Students in Illinois public schools will learn about the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in state and national history after approval today of the Inclusive Curriculum Law by Gov. Pritzker, according to Equality Illinois.
Starting with the 2020-21 school year, the Inclusive Curriculum Law — House Bill 246 — will ensure the inclusion of the contributions of LGBTQ people in the history curriculum taught in Illinois public schools. Illinois is the fifth state to enact such legislation, after California in 2011 and New Jersey, Colorado and Oregon in 2019.
Sponsored by State Rep. Anna Moeller ( D-Elgin ) and State Sen. Heather Steans ( D-Chicago ), the Inclusive Curriculum Law is an initiative of Equality Illinois, the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, and the Legacy Project and is supported by more than forty education, health care, and civil rights organizations across Illinois.
he body of a 40-year-old trans woman known as ‘La Gata’ was found by her family in the province of Santo Domingo de los Tsachilas in the South American country.
This is the eighth case of murder or violent death of a trans person in the country this year, according to Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Diane Rodriguez, the first trans woman elected to Ecuador’s National Assembly, told Reuters: “Once again, the LGBT community in Ecuador is in mourning. We thought (the attacks) were going to decrease, but on the contrary, we’ve been surprised by this year’s statistics.”
The killing has sparked fears of a rise in anti-LGBT violence in the country, which has seen progress for the LGBT+ community in recent years.
The constitutional court in the capital Quito voted five-to-four to approve same-sex marriage in the cases of the two, extending gay marriage across the country.
A 23-year-old Las Vegas man who allegedly wanted to attack Jews and patrons of an LGBTQ bar was arrested on suspicion of possessing parts to make a bomb, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Nevada said Friday.
Conor Climo, who was arrested Thursday, was connected to white supremacists though encrypted online conversations, federal prosecutors said.
“Threats of violence motivated by hate and intended to intimidate or coerce our faith-based and LGBTQ communities have no place in this country,” Nicholas A. Trutanich, U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada, said in a statement.
Climo had already caused concern among his neighbors in 2016 when, in a video posted to his now-deleted YouTube channel, he announced plans to patrol his Centennial Hills neighborhood with an AR-15-style rifle, four 30-round clips, and camouflaged packs.
FBI agents with the Las Vegas Joint Terrorism Task Force began looking at Climo in April when, according to the complaint, they learned he was communicating with the white extremist group Atomwaffen Division.
Members of that group have been linked to at least five deaths since 2017, including a Tampa man who killed his two roommates and told police they were members of the group planning a large-scale attack.
Climo, who faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted, was arraigned in federal court on Friday, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney for Nevada.
His arrest stemmed from an investigation conducted by an FBI task force specializing in monitoring the activities and online communications of extremists and domestic terror groups. The investigation was detailed in an 11-page criminal complaint and probable cause statement filed in court federal prosecutors and the FBI.
During encrypted online conversations with undercover FBI operatives, Climo discussed attacking a Las Vegas synagogue and making Molotov cocktails and improvised explosive devices, according to the criminal complaint.
The evangelical blogger made anti-LGBT comments as he destroyed the books, including young adult novel Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan, illustrated LGBT+ history book This Day in June by Gayle Pitman, Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress by Christine Baldacchino and Families, Families, Families! by Suzanne Lang.
Dorr was found guilty of 5th degree criminal mischief in Sioux County District Court on Tuesday (August 6).
The state of Iowa had sought the maximum penalty, a fine of $625.
Dorr, who represented himself, had told the court: “My motive was to honour the Triune God in whom my faith resides and to protect the children of Orange City from being seduced into a life of sin and misery.”
LGBT+ campaigners condemn ‘reprehensible’ burning of library books
Courtney Reyes of One Iowa told Iowa Public Radio: “Libraries are safe havens where every person has free access to all ideas and expressions without restriction.
“Dorr intended to deprive the children of Orange City that access, to isolate LGBTQ youth from reflections of themselves in stories, to take from all youth the opportunity to empathise with people different than themselves. Such an act is terrible, and we are glad justice was served today.”
Bettis Austen of the ACLU of Iowa said: “Burning public library books is the destruction of ideas, and that’s reprehensible.
“The destruction of books from a public library is a clear attempt to shut down the open sharing and discussion of ideas.
“No one person or even group should decide that they are the gatekeepers of ideas for the rest of the public.”
Dorr has previously expressed the belief that people become gay because of “the harm that adults did to you as children” and urged LGBT+ people to “walk away from your degeneracy… repent and turn back to Christ.”
Explaining his actions, Dorr had said: “I cannot stand by and let the shameful adults at the Orange City Library Board bring the next group of little children into their foul, sexual reality without a firm resistance.”
One of the books burned, David Levithan’s Two Boys Kissing, was ranked as the fifth most-banned book during the American Library Association’s annual Banned Books Week in 2016.
Between August 2 and August 6, Pence was at a conference organised by conservative blogger Erick Erickson, a roundtable with Donald Trump’s religious freedom ambassador Sam Brownback and a “fireside chat” with Mike Farris, CEO of anti-abortion Christian lawyers the Alliance Defending Freedom.
The Human Rights Campaign said that Pence is on an “anti-LGBTQ crusade.”
On August 2, Pence appeared on stage at The Resurgent Gathering conference in Atlanta with Erick Erickson, a conservative evangelical American blogger and radio host who organised the conference.
Erickson, in a blog post on the same day, lashed out at Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg for not “repenting” his sexuality.
Erickson, a former Fox News pundit who hosts a right-wing radio show, took aim at Buttigieg on his blog, The Resurgent.
“Pete Buttigieg is a practising homosexual who wilfully refuses to recognise Holy Scripture identifies that as a sin,” Erickson wrote.
Sam Brownback has repeatedly been homophobic and transphobic
On August 5, Pence met with Sam Brownback, Trump’s new ambassador for religious freedom – who has a history of attacking LGBT+ people, often justifying his actions through religious freedom.
Pence and Brownback were part of an International Religious Freedom roundtable, at which Pence “reaffirmed the administration’s commitment to stand with people of every faith in every country around the world.”
Brownback, who gained Pence’s tie-breaking vote to be confirmed in the Senate, repeatedly promoted homophobic and transphobic policies in his seven years as Governor of Kansas.
Alliance Defending Freedom is anti-LGBT, anti-abortion
On Tuesday (August 6), Pence then went to an event run by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), an evangelical Christian group that lobbies against reproductive rights in the US.
The ADF is currently involved several anti-trans lawsuits, including in Connecticut where it has filed a federal discrimination complaint challenging the state’s policy of letting trans students compete on sports teams according to their gender identity.
A Northern California city has denied a request to hold a so-called Straight Pride rally at a park. Modesto city officials on Friday denied an application by the National Straight Pride Coalition for an Aug. 24 event at Graceada Park.
Organizer Don Grundmann had estimated 500 people would attend. The group says it supports heterosexuality, Christianity and white contributions to Western civilization. Opponents argued the rally would promote hatred of LGBTQ people and minorities.
City spokesman Thomas Reeves says the permit request was denied over safety concerns, because the group lost its liability insurance and the parks department determined the event wasn’t consistent with park use.
The other Straight Pride event in Boston is still on.
More than two years after President Trump tweeted he’d ban transgender people from the U.S. military “in any capacity,” the military services say the policy hasn’t resulted in denials of service for otherwise qualified individuals — a claim transgender advocates say is dubious at best.
The Washington Blade reached out to each of the military services — the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard — to obtain numbers of discharges and denials of enlistment of transgender people since the Defense Department implemented the policy, DTM-19-004, on April 12.
Each of the services — with one exception — had the same reply when asked how many otherwise qualified transgender individuals were denied accession, or enlistment, into their ranks: zero. (The exception was the U.S. Coast Guard, which reported denying enlistment to two applicants under the policy.)
Moreover, each of the services uniformly had the same answer in response to a question about the number of separations under the anti-trans policy: zero.
Stephen Peters, spokesperson for the LGBT group Modern Military Association of America, said the assertion that no transgender applicants were denied enlistment is “incredibly misleading.”
“While I’m sure whoever is responding to your inquiry is justifying their response based on semantics, there is no denying that numerous qualified trans patriots want to enlist or commission into the military,” Peters said.
As evidence of transgender applicants being denied accession into the military, Peters pointed to his organization’s lawsuit against the ban, Karnoski v. Trump, which is pending before a trial court after remand from the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit include Ryan Karnoski, Staff Sergeant Cathrine Schmid and Drew Layne — transgender people blocked under the ban from accession into the military. (Each of these individuals joined the lawsuit before the current policy went into effect on April 12.)
On July 26, 2017, Trump surprised the world, including leadership in the U.S. military, when he announced he’d ban transgender people from the military “in any capacity.”
“After consultation with my generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military,” Trump tweeted. “Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.”
Essentially, the tweet announced a reversal of policy allowing transgender people to serve openly and obtain transition-related care without fear of discharge — a policy that was implemented by former Defense Secretary Ashton Carter in the last six months of the Obama administration.
It took nearly two years for the Pentagon to implement Trump’s pledge to ban transgender troops. The policy became know as DTM-19-004, “Military Service by Transgender Persons and Persons with Gender Dysphoria.”
Why the delay in implementation? Trump tweeted the policy at the same time as former Defense Secretary James Mattis was conducting a six-month study reevaluating transgender service. Following Trump’s tweets, the study concluded transgender people should not serve.
Moreover, courts had until the time blocked Trump’s policy from going into effect. Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the orders from the lower courts, essentially allowing the policy to go forward.
Under DTM-19-004, service members are discharged who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria or are prescribed transition-related care. In terms of enlistments, the policy bars applicants with a history of gender dysphoria — unless the individuals are willing to serve in their biological sex (an extremely small number of transgender people). Applicants who obtained transition-related care are outright banned.
The transgender ban contains an exemption that allows transgender people who came out during the Obama-era policy to continue to serve and receive transition-related care. But those troops could face complications under the ban, such as if they seek promotions, want to change services or drop out to pursue educational opportunities and seek to re-enlist.
The Defense Department has insisted the new policy is a medical-based policy applied to every service member, even though the policy applies to conditions faced solely by transgender people, and is not a ban, even though it bars many transgender people from service.
In response to the Blade inquiry, each of the four services under the Defense Department — the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps — each claimed zero applicants were denied enlistment under DTM-19-004, while the Coast Guard, which is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security, claimed two denials.
(Initially, an Army spokesperson responded, “No applicant meeting the medical accession standards contained in DTM 19-004 has been denied entry into the Army under DTM 19-004.” When the Blade followed up by asking for the numbers on how many were denied as not meeting the standard, the response was “None.”)
Similarly, a Navy spokesperson initially replied, “By policy (DTM 19-004) there can be no denial of accessions based on gender identity alone. Therefore the answer is zero related to gender identity.” When the Blade pointed out no mention was made of gender identity, the new response was “zero.”)
Aaron Belkin, director of the San Francisco-based Palm Center, said the difference between numbers of the Coast Guard and other services suggests the former views the transgender ban differently.
“The fact that the Coast Guard is reporting the data honestly shows that it is not afraid to acknowledge evidence that indicates what we have long known, which is that the transgender ban harms readiness,” Belkin said.
It’s possible the number of applicants denied enlistment under the ban don’t reflect individuals not just blocked from enlisting under the transgender ban, but due to reasons unrelated to the policy.
Moreover, those numbers don’t capture the impact of the policy as a deterrent. At a time when the military is falling short of its recruitment goals, many transgender people may not attempt to enlist even if they would otherwise be interested in military service.
A gay Democratic statistician in New York City, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he’s not authorized to talk to the press, said the likelihood the Army denied enlistment to no applicants when the Coast Guard denied enlistment to two is infinitesimally small.
“While it’s difficult to say anything with much certainty because we have been given so little data to work with, the odds that a service like the Army that gets nearly 10 times as many applicants as the USCG had zero rejections, while the USCG had two are incredibly low,” he said. “Far less than one percent odds.”
Belkin said the services reporting no separations is “not surprising” because the process for those separations may not be yet finalized.
“The process for administrative separation set out in DTM-19-004 is efficient but not instantaneous, and it’s only been three months since the ban took effect,” Belkin said. “Candidates for separation, by definition, would be service members who had not been diagnosed with gender dysphoria by April 12 (otherwise they would be grandfathered). The process for administrative separation could not even begin until diagnosis, followed by another determination that gender-transition treatment was medically necessary.”
Belkin added transgender service members may be serving in the shadows like under like “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the ban on openly gay service repealed during the Obama administration, and avoid seeking transition-related care, which would initiate a discharge.
“Transgender members will avoid medical and health care encounters that could expose them to separation,” Belkin said. “Separations are the tiny tip of the iceberg.”
The Blade also sought to obtain information on waivers under the trans ban. Under Section 3 of DTM-19-004, the military departments and Coast Guard may grant a waiver to allow a transgender person who would otherwise be blocked from service.
Each of the services uniformly replied they had granted no waivers under the transgender ban, nor had they denied any requests for waivers. The Air Force and the Navy added they have obtained no requests for a waiver to begin with since the implementation of the policy.
Belkin said admission from the services they had not granted any waivers speaks volumes about these waivers being a false promise.
“This rebuts claims from military leadership that availability of waivers will soften the effect of the ban,” Belkin said. “In particular, some waivers should have been expected soon after the ban took effect because a number of service members got caught short by the sudden April 12 effective date and the inability to obtain qualifying diagnoses on short notice.”
Transgender people who sought diagnoses prior to April 12, Belkin said, would have been obvious candidates for waivers as well as military students in ROTC.
The Blade also asked whether the military services granted any exemptions under Section 1 of the policy, which contains a grandfather clause allowing transgender service members who came out during the Obama administration to continue military service without fear of discharge.
The Coast Guard reported zero, the Air Force said no exemptions were granted or requested and the Army said no in-service exemptions have been granted.
The Navy spokesperson, however, said one exemption “was granted due to when they started the enlistment process.”
The Marine Corps declined to answer that inquiry altogether, asserting “we do not track those numbers” because the question is a medical issue and “protected (to an extent) by HIPAA,” the federal law providing data privacy for medical information.
Belkin, however, said claims of being unable to provide numbers on exemptions due to concerns about HIPAA are flat-out “wrong.”
“For example, the Accession Medical Standards Analysis & Research Activity (AMSARA) writes a report every year tracking the medical status of service members to determine how effectively medical accession standards are screening for fitness,” Belkin said.
Belkin added the “we do not track” excuse recalls Mattis’ attempt in an exchange with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) to undercut the testimony by military service chiefs that the inclusive policy has not harmed readiness.
“In short, the ‘we do not track’ assertion is false and is used to avoid conceding that inclusive policy worked and that there is no evidence to suggest otherwise,” Belkin said.
Meanwhile, the transgender military ban continues to face acts of resistance, including the litigation filed by LGBT legal groups that remains pending in federal court.
Two major universities — the University of Wisconsin Law School and American University — have threatened to ban military recruiters on campus as long they refuse to admit transgender candidates. (If the schools make good on that threat, they would likely face a loss of federal funding under the Solomon Amendment.)
Moreover, transgender advocates praised recent Senate testimony from Vice Adm. Michael Gilday, Trump’s pick to become the next chief of naval operations, in which said he transgender service members have had no negative impact on unit cohesion.
“I am unaware of negative impacts on unit or overall Navy readiness as a result of transgender individuals serving in their preferred gender,” Gilday said in written responses for his confirmation hearing.
Peters also said transgender people making an attempt to enlist despite the ban is helpful in efforts to dismantle the policy.
“There are also numerous trans patriots who want to enlist, but they are not going through the process because they are well aware the ban is in place,” Peters added. “It’s no secret the administration has implemented this ban, so they know they would be rejected based on who they are.”
Kansas’ child welfare agency has drafted guidelines urging foster parents to allow LGBTQ kids in their care to “express themselves as they see themselves,” riling conservatives a little more than a year after the state granted legal protections to faith-based adoption agencies that do not place children in LGBTQ homes.
The Department for Children and Families issued draft “guidance” for “prudent parenting” in mid-July, six months after Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly took office. It said foster homes should recognize LGBTQ children “by their preferred identity if it differs from their sex assigned at birth.”
Conservatives read the document as a policy directive for reshaping foster families’ lives and an attempt to skirt a 2018 law that Kelly doesn’t like for protecting faith-based adoption agencies. It’s a sharp break in tone with that law, which prevents the state from barring agencies from providing services if they refuse to place children in homes violating their religious beliefs.
The department’s move drives home the difference Kelly’s election last year made on hot-button social issues. Her administration followed eight years of conservative Republican control in a state that still has a GOP-dominated Legislature and a Republican Party with a platform declaring, “We believe God created two genders, male and female.”
“It’s going to continue pushing this envelope,” said Kansas House Majority Leader Dan Hawkins, a conservative Wichita Republican, who worried in a recent newsletter about the department pursuing a “social experiment.”
The department presented the first draft of its guidelines during a quarterly meeting with private agencies that place abused and neglected children in foster and adoptive homes.
State officials said a final version could be ready later this month and won’t be formal policy or regulations, just principles for placement agencies and foster families. As such, they wouldn’t be subject to outside review — though Hawkins and other conservatives are considering legislative hearings.
Department officials said their first draft was a response to questions that private agencies passed along from foster parents who want to support LGBTQ youth. They said they’re picking up on best practices from other states and national groups.
“The fact of wanting children we’re caring for to feel safe and welcome in their foster homes just shouldn’t be a controversial issue to anybody,” Laura Howard, the department’s top administrator, said in a recent interview.
But Kelly’s views on LGBTQ rights already had conservatives on edge. Kansas said in June that it would allow transgender people to change their birth certificates to reflect their gender identities. Under Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, the state had some of the nation’s toughest rules for making such changes.
Kelly also said before taking office that she would try to avoid enforcing last year’s adoption law if she could. Conservatives link that stance and the department’s new guidance, though its officials say there is none.
“It looks like an end-run around the adoption-protection act,” said Chuck Weber, director of the Kansas Catholic Conference.
The department’s guidance says foster children have the right to wear clothing and hairstyles “that suit their gender identity” and that refusing to use their preferred pronouns “can endanger their physical and emotional well-being.”
Within days, the conservative Family Policy Alliance of Kansas criticized the guidance publicly as imposing an “invasive sexual agenda.” The first draft of the guidance included a “Q&A” discussion about transgender foster youth sharing rooms with other children and having sleepovers.
State Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook, a conservative Kansas City-area Republican, said the guidelines endanger safety. For example, she said, the first draft tells foster parents that if space in their home is limited, a “biological boy” teenager can share a bedroom with a teenage girl.
Pilcher-Cook said both the foster parents and a child’s birth parents — who still might have parental rights — might object to the guidelines.
“It’s a problem when government takes such a heavy hand to coerce people to live out beliefs that they don’t embrace,” Pilcher-Cook said.
A later draft of the department’s guidance on its official letterhead dropped the Q&A section because, Howard said, “it’s really difficult to sort of script any particular situation.” Both drafts said case workers should ensure all children in a foster home are comfortable with the living arrangements.
The guidelines’ defenders said the state and placement agencies don’t require foster parents to take particular children and that the agencies work through issues before a placement. If issues arise after a placement, the agencies would attempt to work through them with families individually, rather than apply the guidelines as rules, they said.
And, they said, the goal always is to find foster homes that best fit children already traumatized by abuse or neglect.
“What it really boils down to is, we’re not going to be putting these kids in a hostile environment,” said Tom Witt, executive director of the LGBTQ-rights group Equality Kansas.
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Ivan, a 25-year-old gay man from Uganda, entered the U.S. on Christmas Day 2018 when he crossed the Rio Grande from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, to El Paso, Texas.
Ivan told the Washington Blade during an interview at the offices of Alianza of New Mexico, a Las Cruces-based HIV/AIDS service organization, on July 15 that anti-gay discrimination and his family’s decision to reject him because of his sexual orientation prompted him to leave Uganda.
Ivan said he received a lawyer from Las Cruces when he was in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in El Paso. Ivan had a second lawyer after ICE transferred him to a detention center in Houston.
Ivan, who asked the Blade not to publish his last name or picture, said he won his asylum case on July 9. Ivan said a volunteer with Advocate Visitors with Immigrants in Detention (AVID) in the Chihuahuan Desert, a Las Cruces-based group that visits migrants who are in detention facilities, helped him get a bus ticket from Houston to Las Cruces where he currently lives with PFLAG Las Cruces President Ryan Steinmetz.
“It’s good, though a little bit hot,” said Ivan when the Blade asked whether he likes Las Cruces. The temperature in the city was over 100 degrees on July 15. “I’ve never been to such a hot climate.”
Las Cruces, which is in New Mexico’s Mesilla Valley through which the Rio Grande flows, is less than 50 miles north of El Paso and the U.S.-Mexico border. PFLAG Las Cruces is among the local advocacy groups that have begun to assist migrants.
Steinmetz said before the Blade interviewed Ivan that PFLAG Las Cruces’ Rainbow Refugee Project began after a local advocacy group asked for housing for two gay couples who ICE was going to release on bond.
“I first said that I can do this because I had the space in my house to be able to house them,” said Steinmetz. “But I went to PFLAG Las Cruces … and said I want to know if PFLAG is behind this and could support these gentlemen during their time here and they were.”
Steinmetz said PFLAG Las Cruces soon partnered with other Las Cruces-based organizations — NM Comunidades en Acción y de Fé and Border Servant Corps — and Peace Lutheran Church, an LGBT-affirming congregation in Las Cruces, and created a sponsorship package for the couples’ lawyer and the immigration judge who granted them bond.
“That was essentially what allowed for them to be released because so many of them did not get released,” Steinmetz told the Blade. “We were able to show that they had that community support, they had a place to go and they had an entire community that was wrapping their arms around them with other support services, and donations and things like that.”
Steinmetz said PFLAG Las Cruces’ Rainbow Immigration Project has worked with eight gay men from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Uganda who entered the U.S. from Ciudad Juárez.
Three of these men are from Guatemala, and were “severely discriminated against and abused for being gay,”according to Steinmetz. He told the Blade one of the men was in a coma for a month and lost sight in an eye after his stepfather beat him because he is gay.
Steinmetz said a group of criminals who “were trying to clean the streets of ‘drogadictos e homosexuales’ (drug addicts and homosexuals)” added the same man’s name to a list “to be taken care of.” Steinmetz told the Blade the man whose stepfather beat him, his partner and a handful of other gay men traveled through Mexico on a freight train known as “La Bestía” (the Beast) before they reached the U.S.-Mexico border.
Steinmetz said the men tried to cross a bridge from Ciudad Juárez to El Paso three times in order to ask for asylum, but U.S. officials denied their request, “saying that you Guatemalans, you have diseases, you’re not allowed to come in or whatever.” Steinmetz told the Blade they used a tunnel to cross the border and enter the U.S. in Sunland Park, N.M.
“They crossed in a way that was illegal for them to cross,” said Steinmetz. “But they felt they had no other options because they couldn’t return to where they were from. And they needed to ask for asylum.”
AVID has also worked with LGBT migrants.
Margaret Brown Vega and Nathan Craig, who volunteer with the organization, on July 15 during an interview at their Las Cruces home showed the Blade a picture they received from a gay asylum seeker who drew it when he was in solitary confinement at the Otero County Processing Center, an ICE detention facility in Chaparral, N.M., that the Management and Training Corporation, a company that operates prisons across the country, runs.
Craig said he and other AVID volunteers visited the man and three other gay men who ICE detained at the facility after they and a group of more than a dozen other LGBT migrants from Mexico and Central America asked for asylum in the U.S. in Nogales, Ariz., in 2017. Craig told the Blade two of the gay men, including the one who drew the picture, won their asylum cases and now live in New York.
“We’re very fond of him,” said Vega.
Vega and Craig spoke with the Blade less than six weeks after Johana “Joa” Medina León, a transgender woman from El Salvador, died at El Paso’s Del Sol Medical Center three days after ICE released her from their custody.
Medina had been detained at the Otero County Processing Center.
Craig said he and other AVID volunteers visited one of Medina’s podmates “who was expressing concern for several weeks about Johana’s declining health.” Vega told the Blade the three other trans women with whom Medina was detained found out she had died on the news.
“We go to the facility once a week and we knew we couldn’t get there beforehand,” said Vega. “There’s no way to reach people in detention. You have to wait for them to reach out and we were concerned they were going to hear about it.”
“It was strange to us the facility staff didn’t bother to tell them,” she added. “They thought she was still in the facility, but in medical isolation because that’s why she was taken out from where they were at.”
The Blade on July 24 interviewed Medina’s mother, Patricia Medina de Barrientos, in the Salvadoran capital of San Salvador. Medina de Barrientos and her family have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against ICE and the Department of Homeland Security over Medina’s death.
The Blade’s visit to Las Cruces took place against the backdrop of continued outrage over President Trump’s hardline immigration policies, his racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric and the treatment of migrants in ICE custody.
The White House on July 15 announced it will end asylum protections for most migrants who arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border. Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales’ government less than two weeks later signed a “safe third country” agreement with the Trump administration that requires migrants who pass through Guatemala on their way to the U.S. to first seek asylum in the country.
The U.S. has forced thousands of asylum seekers to return to Ciudad Juárez and other Mexican border cities under the so-called Remain in Mexico program to await processing of their claims.
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, the Santa Fe Dreamers Project and Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in a March 25 letter to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security said a dozen gay and trans detainees suffered “rampant sexual harassment, discrimination and abuse” at the Otero County Processing Center.
ICE in 2017 opened a unit for trans detainees at the Cibola County Correctional Center, a detention center in Milan, N.M., that CoreCivic, a private company that was once known as Corrections Corporation of America, operates.
The Blade is among the handful of media outlets that ICE invited to tour the unit on June 12. Trans Queer Pueblo, a Phoenix-based group that advocates on behalf of undocumented LGBT immigrants, on June 26 received a letter from 29 trans women at the Cibola County Correctional Center in which they complain about inadequate medical care and mistreatment from staff.
Massachusetts Congressman Joseph Kennedy in a letter he sent to Acting ICE Director Mark Morgan on June 27 demanded additional information about Medina’s death.
El Paso Matters President Bob Moore tweeted U.S. Sens. Martin Henrich (D-N.M.) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.) staffers on May 31 visited the Otero County Processing Center.
The tweet notes the staffers met with the facility’s warden, Ray Terry, and officials from ICE and Management and Training Corporation.
“Representatives from Sen. Udall and Sen. Heinrich’s staffs toured the Otero County Processing Center last Friday, May 31st, and held a meeting with the warden of the facility, as well as ICE officials and the individuals representing the independent contractor operating at the facility,” reads a statement from the senators’ spokespeople. “During their tour, representatives from Udall and Heinrich’s office (sic) raised concerns about the treatment and conditions for transgender and other LGBT individuals in detention at the facility.”
“At no point during the meeting did the OCPC (Otero County Processing Center) or ICE officials inform our staffs that a transgender individual who had been in U.S. custody had fallen ill, and was admitted to the hospital for treatment for serious medical issues,” adds the statement. “The senators believe that ICE should be fully transparent and publicly disclose all relevant information regarding this tragic and disturbing situation, and they continue to push for humane treatment for asylum seekers and for real solutions to this humanitarian crisis.”
NEW: Staffers for @MartinHeinrich and @tomudall met with ICE officials and warden of Otero County Processing Center on Friday to discuss treatment of transgender detainees. Officials never mentioned Johana, trans woman who fell ill 3 days earlier and died on Saturday.
“We were doing some thing to raise the alarm, but not enough,” Craig told the Blade as he and Vega discussed Medina’s death and the circumstances that surround it. “We’ve certainly resolved ourselves to be much louder about those kinds of concerns since that took place.”
Craig said other trans women who are detained at the Otero County Processing Center have said they have been harassed after Medina’s death. Craig and Vega also told the Blade the detainees have complained about a lack of access to hormones and food.
“They go to bed hungry,” said Vega. “So, people just get used to being hungry all the time.”
Ivan told the Blade he did not experience discrimination because of his sexual orientation when he was in ICE custody. Ivan did acknowledge trans people were separated from other detainees.
“I wasn’t discriminated against, though the discrimination I did see was the transgenders,” he said. “They are kept in the shoe.”
Ivan also told the Blade he wanted to study tourism in Uganda, but his family didn’t support his education “because I’m a homosexual.” He said he would like to return to school and travel to other parts of the U.S.
“You never know what comes around the way,” said Ivan. “I have a passion for traveling. I would like to go to other states and see how other people spend their time.”