Despite Biden’s campaign promises to “advance LGBTQ+ equality” and “take urgent action” to reform immigration policy, trans women like Maura Martinez continue to be detained by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Martinez, a 41-year-old trans woman who was born in Nicaragua, has been detained in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in San Diego for the past two years.
In an interview with The Guardian, she said that she feels like she’s been “forgotten.”
“I am a human being,” she said. “I’m just asking for an opportunity to stay in the United States and to be free and be safe.”
Martinez, who gained lawful permanent residence after coming to the U.S. as a teenager, was first detained by police as an adult in 2017 after an incident in which she threw a rock at a person in self-defense. She was reincarcerated for breaking parole following the incident and was handed over to ICE on the day of her scheduled release from prison in 2019.
But if deported, Martinez would be sent to Nicaragua, where she has no family or support system. “It would mean death to me,” she told The Guardian.
Her lawyers applied for asylum last year, but the request was denied.
In detention, Martinez says that she has been beaten by male detainees and placed in solitary confinement for extended periods of time. “I felt like I had no rights from the moment I got to the detention center,” she said. “It’s like reliving all of the trauma that I suffered as a child, with the way people harass me and make fun of me.”
The detention center she’s being held in, Otay Mesa, has a track record of mistreatment and neglect of trans people and people living with HIV. According to an April report by the ACLU Foundation of San Diego and Imperial Counties, detainees allege that they have been denied HIV medication and hormone therapy, as well as being subjected to verbal, physical, and sexual abuse. The facility has also placed trans people in housing that is not consistent with their gender identities.
Otay Mesa, which is run by for-profit detention facility operator CoreCivic, has also been accused of systemically using prolonged solitary confinement, which is severely harmful to the physical and mental health of detained persons. It was also the site of the first COVID-19 death of an ICE detainee last year.
These kinds of abuses are unfortunately not specific to Martinez’s facility. Trans people in ICE detention are often housed in facilities that don’t match their gender and are also routinely put in extended solitary confinement. Of respondents who had been incarcerated in the past year, the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey reported that nearly a quarter had been physically assaulted, and one in 5 had been sexually assaulted, whether by staff or other detained persons.
Several other recent cases of trans people detained by ICE have made headlines. The family of Roxsana Hernandez, a refugee from Honduras who died in detention in 2018, is currently in the process of suing the federal government over her death. Their suit alleges abuse and mistreatment, which an autopsy confirmed. And Kelly Gonzalez Aguilar, another trans asylum seeker who was released last July, spent a record 1,051 days in ICE custody.
It is unclear how many trans people are currently being detained by ICE, though the agency reportedly had just 31 self-identified trans people in detention according to a November 2020 report by The Guardian.
Martinez’s lawyers are concerned for her safety if ICE goes through with her deportation. Tania Linares Garcia, who is a senior attorney with the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), told reporters that trans people are “overly criminalized” and that trans immigrants face “double punishment” that can “lead to their deaths” when it comes to deportation proceedings.
“She was homeless, and she was trying to defend herself against someone who was threatening to harm her,” Garcia said, “and instead of getting the help she needed, she was convicted.”
During his presidential campaign, Biden promised reforms to the U.S. immigration system, including ensuring that ICE and Customs and Border Protection are “held accountable for inhumane treatment.” But the past few months have seen few changes to the current situation, with the president recently coming under fire for maintaining the low Trump-era cap on the number of refugees admitted into the country before reversing the decision.
And while activists have met with Biden and with DHS officials, they worry that change will not come soon enough to save Martinez and other women who remain locked in ICE facilities, with no help on the way.
Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for them.’s weekly newsletter here.
