A Cold Slowly Killing Me: A Trans Women’s Hellish ICE Detention
A transgender immigrant is suing over the mistreatment she suffered in a federal detention center, which includes being forced to undress in front of male prisoners.
Marisol (second from left) pictured marching with friends in a gay pride parade in Tapachula, Mexico, before seeking refuge in the U.S. (Photo taken by Marisol's friend Lennin)
by Mira Lazine
Marisol Ordonez Vargas remembers the unrelenting pain, the brutal sexual harassment, the unforgiving cold of her cell. She also remembers her fear of speaking up, of the powerlessness she felt as a transgender immigrant from Central America who was being detained by personnel indifferent or hostile to her well-being.
Ordonez Vargas has detailed her mistreatment in a federal lawsuit filed by her attorneys this month in the Southern District of New York. Staff at the upstate New York detention facility “refused to provide [her] with the medication or treatment which she needed and did not take her health concerns seriously,” the lawsuit alleges. “Additionally, they placed her in solitary confinement without proper justification.”
Though Ordonez Vargas says she broke no laws, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency ordered her detention in October 2023. A fractured nose she had suffered in a previous car accident was left untreated by prison personnel during her month-long detention, she said, causing lasting damage.
Ordonez Vargas produced documentation from her doctors detailing the immediate attention her nose fracture would demand in detention. Detention personnel produced only tabs of ibuprofen in return, her lawsuit says.
Assigned Media interviewed Ordonez Vargas by phone last week, in a conversation arranged by her lawyer, Elena Cohen. An interpreter fluent in Spanish and English joined the call to assist.
Ordonez Vargas, whose primary language is Spanish, said she had immense difficulty communicating with detention personnel. She was placed in isolation for several days initially, in a cell that lacked toilet paper, her food thrown on the ground as if she were an animal.
Mistreatment of queer detainees like Ordonez Vargas has been well documented.
NPR reported in 2023 how detention personnel left open wounds untreated and deprived detainees of necessities like asthmatic inhalers. Transgender women of color had been particularly victimized.
In a case documented by the National Immigrant Justice Center in 2023, a trans woman described how she was berated with slurs, insults, and misgendering before her medical care was stripped away. As early as 2020, a Cascade PBS investigation described how trans women had been denied care and moved across the country dozens of times. At least one trans woman died.
And at Rikers Island, in New York, once-groundbreaking protections for trans inmates have been dismantled on orders of the mayor, leaving detainees open to violence and threats.
Ordonez Vargas, who came to the United States in 2022, thought she had been doing all the right things. Originally arriving in Houston before settling in the Bronx, she had checked in regularly with ICE officials as required, and had wanted to apply for a work permit. She had fled the societal violence and police brutality that queer people face in her home country, which is not identified in the lawsuit to protect her safety.
In the interview with Assigned Media, Ordonez Vargas described how she was drawn into a work permit scheme that she now believes was fraudulent. In the runup to her ICE appointment in October 2023, she responded to a Facebook ad promising to help transgender women get work permits.
The permit scheme, though not part of her lawsuit against detention officials, provides a window into just how vulnerable trans people can be in the complex and often unforgiving immigration process.
“It seemed legitimate,” she said, though her suspicions were raised by unexpected demands for money, $1,000 in total.
Desperate to get through the work permit process, and recognizing that the process does cost money, Ordonez Vargas sent the $1,000 and prepared for her appointment with ICE officials on Oct. 5, 2023. But there was no permit after all, and ICE ordered her detained that day, beginning her hellish month in detention.
From there, Ordonez Vargas told Assigned Media, she was immediately subjected to ill treatment and abuse. “They put me in isolation where I couldn't speak with anyone and then they purposely didn't understand what I was telling them,” she said, describing how a translation error led detention personnel to decide she was suicidal, in spite of paperwork and her own testimony to the contrary. She also described to them the broken nose she had suffered in a previous car accident.
“There was no communication,” she told Assigned Media. “I came in and I had a fractured nose. There were fractures in four different places and so I was crying from the pain and I said that I needed help and I needed pain medication. And the ICE guards, they were laughing at me.”
More abuse was to come. Detention officials eventually transferred her to a group cell with cisgender men, also immigrants from Central America. She was forced to undress and bathe in front of these men. “I understand that it's a jail and that we were all being punished there,” Ordonez Vargas said, “but I didn't understand why we should be punished and humiliated in this way.”
The guards, who had repeatedly ignored her pleas for medical attention, eventually placed her in a larger cell with men who laughed at her and berated her for being queer. One detainee “came and took his clothes off in front of me and asked me to perform oral sex on him. And I didn't say anything, I didn't report it to the guards because I didn't feel like I could trust them and I was afraid that if I spoke up about it then my case would take longer and they would keep me in detention for more time.”
Her experience was “extremely traumatizing,” she recalled, but she is determined to maintain her strength. “I'm a solid fighter, I'm a woman who knows how to keep moving forward and I'm in this for a better tomorrow.”
People who want to help trans immigrants in their communities, she said, can point them to resources about their legal rights, and how they can pave a future here.
“So many of us are scared,” Ordonez Vargas said, “and unfortunately in this world there are people who say that gay people are sick and they treat us like we're not human, that we're not people, flesh and bone just like everyone else. And what we want to do is just cry out to society. Why do you treat us like this in a world where there are people who are delinquents or criminals?
Mira Lazine is a freelance journalist covering transgender issues, politics, and science. She can be found on Twitter, Mastodon, and BlueSky, @MiraLazine