U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
Chad F. Wolf
Acting Secretary of Homeland Security
Washington, D.C. 20528
Twitter: @DHS_Wolf
Matthew T. Albence
Deputy Director and Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Director
U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement
500 12th St., SW
Washington, D.C. 20536
March 21, 2020
ICE Needs to #FreeKelly, It is a Matter of Life or Death
The TransLatin@ Coalition, along with other national immigrant and human rights organizations, call for the immediate release of ALL people being held in immigration detention, especially transgender women, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. The urgency of this demand is especially present for transgender women who have spent prolonged periods of time in detention, and have developed significant medical health needs or have had their medical exacerbated by the inadequate care provided at ICE Detention facilities.
For the past year, TransLatin@ Coalition has been organizing to #FreeKelly, Kelly is a 23-year-old transgender asylum seeker who has been detained for nearly three years. Like many transgender folks in the inhumane immigration detention system, she has suffered medical neglect and has been put in solitary confinement arbitrarily, in one instance for four months straight. Kelly has been transferred three times and is now being held in Aurora Detention Center in Colorado, after the Cibola Detention facility in New Mexico where she was previously housed abruptly moved all transgender immigrants from their facility. Despite the fact that she has fled from her country of origin as an unaccompanied minor and for reasons related to her safety, Kelly has been denied her petition for parole multiple times and is being forcefully held in immigration detention with extreme health needs, only putting her at risk for life-threatening conditions, especially right now during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We have just been informed that Kelly has been diagnosed pre-diabetic, and has been neglected of her significant dietary and medication needs. Kelly can feel her health is deteriorating, fears the risk of contracting coronavirus, and is being tortured by ICE. At this rate, given the widespread ICE raids and arrests that are continuously happening despite the quarantine, Kelly’s conditions will likely get worse and detention centers will further get overcrowded.
Kelly is met with the dangerous decision of self-deporting and risking her life in a country that threatens her existence or choosing to stay in a detention facility that will potentially never release and leave her to die slowly.
Several transgender women have died in ICE custody due to medical neglect and inhumane treatment, such as the cases of Roxsana Hernandez and Johana Medina, and we cannot lose another community member to the structural, and institutional violence that our immigration system forces upon trans people. This tactic of prolonging release and providing little to no care to people in detention is a plot by ICE to slowly harm, and kill, immigrant communities. ICE has shown that they intend to be a killing machine and we must not stop until every vulnerable person in immigration detention is released!
Detention of asylum-seekers should not be a part of the asylum process. We should not expose transgender immigrants to continue to be harmed by placing them in detention facilities that restrict their access to appropriate, sensitive, and competent care. The detention of asylum-seekers or other migrants solely on the basis of their migration status constitutes arbitrary detention under U.S. and international law. Detaining Kelly under false allegations is a violation of Kelly's human rights under international law, this is torture!
As an organization that believes in supporting the safety and lives of those seeking asylum and fleeing persecution, we condemn the prolonged detention of transgender immigrants and are demanding they be released NOW! ICE continues to criminalize immigrants for seeking safety, tortures them while in custody without taking into consideration the specific needs of these communities, especially Transgender Latina immigrants. Given the COVID-19 pandemic, the time is now for Kelly and all trans immigrants to be released, without hesitation as the lives of trans women who are in immigration detention are at the mercy of the ICE killing machine.