Trans people in US federal prisons face brutal crackdown under Trump order
Trans people in US federal prisons face brutal crackdown under Trump order
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Advocates report harassment and loss of gender-affirming care as trans women face transfers to men’s prisons. Transgender women incarcerated in federal prisons have been placed in isolation, told they will be transferred to men’s prisons and advised they will lose access to gender-affirming medical treatments in response to Donald Trump’s executive order “defending women from gender ideology extremism”, according to civil rights advocates and people behind bars.
LGBTQ+-rights lawyers say the moves will have major consequences for the health and safety of trans people in federal custody, and blatantly violate federal laws and a range of constitutional protections. The executive order on “gender ideology” was announced on Trump’s first day in office, and is part of a flurry of executive actions targeting trans rights and LGBTQ+ education.
It asserts that “sexes are not changeable” and that the US government no longer recognizes trans people. It calls for a broad rollback of anti-discrimination protections, and includes a directive that the attorney general and homeland security secretary “shall ensure males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers” and that no federal funds go to gender-affirming treatment or procedures for people in custody.
The order does not include specifics on how prisons should implement those directives, and the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and White House did not respond to repeated questions. But reports from inside federal women’s prisons suggest a swift and chaotic crackdown on trans people in the first week of the new administration, though the scale of the impacts so far is unclear.
