Trans Migrants in ICE Detention Are Losing Their Rights and Medical Care

A 25-year-old transgender woman from Venezuela has spent 11 months in a federal immigration detention center for men, where she says she has been assaulted, threatened and deprived of medical care, and has been held in solitary confinement without ready access to water for up to 24 hours a day. The federal government has halted specialized care for transgender detainees in at least 10 detention centers from Calexico, California to Batavia, New York, and no longer consistently provides hormones or other gender-related care. An Obama-era policy establishing basic rights for transgender people in immigration detention was deleted from the DHS website in February 2025.