Thread: Transgender asylum seeker dies after 6 weeks in ICE custody

Transgender asylum seeker dies after 6 weeks in ICE custody

BEN KESSLEN
Jun 3rd 2019 12:19PM

A transgender woman from El Salvador seeking asylum in the U.S. died on Saturday in a Texas hospital four days after being released from custody, officials and advocates said.

Johana Medina Leon, 25, complained of chest pains and was brought to Del Sol Medical Center in El Paso, Texas, on Tuesday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said. That same day, ICE said she was processed for release on parole. Medina Leon died on the first day of pride month.

"This is yet another unfortunate example of an individual who illegally enters the United States with an untreated, unscreened medical condition,” said Corey A. Price, field office director for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) in El Paso.

Allegra Love, the executive director of the Sante Fe Dreamers Project, a nonprofit that provides free legal service to immigrants, said Medina Leon did nothing "illegal" when she fled to the U.S following Department of Homeland Security protocol

"She didn't violate a single law coming to the U.S. to ask for political asylum," Love said.
Medina Leon, who was known to friends as Joa, had been detained in the U.S. since mid-April. On May 18, Medina Leon received a positive credible fear finding, ICE said. Advocates told NBC News Leon was seeking asylum in the U.S. as a transgender woman.

Medina Leon was being held at Otero County Processing Center, a private detention center in New Mexico where the ACLU and the Santa Fe Dreamer Project recently alleged poor treatment of and "unconscionable conditions" for LGBTQ immigrants. In a letter sent to ICE, the groups said "ICE’s practices at Otero have created an unsafe environment" for the LGBTQ detainees in Otero.

Medina Leon fell while in ICE Custody, where she also tested positive for HIV.

In a Facebook post about Medina Leon's death, Diversidad Sin Fronteras, an advocacy group for LGBTQ refugees, said that Medina Leon had pleaded to ICE for medical attention. She “became extremely ill and unconscious” the group said.

Medina Leon's death comes almost exactly one year after Roxsana Hernandez, 33, a transgender migrant from Honduras, died of AIDS complications in ICE custody.

Kris Hayashi, the executive director of the Transgender Law Center, said in a statement the group is "devastated and outraged, but not surprised" by the news of Leon's death.

Referring to the deaths of both Hernandez and Medina Leon, Hayashi wrote, "these deaths are a direct result of U.S. government policy, and will continue unless we force dramatic change."

In the wake of Hernandez's death in ICE custody, activists and advocates have been sounding alarms on the treatment of LGBTQ migrants in ICE Custody.

On Friday, the Transgender Law Center filed a lawsuit against DHS and ICE suit "for illegally withholding information" about Hernandez's death, and a NBC News investigation found that immigrants are often forced into solitary confinement in U.S. detention centers for being LGBTQ.

When a spokesperson for Diversidad Sin Fronteras visited Medina Leon in the hospital, she said we was deeply cornered about the young women's fate. "I said that what happened a year ago to Roxana in the month of May could happen to JOA right in there. And it did."

Love, of Sante Fe Dreamers Project, told NBC News, "I give an interview a week about the medical conditions for trans women," which she described as alarming and dangerous.

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2019/06/03/transgender-asylum-seeker-dies-after-6-weeks-in-ice-custody/23740715/

Shut this bogus Asylum program down and defund it!

We allow over ONE MILLION a year to come legally.

ONE PROGRAM FOR ALL AND LOWER THAT ONE MILLION NUMBER SUBSTANTIALLY...NO MORE BACK DOOR ALLOWING MILLIONS MORE TO COME ON ALL THESE STINKING PROGRAMS!

GET IN LINE AND WAIT YOUR TURN!

SEND THEM ALL BACK!

FLASHBACK to OCT 30, 2009:

Obama Lifts a Ban on Entry Into U.S. by H.I.V.-Positive People

By JULIA PRESTON OCT. 30, 2009

President Obama on Friday announced the end of a 22-year ban on travel to the United States by people who had tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS, fulfilling a promise he made to gay advocates and acting to eliminate a restriction he said was “rooted in fear rather than fact.”

At a White House ceremony, Mr. Obama announced that a rule canceling the ban would be published on Monday and would take effect after a routine 60-day waiting period. The president had promised to end the ban before the end of the year.

“If we want to be a global leader in combating H.I.V./AIDS, we need to act like it,” Mr. Obama said. “Now, we talk about reducing the stigma of this disease, yet we’ve treated a visitor living with it as a threat.”

The United States is one of only about a dozen countries that bar people who have H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.

President George W. Bush started the process last year when he signed legislation, passed by Congress in July 2008, that repealed the statute on which the ban was based. But the ban remained in effect.

It was enacted in 1987 at a time of widespread fear that H.I.V. could be transmitted by physical or respiratory contact. The ban was further strengthened by Congress in 1993 as an amendment offered by Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina.

Because of the restriction, no major international conference on the AIDS epidemic has been held in the United States since 1990. Public health officials here have long said there was no scientific or medical basis for the ban.

Under the ban, United States health authorities have been required to list H.I.V. infection as a “communicable disease of public health significance.” Under immigration law, most foreigners with such a disease cannot travel to the United States. The ban covered both visiting tourists and foreigners seeking to live in this country.
Photo

President Obama signs the Ryan White H.I.V./AIDS Treatment Extension Act of 2009, which provides medical and support services for those with H.I.V./AIDS. CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

Once the ban is lifted, foreigners applying to become residents in the United States will no longer be required to take a test for AIDS.

In practice, the ban particularly affected tourists and gay men. Waivers were available, but the procedure for tourists and other short-term visitors who were H.I.V. positive was so complicated that many concluded it was not worth it.

For foreigners hoping to immigrate, waivers were available for people who were in a heterosexual marriage, but not for gay couples. Gay advocates said the ban had led to painful separations in families with H.I.V.-positive members that came to live in this country, and had discouraged adoptions of children with the virus.

Gay advocates said the ban also discouraged travelers and some foreigners already living in the United States from seeking testing and medical care for H.I.V. infection.

“The connection between immigration and H.I.V. has frightened people away from testing and treatment,” said Rachel B. Tiven, executive director of Immigration Equality, a group that advocates for gay people in immigration matters. She said lifting the ban would bring “a significant public health improvement.”

“Stigma and exclusion are not a sound basis for immigration policy,” Ms. Tiven said.
Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, who led the effort to repeal the ban, said it had now “gone the way of the dinosaur.”

But, Mr. Kerry added, “it sure took too long to get here.”

International health officials said lifting the ban would end a much-criticized inconsistency in United States health policy, with Washington playing a leading role in AIDS prevention in Africa and other countries with severe epidemics, but preserving restrictions that in practice prevented international AIDS researchers and activists from gathering at conferences here.

In 1989, a Dutch AIDS educator, Hans Verhoef, was detained for several days in St. Paul when he tried to attend a conference. Since then, people involved with AIDS issues have not organized meetings here.

“We think this is going to give a very positive image of where the United States is going in terms of eliminating stigma and discrimination in relation to H.I.V.,” Dr. Socorro Gross, assistant director of the Pan American Health Organization, said Friday.

Correction: November 3, 2009

A picture caption on Saturday with an article about President Obama’s announcing the end of a ban on travel to the United States by people who test positive for HIV misidentified the document Mr. Obama was shown signing. It was the Ryan White H.I.V./AIDS Treatment Extension Act of 2009, which provides medical and support services for those with H.I.V./AIDS; it was not the order ending the travel ban.

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/u.../31travel.html