Transgender and nonbinary people held in an Aurora immigrant detention center are routinely locked down in their cells, barred from speaking to one another, taunted by guards and deprived of medical care, according to a civil rights complaint filed Tuesday with the Department of Homeland Security.
The National Immigration Project, Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network and American Immigration Council filed the complaint on behalf of five people alleging ongoing discrimination, harassment and mistreatment at the Aurora Contract Detention Facility, owned and operated by GEO Group Inc. under contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“Women at the Aurora facility are being abused, and it’s clear ICE is not able to keep them safe or ensure their well-being — and so, for that reason, they should be released,” said Ann Garcia, a staff attorney at the National Immigration Project.
The complaint asks that transgender and nonbinary people facing immigration charges be supervised in the community while waiting for their court hearings, rather than be exposed to the dangers of incarceration.
The groups allege that ICE, which uses the facility to detain people held on immigration charges, is in violation of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and its own 2011 Performance-Based National Detention Standards, which provide guidance on how to create a safe environment for survivors of assault and violence including transgender and nonbinary people held at the facility.
Violence against people who have transitioned from one gender to another is on the rise. According to the FBI’s national crime statistics released in October 2023, there was a 33% increase in the number of reported hate crimes based on gender identity compared to the previous year.
The civil rights complaint is the latest to allege poor treatment of people detained at the Aurora Contract Detention Facility, which has faced lawsuits, including one after a Nicaraguan man became the third person to die in custody.
Immigrant rights organizations have also filed numerous complaints about the facility to the federal government alleging racial discrimination and excessive force, arbitrary and overuse of solitary confinement and poor health policies that led to a coronavirus outbreak at the center.
The GEO Group said in a statement it continues to follow the 2011 standards set by ICE that govern contracted services at all federal immigration centers, including the care and treatment of transgender people at the Aurora center.
“We are committed to providing a respectful, safe, and secure environment for all non-citizens, including those individuals who identify as transgender and who are generally at a higher risk of victimization,” Christopher Ferreira, a GEO Group spokesperson, wrote in an email to The Colorado Sun.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson Steve Kotecki said the agency is committed to ensuring that people in custody are held in safe, secure and humane environments. “ICE regularly reviews each case involving self-identified transgender noncitizens and determines on a case-by-case basis whether detention is warranted,” he wrote in an email to The Colorado Sun on April 11.
The Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties said it would evaluate the allegations to determine if it should open an investigation, and that the office would notify the complainants about that decision, spokesperson Dana Gallagher wrote in an email to The Sun on April 12.
Past complaints about the Aurora detention facility allege assaults by guards, rampant sexual violence, rape, medical abuse and neglect and other harms, according to the complaint.
In 2020, a group of trans and nonbinary people detained at the Aurora facility filed a petition that said they could not receive therapy or treatment and that they faced significant delays in receiving medication to control their symptoms from HIV.
Similar problems persist, according to the complaint, which says it takes two to three days for medical staff to respond to written requests for care.
One transgender woman who had exams on her thyroid and liver almost a year ago still has not received results of those tests, according to the complaint.
The woman, Elsa, a pseudonym, was initially detained in a men’s dorm at the Aurora facility, and reported a sexual assault she said happened in a bathroom with no cameras.
“It took others reporting the same behavior for guards to act,” the complaint says.
Elsa was assaulted by guards, the complaint says, some of whom also laughed and pointed at her while she used the bathroom.
A nonbinary detainee, Omar, also a pseudonym, said they will not start hormone replacement therapy because it would mean they must be placed in solitary confinement, the complaint says.
Trans people held at the Aurora facility said they can talk to other people in their room but not others in the trans pod — a rule that applies to no one else at the facility.
Transgender people are routinely barred from going outside for recreation and have no access to books in their native language or in-person visits from loved ones.
One trans woman said she was allowed outside this month for the first time in eight months, according to the complaint.
“ICE needs to permanently end keeping trans and nonbinary people in detention, because the agency clearly cannot guarantee basic standards of care,” said Rebekah Wolf, senior advocacy strategist at the American Immigration Council.
If the Department of Homeland Security believes immigrants would be a flight risk, it could turn to community-based treatment providers and nonprofits to ensure immigrants make it to their hearings, said Laura Lunn, director of advocacy and litigation at Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network.
“It costs far more for the federal government to keep people in civil immigration detention than it does to provide them care in the community,” Lunn said.
The American Friends Service Committee of Colorado, an immigrant rights nonprofit, is organizing a fundraiser to help support transgender people detained at the Aurora facility, including help with clothing and access to messaging apps.
This story was updated at 3:14 p.m. on April 12, 2024, with responses from the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.