and dietary supplements she wanted to handle a persistent sickness, Decker, her lawyer, wrote in emails to ICE on the time. Westley was additionally not given her estrogen hormone remedy, even if her physique not produced intercourse hormones by itself. Being denied hormone remedy, particularly after surgical procedures to cease naturally produced intercourse hormones, may cause a variety of well being points, together with extreme gender dysphoria, anxiousness, despair, cognitive issues and modifications in bone density.
By Might, Westley developed what regarded like an an infection on the website of her vaginoplasty, a surgical procedure she had had the yr earlier than to assemble a vagina. As a part of the post-operative care, Westley wanted to insert dilators a minimum of twice weekly. She mentioned she was denied entry to her dilators throughout the first month; as soon as employees lastly gave her these instruments, Westley was shuttled to solitary confinement to carry out the dilations in a extra sterile and personal setting. Spending any period of time alone in a cell made Westley really feel claustrophobic. Her chest tightened and he or she felt like she couldn’t breathe, making the dilation course of much more uncomfortable.
At one level, she remembers going to make use of the restroom and seeing her underwear stuffed with discharge. She felt excessive ache. Medical employees informed her they have been “not outfitted to deal with her medical wants and haven’t any understanding of post-vaginoplasty medical care,” in line with an e-mail Decker despatched to the heads of ICE’s area workplace in New Orleans. Decker pressured that the discharge could possibly be the symptom of a “probably life-threatening an infection.”
Westley mentioned a health care provider refused to deal with her however requested her uncomfortable questions on her vaginoplasty. In June, a special physician referred Westley to an exterior gynecologist, a transgender care supplier, and an oncologist to observe up on a colon most cancers screening she’d had beforehand, in line with Decker’s emails. However by the point she was deported in November, Westley mentioned, she had not been taken to any of her exterior medical appointments.
ICE has not paid any of its third-party medical care suppliers since October, and the company famous it is not going to start processing claims till April of this yr. The company’s failure to pay medical payments has brought on some medical suppliers to cease caring for individuals in detention, Popular Information first reported, citing an unnamed supply. One other administration supply informed CBS News Atlanta that this has brought on some detainees to be denied important medical therapy.
With fewer suppliers and a record number of detainees, medical neglect at detention facilities is predicted to worsen. Immigration advocates fear that, for trans immigrants, who could require extra advanced and constant well being care, that neglect could possibly be deadly.
In a press release to HuffPost, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin didn’t reply particular questions concerning the allegations of trans detainees, however she broadly denied claims of medical neglect in ICE custody. “That is the most effective healthcare than many aliens have obtained of their complete lives,” she mentioned. Nonetheless, she acknowledged that detainees aren’t given hormone remedy. “We’re NOT losing U.S. taxpayer {dollars} to offer hormone remedy to unlawful aliens looking for to vary their intercourse,” she mentioned.
1000’s of miles away from SLIPC, in Arizona, a 37-year-old trans lady from Iran referred to as Melissa confronted practically an identical boundaries to medical take care of issues as a result of her vaginoplasty, which she had obtained greater than a decade earlier. (Melissa is being recognized by a pseudonym to guard her privateness.)
Whereas in detention at an Arizona detention facility, Melissa mentioned she skilled vaginal bleeding and discharge for 2 months and didn’t obtain her hormone remedy for 4 months. Detention facility employees acknowledged that she would “profit from getting transferred to a facility that gives these companies,” in line with medical data reviewed by HuffPost. However Melissa was put into medical isolation, a type of solitary confinement, twice when she tried to advocate for care, in line with her lawyer, Sahar Jalili Pawelski.
ICE brokers poked enjoyable at her dilation instruments and threw away her clothes, Melissa mentioned. She was given hydroxyzine, an antihistamine usually used to manage anxiousness and insomnia; she took it, not figuring out what it was or how a lot it will make her sleep.
“I used to be so out of it, I used to be simply sleeping 24/7. Generally I didn’t know if it was daylight or nighttime,” Melissa informed HuffPost in Farsi. (Jalili Pawelski translated.)
Melissa had waited years to acquire asylum in the US, after the so-called “Muslim ban” throughout Trump’s first time period delayed her plans. 5 days after Trump was inaugurated for a second time, Melissa was lastly on the U.S. border. She had left Iran after being overwhelmed by police and abused by transphobic members of the family.
As she waited in line on the processing heart, she seen the officers signaling her means and yelling phrases in English that she didn’t perceive.
“They’re saying it’s important to go to the opposite line as a result of they’re unsure if you happen to’re male or feminine,” one lady translated into Farsi. “They’re suspicious of your brow.”
At first, Melissa was confused. Then she felt humiliated and began to cry. Her start certificates mentioned “feminine,” and he or she had obtained gender-affirming surgical procedures whereas nonetheless in Iran. However an immigration official had deemed her brow to be too masculine, which meant she was pulled apart and put in solitary detention.
Illustration: Grace Russell for HuffPost
Solitary confinement is widely used throughout the immigration detention system. Generally trans individuals are positioned in solitary to “protect” them from different individuals in detention, however it will also be used as punishment.
Melissa was later transferred to a different facility, Otay Mesa in California, the place she was once more positioned in solitary confinement. Three days into her keep, she mentioned she was taken to a room with facility officers who started to interrogate her: Had she ever raped a toddler? Did she wish to be with males or ladies? Did she wish to harm any individual?
“Of the 1,100 individuals I’ve labored with in detention services, that is the primary time I’m listening to one thing like this. It’s by no means been this invasive or this current,” Jalili Pawelski mentioned.
“I really feel like her mere presence was making them uncomfortable,” she added.
Melissa has since gained her asylum case and is staying with a number household in New Mexico. However DHS nonetheless hasn’t granted her an I-94, a type that proves her skill to remain within the nation. With out it, Melissa can’t work or get a driver’s license.
“I don’t know the place to go, I don’t know what to do. From stress, I’m getting extra destroyed day-after-day,” she informed HuffPost.
Luis Renteria-Gonzalez, a 37-year-old transgender man, alleged he was sexually harassed and abused whereas in detention at SLIPC in Louisiana. He was pressured to work in an “off the books” labor program on the facility, in line with a federal declare filed by attorneys on the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Middle, the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, and the Nationwide Immigration Mission.
Between 2023 and 2025, Renteria-Gonzalez mentioned employees recruited him to be a part of a late-night work program. An assistant warden pressured him to carry out arduous handbook labor with out protecting gear. As soon as, he mentioned, he used an industrial-grade chemical to strip facility flooring, and it burned by way of his sneakers and onto his ft. He mentioned the warden picked on him and different trans males, saying, “You suppose you’re a person? You’re going to work like a person.”
After Renteria-Gonzalez shared his experiences with The Guardian final yr, he mentioned he skilled retaliation: He was put into solitary confinement for 40 days and didn’t obtain satisfactory medical care. Whereas in solitary, he mentioned, he had problem gaining access to the telephones, talking together with his kids, mom and lawyer for only some minutes at a time.
“It’s not simple in right here, you already know. It’s by no means been simple, however beneath this administration, I really feel like issues are simply that a lot more durable for us,” Renteria-Gonzalez mentioned, talking from SLIPC.
“I really feel like a variety of the phrases that Trump has used to check with individuals like us has just about inspired officers to deal with us in any sort of means and haven’t any respect for individuals like us,” he mentioned.
Renteria-Gonzalez has since been deported to Mexico, a rustic he barely is aware of. He was dropped at the US by his household when he was 5 years outdated.
The trans migrants all mentioned they’re nonetheless struggling to deal with the trauma they skilled.
After a bacterial an infection she had contracted whereas in detention ravaged her ft, Westley mentioned she needed to get six of her toenails eliminated by a health care provider in Mexico. She continues to be recovering from the vaginal an infection, which has made it tough for her to dilate, and he or she worries that her vaginal canal has partially closed and won’t operate correctly once more.
Far-off from her pals, her boyfriend and her mother in New Orleans, Westley is navigating life in a brand new nation. She mentioned she principally stays inside a rental property and will get meals delivered, as she’s frightened about her security in a metropolis identified for prime ranges of violence towards trans individuals. Westley hopes to return to the US, however she is aware of it could take a very long time. Within the meantime, she’s persevering with her advocacy work, drawing up plans to create a sort of sanctuary house to help trans migrants who get deported to Mexico.
“I FaceTime my animals day-after-day,” she added. “That’s the factor that’s holding me robust.”
Joseph Heller contributed translation for this story.
