Her Story
Roxana Hernandez, a 33-year-old transgender woman from Honduras died while in custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement May 25, 2018. She joined a migrant caravan and came to the US seeking asylum because of the stigma and violence associated with being a transgender woman in her home country. When she arrived, she was locked away in a cold detention center where the lights were on 24 hours a day so she could not rest, and ICE did not give her the medical care she was supposedly guaranteed. A couple of days later, ICE transferred her to a "transgender unit" at a men's prison that contracts out with ICE, where she began exhibiting symptoms of "pneumonia, dehydration, and complications with HIV," and was taken to a local hospital. She then passed away in the hospital and the press release ICE put out regarding her death used her deadname and painted her as a criminal without ever releasing the results of her autopsy.
Roxana Hernandez fled the violence of the notorious gang MS-13. She said that four members gang-raped her and caused her to contract HIV, and she feared that they would kill her if she did not leave the country. The fact that the US treated a brave survivor like her with such indignity is abhorrent. Time and time again, transgender women of color suffer in detention because the state does not know what to do with these groups that society often 'others.'
Hernandez had crossed the US-Mexico border illegally before, but this time she came to a checkpoint legally and asked for asylum. She also had a record "of lewd, immoral, and indecent conduct and prostitution" in Dallas, Texas. But she still had the right to her life and safety, both of which ICE took away from her.
State Violence Against Women of Color
Women and girls of color experience state violence at much greater rates than white women, and unlike the countless stories we can tell about young men of color being killed at the hands of police, we do not speak much about the women and girls who face the same fate. Roxana Hernandez's story was not widely published, and few know about her or the 21 other migrants who died in ICE custody in 2017 and 2018. Transgender women and girls are even less likely to be mentioned in mainstream media but are more likely to be killed by civilians or the state because of how transgender people are perceived and the fact that they hold multiple marginalized identities.
Relation to Class Texts
In her widely cited Ted Talk, "The Urgency of Intersectionality," Kimberle Crenshaw articulates that the reason we do not hear the stories of black and brown women who face state violence has to do with their multiple marginalized identities. Roxana Hernandez was not only a woman of color, but she was also an immigrant, transgender, and a sex worker. All these interlocking oppressions make Hernandez's story subjugated and less likely to be heard and spoken about by the general public who has become so desensitized to state violence against young black men.
The Combahee River Collective wrote about interlocking oppressions, which is much like the idea of intersectionality. Not only did Roxana Hernandez have multiple identities, but her identities made her a target at home and in the US to law enforcement. The Combahee River Collective writes that women of color have an inherent value, something Hernandez held, not something she had to earn. Breaking laws regardless of reason for doing so cannot take away a person's inherent value, but ICE did not see Hernandez's life as a value to protect. They saw her as a criminal and someone who needed to be punished, even as she sought safety from MS-13, a gang group that ICE and Trump fight against because they are notorious in South America.
Patrisse Khan-Cullors writes about her brother's multiple incarcerations and how he was treated in the streets, jail, prison, and court because he was deemed a criminal. White American culture often brands those who break the law as bad people who choose to be unlawful, instead of seeing the law as a system that targets poor people of color and puts them in prison to separate them from society and stunt their families. Monte Cullors is denied proper medical care for his mental illness, and forced to drink water from a toilet because he grows so dehydrated in jail. Roxana Hernandez too lacked medical treatment and water and she died from being denied her basic human rights. Even though Hernandez broke the law by entering the US illegally in 2003 and 2009, and she solicited sex for money, she was still a human who like all others, deserved food, water, safety, and medical care.
No Human is Illegal
The US needs to allow many more people who seek asylum to enter, and not detain them at the border.
Universal healthcare for anyone in the US, including those in detention centers is a basic human right that should never be violated.
Prisons need to be reformed or even abolished because of how they are used to harm black and brown families financially and emotionally.
At the very least, ICE and other law enforcement agencies need to be overseen and held accountable when someone dies in their custody. Full investigations should be launched for each and every death. Vigilant oversight would make law enforcement officials take each and every life seriously and treat each person they see with the respect they deserve.
No Justice. No Peace.
Backlash
No one working for ICE nor Ciobla Detention Center where she died in custody in New Mexico has been charged with responsibility for her death. ICE's press release bleakly stated her criminal record and how she died, without bearing any of the blame. Kirstjen Nielson is no longer Secretary of Homeland Security, but she was not fired for the many deaths that happened under her oversight, even though she claims no one knows how many deaths and disappearances of children and adults in ICE custody occurred.
ICE never apologized for publishing Hernadez's deadname.
Hernandez's case also reminds me of Marsha P. Johnson, a black transgender sex worker in New York City whose murder case is still open.
Her Name is Roxana Hernandez.
We can never have justice if we do not Say Her Name.
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