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    Letter Urging DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson To Protect LGBT Immigrants From Sexual Assault

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    Mike Honda
    Representatives Mike Honda (D-CA) and Raúl Grijalva led 33 Members of Congress in sending a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson expressing concern over the circumstances lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) immigrants face while held in detention centers under Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. The letter reads in part, “we strongly urge you to use existing discretion to release LGBT individuals from custodial detention and use parole or alternatives to detention to ensure the safety and appearance of this group throughout their immigration proceedings.”

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    Letter Urging DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson To Protect LGBT Immigrants From Sexual Assault

    Uploaded by

    Mike Honda
    463 views4 pages
    Representatives Mike Honda (D-CA) and Raúl Grijalva led 33 Members of Congress in sending a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson expressing concern over the circumstances lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) immigrants face while held in detention centers under Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. The letter reads in part, “we strongly urge you to use existing discretion to release LGBT individuals from custodial detention and use parole or alternatives to detention to ensure the safety and appearance of this group throughout their immigration proceedings.”

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    Letter Urging DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson to Protect LGBT Immigrants from Sexual Assault

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    Representatives Mike Honda (D-CA) and Raúl Grijalva led 33 Members of Congress in sending a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson expressing concern over the circumstances lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) immigrants face while held in detention centers under Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. The letter reads in part, “we strongly urge you to use existing discretion to release LGBT individuals from custodial detention and use parole or alternatives to detention to ensure the safety and appearance of this group throughout their immigration proceedings.”

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    463 views4 pages

    Letter Urging DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson To Protect LGBT Immigrants From Sexual Assault

    Uploaded by

    Mike Honda
    Representatives Mike Honda (D-CA) and Raúl Grijalva led 33 Members of Congress in sending a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson expressing concern over the circumstances lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) immigrants face while held in detention centers under Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. The letter reads in part, “we strongly urge you to use existing discretion to release LGBT individuals from custodial detention and use parole or alternatives to detention to ensure the safety and appearance of this group throughout their immigration proceedings.”

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 4

    Q~nngri~ii~ uf tIp~ 1lIniIi~i

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    ~lla~I~ingtnu, ~Gt 20515

    June 23, 2015


    The Honorable Jeh Johnson
    Secretary of Homeland Security
    Washington, D.C. 20528
    Dear Secretary Johnson:
    We write to express our concerns regarding the circumstances surrounding lesbian, gay, bisexual
    and transgender (LGBT) immigrants who are held in detention centers under Immigration and
    Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. These individuals are extremely vulnerable to abuse,
    including sexual assault, while in custody, in particular, transgender women housed in mens
    detention facilities.
    We understand the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs
    Enforcement (ICE) have had conversations with LGBT immigrant advocates and community
    members for some years now in order to find a solution to this pressing situation. Recently, ICE
    formed a working group to review placement and safety issues for LGBT detainees and will be
    issuing recommendations for DHS consideration in the near future. As you review these
    recommendations, we strongly urge you to use existing discretion to release LGBT individuals
    from custodial detention and use parole or alternatives to detention to ensure the safety and
    appearance of this group throughout their immigration proceedings, such as supervised release
    and community placements, unless there are extenuating circumstances.
    Detention should almost never be used for vulnerable groups such as LGBT immigrants facing
    immigration proceedings. Recent surveys ofjails and prisons by the Bureau of Justice Statistics
    (BJS) found that non-heterosexual detainees experience sexual assault at up to ten times the rate
    of heterosexual men. The situation is starker for transgender detainees. According to the BJS
    survey, one in three will be sexually abused within twelve months in custody. When viewing the
    trend of reported sexual assaults against this community in immigration detention, the
    Government Accountability Office in November 2013 found that transgender immigrants
    reported 20% of sexual assaults in ICE custody. This is deeply troubling given the fact that
    transgender individuals are estimated to be less than 1% of the general population.
    ICEs own intake system recognizes the risk LGBT immigrants face in detention and says they
    can release LGBT immigrants 70% of the time, however ICE officers consistently override this
    and use their discretion to detain anyway in 68% of those cases. A recent study conducted by the
    DHS Office of the Inspector General found that ICE overrode explicit Risk Classification
    Assessment recommendations in 7.6 percent of cases for the general population and in 19
    percent of the cases for LGBT detainees.

    PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPER

    ICE policies for years have recognized that LGBT immigrants, particularly those who are
    transgender, are in dangerous situations while detained, including DHS s Prison Rape
    Elimination Act (PREA) Standards. However, we understand that there has been no clear PREA
    implementation plan to date with respect to this population. This has lead ICE to routinely
    segregate transgender women in mens facilities in order to keep them safe, including the use of
    isolation and GBT pods, the latter being used more frequently in recent months. ICE must
    apply discretion to ensure that vulnerable populations are not subjected to an unacceptably high
    risk for sexual abuse.
    We respectfully urge DHS and ICE to end the practice of detaining vulnerable groups such as
    LGBT immigrants. We believe ICE should consider an LGBT persons detention as not in the
    public interest, per your enforcement priorities memo of November 20, 2014, due to the
    extraordinarily high risk of abuse in detention. Finally, we request DHS and ICE to engage
    LGBT and immigrant civil rights groups to develop additional community-based alternatives to
    detention, for vulnerable populations. To address the concerns raised above, we have questions
    regarding ICEs protocol for LGBT detainees:
    1.
    2.

    3.

    What factors do ICE officers use to decide whether they will overrule the RCAs
    recommendation or choose detention in the absence of an RCA recommendation when
    an immigrant has a special vulnerability such as LGBT status?
    What steps has ICE taken, or will ICE take, to ensure that officers use discretion
    appropriately to keep vulnerable LGBT persons out of detention centers whenever
    possible?
    What action has DHS taken, or will DHS take, towards effective oversight to ensure
    that ICE uses its discretion appropriately to keep vulnerable LGBT persons out of
    detention centers whenever possible?

    We urge you to act swiftly to address the issues. The safety and security of many individuals
    depend on it. We look forward to collaborating on this pressing issue. If you have any questions,
    please have your staff contact Robert Lucas (Rep. Honda) and Yesenia Chavez (Rep. Grijalva).

    Sincerely,
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    Michael M. Honda
    Member of Congress

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