Recently freed Honduran transgender woman detained again by Ice
A Honduran transgender asylum seeker who was released last week after a year incarcerated in immigration centres has been re-detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).
The move was condemned by her legal team as punitive and damaging to the young woman’s physical and mental health.
Nicole Garcia Aguilar, 24, fled southern Honduras after being subjected to death threats, sexual assault and attempted murder linked to her gender identity. She sought help from the police in Honduras, but was told by one officer that the violence against her was “because of the way [she is]” and would not stop until she was dead.
Garcia legally claimed asylum upon arriving at the southern US border in April 2018. She was transferred to the country’s only specialist transgender unit in Cibola county, New Mexico, as her claim progressed through the immigration courts.
Garcia was granted asylum by an immigration judge in October 2018. Despite the ruling, Ice refused to release her and appealed the asylum decision claiming there were inconsistencies in Garcia’s testimonies.
As the appeal was processed, Garcia was transferred to the Cibola county facility’s male unit, and then held in solitary confinement for almost three months where her health deteriorated under harsh conditions, according to her asylum attorney.
“Nicole’s time in Ice custody has been unconscionably painful,” said her attorney Tania Linares Garcia from the National Immigration Justice Centre (NIJC). “Unforgivable in any circumstance, solitary confinement is particularly harmful for Nicole, who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, anxiety and depression. Her physical and emotional health deteriorated rapidly. She suffered nightmares and panic attacks.”
Garcia was released last week after lawyers from NIJC and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a habeas corpus, arguing that denying her parole for such a prolonged period without the right to appeal amounted to a constitutional violation of due process.
Before being released, Garcia was transferred to an Ice custody in El Paso, Texas, where she had a pending criminal charge. The charge was dismissed and Garcia finally released from Ice detention on 17 April but given no release paperwork – a document that is
essential in order to travel freely and avoid detention at immigration checkpoints.
On 24 April, Garcia, accompanied by advocates from the Detained Migrants Solidarity Committee, went to the Ice office in El Paso to obtain her release paperwork where she was taken into custody.
“She argued with the agent, but he said it was out of his hands and coming from higher up,” said Jennifer Apodaca from the solidarity group who was with her.
Garcia pleaded with the agent not to put her in the “cold room” – referring to solitary confinement where she spent months, Apodaca told the Guardian. “She was crying and asked me to fight to get her out.”
It’s unclear why Garcia was detained, but, the Board of Immigration Appeals did uphold Ice’s appeal and has ordered her case be returned to the immigration court.
She is currently being held at the El Paso service processing center in Texas, a facility plagued by accusations of abuse and human rights violations. It was there that nine Sikh men were force fed after a prolonged hunger strike to protest against their treatment by facility staff and immigration judges.
The grassroots group Mijente, or my people, has launched a campaign demanding Garcia be released and allowed to continue her asylum claim in the community.
During the Obama administration, nine out of 10 asylum seekers who applied at a legal port of entry and passed the credible fear test were given parole so that they could pursue their claim in the community. Under Trump, parole rates dropped to zero until a successful legal challenge by ACLU in July 2018.
On 23 April, four days after the Guardian first reported on Garcia’s case, Ice said that it did not discuss individual asylum claims on privacy grounds. But in a statement said Garcia was a “twice-deported illegal alien from Honduras” who presented herself at the Nogales, Arizona, port of entry on 23 April 2018, and was later transferred to the Cibola county correctional center to await the disposition of her immigration case.
She had previously been deported in 2017 after pleading her case without legal representation.