In 2018, Roxsana Hernández Rodriguez arrived in the United States in hopes of opening up a beauty salon. She left her home country of Honduras to seek asylum because she feared for her life as a trans woman living in one of the most dangerous places in the world for transgender people.
But what Rodriguez likely did not imagine was the discrimination she would experience during her migration into the United States.
The 33-year-old trans Honduran migrant died just two weeks after she entered the country after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) denied her care for her HIV. ICE is now trying to cover up its negligence of Roxsana’s health but her family’s ongoing lawsuit is seeking to hold them accountable.
Originally, Roxsana sought asylum in Mexico after she fled Honduras because of a sexual assault. Once her refuge was denied, Roxsana entered the United States alongside a border caravan from Central America and presented herself to Border Patrol in order to apply for status as a refugee.
Instead of being granted asylum, Roxsana’s request was denied and she was moved to the transgender unit of the Cibola County Correctional Center in Milan, New Mexico in preparation for her deportation. The holding process in detention centers can last anywhere from 2 weeks to interminable periods of time depending on the migrant’s home country and existing documents. These holding centers are known as “ice boxes” within migratory circles due to their brutal and unaccommodating conditions.
Under the care of ICE, Roxsana was transferred to different facilities multiple times and began to experience extreme health complications that included diarrhea and vomiting. She sought medical attention and alerted ICE agents in charge of her care of her HIV-positive status. But even though ICE is required to provide people with HIV/AIDS with a 30-day supply of medication, her worsening health was ignored for days until she became gravely ill and eventually hospitalized.
On May 25th 2018, the migrant who had entered the U.S. in fear for her life died in a New Mexico hospital after just two weeks in U.S. custody. Roxsana’s family requested an independent autopsy on her body, which found that she had suffered physical assault and abuse consisting of “deep bruising and injuries consistent with physical abuse with a baton or asp while she was handcuffed, and died of dehydration and complications related to HIV.”
This lack of care for HIV-positive detainees has carried onto the pandemic. ICE has refused to release HIV-positive migrants from detention centers despite their pre-existing conditions that place them at exacerbated risk for serious health complications with the coronavirus.
Because of Roxsana’s forensic evidence, the Transgender Law Center has begun a lawsuit against the numerous public entities that failed her under claims of battery, assault, negligence and failure to protect, amongst others. According to the Transgender Law Center, ICE also defied federal laws by deleting video surveillance footage even though a lawsuit regarding Roxsana’s case was expected.
