RMIAN Stands Up for Detained Transgender Asylum Seekers
RMIAN Providing Urgent Legal Services and Advocacy to New Population of Transgender Asylum Seekers Confined in Aurora ICE Detention Center
In response to the recent transfer of a group of transgender asylum seekers from Cibola Correctional Center, in Cibola, New Mexico, to Aurora ICE Processing Center, in Aurora, Colorado, RMIAN immediately began working with community partners and mobilizing its resources to ensure legal representation and medical care for this group.
“RMIAN believes that everyone in immigration proceedings should have a lawyer by their side, fighting for their rights every step of the way. For transgender individuals in immigration detention--who have to navigate isolation and physical and mental health deterioration-- the need for zealous legal representation and advocacy is even more acute,” said RMIAN Executive Director Mekela Goehring.
In addition to providing free legal services and free legal representation through its own staff attorneys and social workers, RMIAN is working with other community organizations, as well as medical providers, to ensure holistic support for these individuals. Of the people transferred who were unrepresented when they arrived in Aurora, RMIAN is proud to say that all cases have been placed with either a RMIAN staff attorney or pro bono counsel so that every woman now has legal representation. RMIAN is working closely with the Santa Fe Dreamers Project, the organization that advocated for the group in Cibola, to provide this continuity of legal services.
Allegra Love, Santa Fe Dreamers Project Executive Director, states, “After two and half years of working with detained trans women in Cibola County, it felt violent and scary to have our clients transferred without notice in the middle of the night. But by activating our relationship with RMIAN, we are now working together to not only ensure a consistency of legal services, but to also elevate our fight against the entire system of trans detention collectively with the Colorado community.”
Transgender people, especially transgender women, are uniquely vulnerable in immigration detention. Not only do transgender migrants face transphobic harassment and sexual assault in detention, they are disproportionately likely to have urgent medical needs, and to be placed in solitary confinement.
Earlier this month, a coalition of 90 migrant and LGBTQI rights groups, including RMIAN, demanded that ICE immediately release all transgender people in its custody.
If you are a lawyer interested in providing pro bono representation or would like to offer your support, please contact Detention Program Pro Bono Coordinating Staff Attorney Colleen Cowgill at probonodetention@rmian.org.