Torture of Gay Immigration Prisoners Alleged

After criticism from the United Nations, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it is “taking action to investigate” reports that 16 gay and transgender detainees have been tortured in U.S. immigration prisons. The report is partially in response to a National Immigrant Justice Center complaint to the federal government in April 2011 that its clients had suffered sexual abuse, solitary confinement, and withholding of HIV medication and hormone therapy. One detainee, “T,” claimed that a guard sexually assaulted her in solitary confinement, and another, “A,” said the guards repeatedly called her a “faggot” and “made jokes about her dying of AIDS.” Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, a staff attorney for Lambda Legal, told Courthouse News in an interview that the abuses are more distressing because the detainees are being held for alleged civil, not criminal, violations. He said the federal government should insist that immigration prisons, public and private, must comply with the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act.