WASHINGTON – Transgender advocates lay down in the street outside the White House on Tuesday as part of a rally demanding that the president release undocumented transgender individuals from what they called unsafe immigration detention facilities.
Transgender individuals housed among men are 13 times more likely to be at risk of sexual assault, making them among the most susceptible to sexual abuse while confined to these facilities, according to a 2014 Center for American Progress report.
“Because LGBTQ folk are not able to be kept safe, it is crystal clear that the only solution is to release them from detention,” Jorge Amaro, the director of media and public relations with the National LGBTQ Task Force, said at the rally.
U.S. immigration officials announced Monday that they would begin to house undocumented transgender immigrants with the gender with which they identify. This is aimed at better protecting transgender individuals confined in immigration detention facilities, the officials said.
“It is an indication that the administration is listening to what LGBTQ advocates have been calling for, but it is really not enough,” Amaro said.
According to the Center for American Progress report, transgender women who are housed with men may be required to strip and shower with men and are vulnerable to sexual harassment from the guards.
Felipe Sousa-Rodriguez, deputy managing director for United We Dream, said he does not trust immigration officials to follow the new directive. But even if they do, he said, transgender undocumented immigrants should not be in a “dysfunctional and unnecessary detention facility.”
In 2013, the Government Accountability Office found that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data system described 215 allegations of sexual abuse and assault from October 2009 and March 2013 in centers that admitted more than 1.2 million people. However, ICE’s information was not complete, limiting its usefulness.
Monday’s announcement came less than a week after Jennicet Gutiérrez, a transgender woman, heckled the president inside the White House.
“President Obama, release all LGBTQ immigrants from detention,” Gutierrez reportedly told the president.