Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday met with two LGBTQ rights activists in Vietnam.
Harris’ office said Chu Thanh Hà Ngoc, a transgender activist, and Đoàn Thanh Tùng, an LGBTQ advocate, participated in a “roundtable discussion with the vice president and Vietnamese social advocacy organizations” that took place at the U.S. Chief of Mission’s home in Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital.
“It is critical that if we are to take on the challenges we face that we do it in a way that is collaborative, that we must empower leaders in every sector, including of course government but community leaders, business leaders, civic society if we are to maximize the resources we collectively have,” said Harris.
Harris specifically noted the Vietnamese Health Ministry “helped craft the draft — and draft — the (country’s) transgender rights law” that took effect in 2017.
“Transgender people deserve and need equal access to healthcare services,” she said. “This is an issue that we still face in the United States, and it is an issue here in Vietnam, I know. And we will work together and support you and the work you are doing in that regard.”
Ann Marie Yastishock, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s mission director in Vietnam, moderated the roundtable.
It took place on the last day of Harris’ trip to Southeast Asia that began on Sunday in Singapore, one of the dozens of countries in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized. The trip also coincided with growing calls for the U.S. to evacuate LGBTQ Afghans from Afghanistan after the Taliban regained control of the country.
Ted Osius, who co-founded GLIFAA, an association of LGBTQ employees of Foreign Service agencies, was the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam from 2014-2017. The late-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2015 presided over the Hanoi ceremony during which Osius and his husband, Clayton Bond, renewed their wedding vows.
President Biden in February signed a memorandum that committed the U.S. to promoting LGBTQ rights abroad.
Visibles Executive Director Daniel Villatoro and Ingrid Gamboa of the Association of Garifuna Women Living with HIV/AIDS were among the members of Guatemalan civil society who participated in a roundtable with Harris in June when she was in Guatemala City. USAID Administrator Samantha Power also met with LGBTQ activists in Guatemala and El Salvador when she was in the countries at around the same time.
Two members of Guatemalan civil society who work with the LGBTQ community and people with HIV/AIDS participated in a roundtable with Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday.
Visibles Executive Director Daniel Villatoro and Ingrid Gamboa of the Association of Garifuna Women Living with HIV/AIDS are among the 18 members of Guatemalan civil society who participated in the roundtable that took place at a Guatemala City university. Rigoberta Menchú, an indigenous human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, is among those who also took part.
Villatoro is among those who attended a virtual roundtable with Harris on April 27.
“When we met last time, I was so moved to hear about the work that you have been doing, the work that has been about helping women and children, indigenous, LGBTQ, Afro-descendants, people who have long been overlooked or neglected,” said Harris before Monday’s meeting began.
Visibles in a tweet acknowledged it participated in the roundtable.
“Today we participated in a meeting with the vice president of the United States to talk about development opportunities for Guatemala and the search for inclusive justice,” tweeted Visibles. “We, as an organization, spoke about the importance of addressing discrimination and acts of violence towards LGBTIQ+ people.”
The family of a transgender woman with HIV who died in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in 2018 has filed a federal lawsuit against five private companies that were responsible for her care.
The Transgender Law Center and two immigration lawyers — Daniel Yohalem in Santa Fe., N.M., and R. Andrew Free in Nashville — filed the lawsuit on Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico. Management and Training Corporation, LaSalle Corrections, Global Precision Systems, TransCor America and CoreCivic are named as defendants.
Hernández, who was from Honduras, entered U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody on May 9, 2018, when she asked for asylum at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in San Diego. She was later sent to the Cibola County Correctional Center, a facility in Milan N.M., that CoreCivic, which was previously known as the Corrections Corporation of America, operates.
Hernández was admitted to Cibola General Hospital in Grants, N.M., shortly after she arrived at the detention center. Hernández died at Lovelace Medical Center in Albuquerque, N.M., on May 25, 2018.
Lovelace Medical Center in Albuquerque, N.M. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
The lawsuit alleges Hernández on May 14, 2018, “exhibited visible signs of deterioration requiring immediate medical intervention” when Management and Training Corporation transported her and 12 other trans detainees from San Ysidro to the San Luis Regional Detention Center, a facility in San Luis, Ariz., that LaSalle Corrections operates.
“MTC denied Roxsana and her fellow detainees food, water, and restroom access throughout their transfer,” reads the lawsuit.
The lawsuit notes one detainee said Hernández appeared “very weak and pale, almost yellow in pallor, with dark circles under her eyes” when she was at the San Luis Regional Detention Center.
Hernández was at the facility for only a “few hours,” but she “used the bathroom several times to vomit or spit up phlegm.” The lawsuit claims Hernández “was so weak from fever that she spent most of her time at SLRDC (San Luis Regional Detention Center) laying on the floor, coughing.”
“Officers of Defendant LaSalle Corrections witnessed Roxsana’s obvious state of medical need and failed to offer her emergency medical assistance,” reads the lawsuit. “Eventually during her time at SLRDC Roxsana was so ill she could not eat and had to use the restroom approximately every 15 minutes because she had such bad diarrhea.”
The lawsuit states Hernández and more than two dozen other trans detainees at around midnight on May 15 boarded a bus that took them to the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa.
“Roxsana was very ill during the four-hour bus ride and pleaded for help to a person who sat with her, saying words to the effect of, ‘Help me! I don’t know if I’m going to survive,’” reads the lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleges a LaSalle Corrections officer “threatened” Hernández and the other detainees with whom she was traveling. The lawsuit says one detainee asked officers in both English and Spanish to provide medical care to Hernández, but they “ignored her.”
“When they arrived at the airport, one of the people being transported by LaSalle alongside Roxsana told an officer with beige pants and long red hair that Roxsana was very sick and needed immediate medical attention,” reads the lawsuit. “The officer refused to respond to her. During her five hour stay in the Mesa airport Roxsana remained in LaSalle’s custody and was provided no medical care or assistance for her sickness.”
The lawsuit states Hernández and the other detainees flew to El Paso, Texas, and arrived at the El Paso Processing Center at around 3:15 p.m. The lawsuit notes Hernández remained at the facility until the morning of May 16, 2018.
“She and her fellow asylum seekers woke up to ICE officers presenting them food that they were instructed to eat for breakfast at around 5:00 a.m.,” reads the lawsuit. “Roxsana attempted to eat the meal provided, but ended up vomiting and then going back to sleep.”
“By this time, Roxsana appeared to all around her to be gravely ill,” reads the lawsuit. “Despite LaSalle’s knowledge of Roxsana’s urgent need for medical care, during the entire time Roxsana was in LaSalle’s custody LaSalle did not provide her with medical care or assistance to alleviate her suffering.”
The lawsuit says Hernández and 29 other detainees who were going to the Cibola County Correctional Center boarded a bus at around 9 a.m.
“Each person was provided an 8-ounce bottle of water and sandwich to last the entire five and-half hour journey to the Cibola detention center in New Mexico,” says the lawsuit, which notes the temperature in El Paso that day reached 97 degrees before noon.
The lawsuit notes Hernández asked an officer for water during the trip, but he told her that he did not speak Spanish.
Hernández reportedly “had a fever and produced a significant amount of phlegm during the trip” and had bloody sputum when she blew her nose. The lawsuit also notes Hernández “felt dizzy and extremely exhausted, and her stomach hurt badly.”
The lawsuit says the bus arrived at the ICE Criminal Alien Program facility in Albuquerque at around 2:30 p.m.
“Despite GPS’s knowledge of Roxsana’s urgent need for medical care, during the entire time Roxsana was in GPS’s custody GPS did not provide her with medical care or assistance to alleviate her suffering,” it reads.
The lawsuit says officers from TransCor drove Hernández and 28 other trans detainees to the Cibola County Correctional Center, which is roughly 80 miles west of Albuquerque. The detainees arrived at the facility shortly after 8 p.m.
“Throughout this trip, Roxsana continued to appear gravely ill,” reads the lawsuit, noting she was unable to eat. 94. “Roxsana required immediate medical assistance that TransCor employees neglected to provide.”
The Cibola County Correctional Center in Milan, N.M. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
The Cibola County Correctional Center at the time had a unit specifically for trans women who were in ICE custody.
The lawsuit states Hernández was booked into the facility at around 1:15 a.m. on May 17. It notes she spent the night in the facility’s “medical waiting room.”
“Roxsana lay on the floor, only getting up to use the restroom or drink a beverage officers brought around 4 a.m.,” reads the lawsuit. “Roxsana was so weak and ill that she became delirious.”
The lawsuit states Hernández was brought to an “onsite medical provider who conducted an intake screening.” Hernández received “electrolytes and Ensure” before she returned to a holding cell.
The lawsuit says “an onsite medical provider” examined Hernández at around 10 a.m. She reportedly weighted 89 lbs., and was diagnosed with “dehydration, starvation, extreme weight loss, muscle wasting, untreated HIV, fever and cough.” The lawsuit also notes Hernández’s blood pressure was 81/61 and she had “rough breathing sounds and increased amount of white phlegm mucus excreted in abnormally large quantities.”
The lawsuit states officers at the detention center called an ambulance that brought Hernández to Cibola General Hospital at 11:44 a.m. Hernández later that day was airlifted to Lovelace Medical Center where she died.
“Throughout her hospitalization, CoreCivic officers shackled Roxsana at her wrists and both ankles to her hospital bed except when medical personnel needed to remove them for certain medical procedures,” reads the lawsuit. “At least one armed CoreCivic officer guarded Roxsana at all times and checked that her restraints were secured at least every 20 minutes.”
“Each time medical staff needed CoreCivic officers to remove her restraints, the officer on duty made a call to ‘central’ to receive approval to remove them, delaying Roxsana’s receipt of medical care,” notes the lawsuit. “CoreCivic officers kept Roxsana shackled even after her treating medical providers medically paralyzed her and when she first went into cardiac arrest.”
‘Every private entity tasked with Roxsana’s care failed her’
An autopsy the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator performed concluded Hernández died from Castleman disease associated with AIDS.
A second autopsy` that former Georgia Chief Medical Examiner Kris Sperry performed at the Transgender Law Center’s request concluded the cause of death was “most probably severe complications of dehydration superimposed upon HIV infection, with the probable presence of one or more opportunistic infections.” The second autopsy also found “evidence of physical abuse” that included bruising on Hernández’s rib cage and contusions on her body.
“Every private entity tasked with Roxsana’s care failed her,” said Dale Melchert, a Transgender Law Center staff attorney, in a press release that announced the lawsuit. “What we know about the short time that Roxsana was in immigration custody is that the officers tasked with transporting her saw her health deteriorate, heard her cries for help, and did nothing. She needlessly suffered as a result of their inaction.”
ICE has denied allegations that Hernández was abused while in its custody.
Amanda Gilchrist, a spokesperson for CoreCivic, on Thursday told the Washington Blade in a statement the company offers “our deepest condolences to the family and friends of Roxsana Hernández.” Gilchrist also noted Hernández was “gravely ill” when she arrived at the Cibola County Correctional Center.
“When she arrived, she went through the intake process, which includes a medical evaluation,” said Gilchrist. “The medical team made the determination that she needed to be immediately transported to an outside hospital.”
“Ms. Hernandez was only at Cibola for 12 hours, where she stayed in the intake area before being transported to the hospital where she passed away nine days later,” she added.
Issa Arnita, a spokesperson for the Management and Training Corporation, on Thursday told the Blade in an email the company “disputes the allegations in the lawsuit, but is unable to comment any further because of the litigation.” Arnita in a second email noted Hernández was in Management and Training Corporation’s custody for “less than four hours, more than a week before her death.”
Organizers of the 2020 International AIDS Conference on Friday announced the event will be held virtually because of the coronavirus.
The conference was scheduled to take place in San Francisco and Oakland, Calif., from July 6-10. International AIDS Society President Anton Pozniak and the conference’s two U.S. co-chairs, Cynthia Carey-Grant and Monica Gandhi, in a statement said the virtual conference “will enable delegates to access and engage with the latest HIV science, advocacy and knowledge traditionally presented at the conference.”
“It will be a compelling combination of virtual sessions and community networking, including exhibitions, workshops, the Global Village, satellites and pre-conferences that will reach audiences around the world,” reads the statement.
The statement notes people with HIV are likely at heightened risk for coronavirus. Organizers also said the decision to make the conference virtual “was informed by advice from the World Health Organization, UNAIDS, leading global and local health authorities, and people living with HIV around the globe.”
“We are acutely aware that there is not yet sufficient data on whether people living with HIV are more susceptible to COVID-19 or more likely to develop severe disease,” reads the statement. “Therefore, we have a special obligation to reduce any potential risk to the HIV community.”
“Furthermore, many of those who were planning to attend are now working on the front lines in the response to COVID-19 around the world,” it adds. “We have a responsibility to not put any of these individuals — or their home communities — at risk, nor redirect their efforts at a critical time in the response to the pandemic.”
The 20112 International AIDS Conference took place in D.C.
Statistics from Johns Hopkins University of Medicine indicate there are 94,238 confirmed coronavirus cases and 1,438 deaths from the disease in the U.S.
Immigration Equality on Monday demanded U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement release detainees with HIV who are at increased risk for coronavirus.
Immigration Equality in a complaint it sent to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties notes the six men who are named as complainants are at higher risk for coronavirus, in part, because of inadequate health care that includes inconsistent access to antiretroviral drugs and a failure to adequately treat opportunistic infections. The men are currently detained at the Winn and Richwood Correctional Centers in Louisiana, IAH Secure Adult Detention Facility in Texas and La Palma Correctional Center in Arizona.
The complaint also notes Immigration Equality has received reports that indicate “a failure to provide information on COVID-19, including how to protect against transmission.”
“In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the continued detention of these individuals puts them at even graver risk,” reads the complaint. “As experts have noted, immunosuppressed individuals, like those with HIV, are at heightened risk of serious medical issues with COVID-19, including death. This is particularly troubling for people in detention where they are at even greater risk of transmission.”
All six complainants are asylum seekers who fled persecution based on their sexual orientation and HIV status.
Acting ICE Director Matthew Albence and Acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan are also named in the complaint. Both of their agencies fall under the Department of Homeland Security’s jurisdiction.
Immigration Equality is among the myriad groups that have urged ICE to release from its custody people with HIV/AIDS and other detainees who are at heightened risk for coronavirus.
Louisiana’s Ouachita Parish in which Richwood Correctional Center is located has four confirmed coronavirus cases. There are no confirmed cases in the state’s Winn Parish where Winn Correctional Center is located.
Arizona’s Pinal County in which La Palma Correctional Center is located has 16 confirmed coronavirus cases. There are no confirmed coronavirus cases in the county where the IAH Secure Adult Detention Facility is located.
ICE on its website says as of March 17 there were no confirmed coronavirus cases in any of its detention centers. A guard at a New Jersey jail tested positive for coronavirus last week, but officials said none of the 250 ICE detainees who are currently at the facility were exposed to the disease.
Visitation at all ICE detention centers has been suspended. Lawyers, lawmakers and/or members of their staff who visit an ICE detention center are now required to wear disposable gloves, marks and eye protection.
“The health, welfare and safety of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees is one of the agency’s highest priorities,” reads ICE’s website. “Since the onset of reports of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), ICE epidemiologists have been tracking the outbreak, regularly updating infection prevention and control protocols, and issuing guidance to ICE Health Service Corps (IHSC) staff for the screening and management of potential exposure among detainees.”
“ICE continues to incorporate CDC’s COVID-19 guidance, which is built upon the already established infectious disease monitoring and management protocols currently in use by the agency,” it adds. “In addition, ICE is actively working with state and local health partners to determine if any detainee requires additional testing or monitoring to combat the spread of the virus.”
An ICE spokesperson on Monday referred the Washington Blade to their agency’s coronavirus guidelines in response to a request for comment about Immigration Equality’s complaint.
The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Washington and the Northwest Immigrants Rights Project last week filed a federal lawsuit that calls for ICE to release detainees who are at high-risk for coronavirus. U.S. District Court Judge James Robart on March 19 ruled against them.
The Trump administration on March 20 announced the U.S. will not allow undocumented immigrants to enter the country from either Mexico or Canada. The announcement came hours before Mexico-U.S. and Canada-U.S. borders closed for 30 days in an attempt to stop the spread of coronavirus.
“Many of these individuals arrive with little or no identity, travel or medical documentation, making public health risk determinations all but impossible,” said Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf during the White House Coronavirus Task Force’s March 20 briefing. “It’s also important to note that the southern border would likely increase the strain on health systems in our border communities, taking away important and life-saving resources away from American citizens.”
Immigrant advocacy groups sharply criticized the new policy.
Advocates along the Mexico-U.S. border say they are increasingly concerned about the coronavirus’ impact on migrants.
Jaime Antonio Marin Rocha and his mother, Yolanda Rocha, run Jardín de las Mariposas, a shelter for LGBTQ migrants in the Mexican border city of Tijuana.
Marin told the Washington Blade on Thursday during a telephone interview from Tijuana the shelter has implemented new personal hygiene procedures. Marin said the shelter currently has enough cleaning supplies, “but we don’t have anything that would be for long-term like four months or six months if we have to self-isolate ourselves.”
Marin also said 90 percent of the shelter’s residents have an underlying medical condition that makes them more vulnerable to coronavirus.
“If they were to get this disease, they would basically be more at-risk,” he told the Blade. “That’s why I want to see if we can take any actions to create a preparedness plan so we can have a response in time.”
Upwards of 2,000 migrants live in a camp in the Mexican city of Matamoros, which is across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas. Many of the camp’s residents have been forced to return to Mexico under the Trump administration’s controversial “remain in Mexico” policy and await the outcome of their U.S. asylum cases.
Resource Center Matamoros, co-founded by Gaby Zavala, was the first group to bring clean drinking water into the camp. Resource Center Matamoros, among other things, has also installed hand washing stations and launched a campaign that promotes personal hygiene among the camp’s residents.
Zavala spoke with the Blade from Matamoros shortly after the Trump administration announced the U.S.-Mexico border will remain closed for 30 days after its closure at midnight on Saturday.
Zavala noted Resource Center Matamoros and Global Response Management are the only two organizations that are currently working on the Mexican side of the river because all other non-governmental organizations have pulled their staff out of the city. Zavala told the Blade that groups in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley continue to donate money and make donations to them.
Global Response Management is building a field hospital in the camp that Zavala said is scheduled to open in a couple of weeks. She said Global Response Management is also responding to suspected coronavirus cases.
Zavala said Resource Center Matamoros is working to quarantine camp residents who are suspected to have the disease in local hotels. Zavala told the Blade she first drives to the hotel personal vehicle and then hires a private taxi to drive the person there “so we can avoid contact.”
Zavala said Resource Center Matamoros reached out to a woman with HIV who lives in the camp and asked her if she wanted to self-quarantine in a hotel. Zavala said the woman, who did not have any coronavirus symptoms, decided to isolate herself in the camp.
Zavala also said lawyers who represent migrants are no longer working from Resource Center Matamoros’ offices, but the organization continues to serve those with “immediate court dates” through a video doorbell system. Zavala said migrants are then able to send necessary documents to them via WhatsApp.
Zavala said on Friday there were two in-person “psychological interviews” that were scheduled months earlier. She told the Blade they washed their hands before entering the office and it was disinfected afterwards.
Global Response Management staffers are also sleeping in Resource Center Matamoros’ offices.
“Resource Center in general is closed,” said Zavala, noting Resource Center Matamoros staffers who distribute tents and supplies remain in the camp. “We’re trying to quarantine as much as we can, so there’s only a few staff that go in and out.”
Resource Center Matamoros co-founder Gaby Zavala in her office in Matamoros, Mexico, on Jan. 14, 2020. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
The Organization for Refugee, Asylum and Migration has also launched a campaign to specifically help LGBTQ asylum seekers and refugees along the Mexico-U.S. border and in Kenya during the pandemic.
Coronavirus preparations in Tijuana ‘minimal’
The Mexican government has confirmed two coronavirus cases in Tamaulipas state in which Matamoros is located, and another four in Baja California state in which Tijuana is located.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Friday posted a video onto his Twitter page that shows him practicing social distancing, but both Zavala and Marin said the Mexican government’s response to coronavirus has not been as robust as that of the U.S.
“San Diego is doing an excellent job in protecting their citizens and taking the appropriate measures to keep them safe,” Marin told the Blade, noting San Diego is roughly 20 miles north of Tijuana. “It’s not as though they’re not doing anything (in Tijuana), but what they’re doing is very minimal.”
Marin said many bars in Tijuana were open on Thursday. He also said there is a lack of information from officials about coronavirus in the local media.
The Blade on Feb. 28 saw an electronic billboard on the Mexican side of the San Ysidro Port of Entry with coronavirus information. There was no such advisory on the U.S. side of the border.
“We’re never going to know and all of a sudden we’re going to have a lot of people sick,” said Marin.
Zavala told the Blade the Matamoros camp “is still running as is,” but many of the migrants who live there are “staying in.” Zavala said Resource Center Matamoros has added 30 more handwashing stations in the camp and distributed soap and masks.
“They’re washing hands,” she said. “Kids are washing hands.”
“The education part, we’ve done a really good job,” added Zavala. “We’re just trying to keep everything sort of the same so that we don’t cause ripple effects that will be more disastrous later.”
A man uses a makeshift ladder to scale a fence that marks the Mexico-U.S. border in Tijuana, Mexico, on Feb. 26, 2020. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
Undocumented immigrants prohibited from entering U.S.
The Trump administration on Friday also announced the U.S. as of midnight Saturday will not allow undocumented immigrants to enter the country from either Mexico or Canada.
Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf told reporters during the White House’s daily coronavirus briefing his department apprehends people from more than 120 countries around the world. Wolf noted “the vast majority” of these nations have coronavirus cases.
“Many of these individuals arrive with little or no identity, travel or medical documentation, making public health risk determinations all but impossible,” said Wolf. “It’s also important to note that the southern border would likely increase the strain on health systems in our border communities, taking away important and life-saving resources away from American citizens.”
Immigrant rights groups condemned the announcement.
“It’s hard to imagine travel more essential than the journey an asylum-seeker makes to flee persecution,” said Charanya Krishnaswami, advocacy director for the Americas at Amnesty International USA, in a statement. “Yet today’s restrictions, which empower the U.S. to push back people who lack proper documentation, may inexcusably prevent asylum-seekers and unaccompanied children — two of the populations at greatest risk of danger — from accessing safety.”
ICE on Wednesday announced it will “focus enforcement on public safety risks and individuals subject to mandatory detention based on criminal grounds” during the coronavirus. The statement that detailed the new policy directive made no mention of detention centers or detainees.
ICE has suspended visitation at all detention centers. Its website also notes “the health, welfare and safety of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees is one of the agency’s highest priorities.”
“Since the onset of reports of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), ICE epidemiologists have been tracking the outbreak, regularly updating infection prevention and control protocols, and issuing guidance to ICE Health Service Corps (IHSC) staff for the screening and management of potential exposure among detainees,” it reads.
“ICE continues to incorporate CDC’s COVID-19 guidance, which is built upon the already established infectious disease monitoring and management protocols currently in use by the agency,” adds the website. “In addition, ICE is actively working with state and local health partners to determine if any detainee requires additional testing or monitoring to combat the spread of the virus.”
River Correctional Center in Ferriday, La., on Feb. 1, 2020. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
A guard at the Bergen County Jail in New Jersey — which houses ICE detainees — tested positive for coronavirus on Wednesday. A spokesperson for the Bergen County Sheriff’s Office told a local newspaper that none of the 250 ICE detainees who are currently at the facility were exposed to the disease.
The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Washington and the Northwest Immigrants Rights Project earlier this week filed a federal lawsuit that calls for ICE to release detainees who are at high-risk for coronavirus. U.S. District Court Judge James Robart on Thursday ruled against them.
“The COVID-19 crisis lays bare our failure to treat migrants with human decency and dignity,” said Laura Rivera, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative, in a statement. “The Trump administration and its enforcement agencies have been indifferent to the death and suffering of immigrants both at the border and in its cages set up across the country. The pandemic exacerbates this cruel indifference, and unless we swiftly change course, more will die than could be prevented.”
“These deaths will be on government hands,” added Rivera.
A well-known LGBTQ activist in Nicaragua who was arrested last September says he was tortured while in custody.
Ulises Rivas on Monday said members of Nicaragua’s National Police on Sept. 1, 2019, arrived at his niece’s volleyball game in Comalapa, a town in the country’s Chontales department that is roughly 75 miles east of the Nicaraguan capital of Managua, and arrested him because “they had an arrest warrant.”
A source with whom the Washington Blade spoke after Rivas’ arrest said he had been accused of robbing a woman. Rivas sent the Blade a screenshot of a message posted to a pro-government Facebook group that said he has also been accused of “inciting violence, destabilizing the peace” of his neighborhood and “hiding under the false flag of protectors of the environment.”
Rivas told the Blade during an emotional WhatsApp interview from his home in Santo Domingo, a town in Chontales department, the police brought him to the departmental capital of Juigalpa and placed him into a cell.
“I was not able to receive anything from my family, nor a visit or food,” said Rivas. “I was hungry all night.”
Rivas said officers the next morning took him to a local jail, and put him into what he described as a “punishment cell.” Rivas told the Blade he was forced to stand inside a cell for four hours with his hands in the air. He also said he suffered physical, “cultural and psychological torture.”
“I was bleeding and my entire body had been beaten and tortured,” said Rivas.
“I didn’t think that I would return to see my family,” he added. “I have tears in my eyes from everything they did to me.”
Rivas told the Blade he was forced to strip naked when his family arrived at the jail to visit him. Rivas also said authorities forced him to show his buttocks and made him do 10 squats.
Rivas said he spent 25 days in the cell before authorities transferred him to a prison within a larger penitentiary complex and placed him into another “punishment cell.”
“There was no bed, there were no mattresses, there were no hammocks,” said Rivas. “There was nothing on the floor.”
Rivas told the Blade there was a hole in the floor into which he and his other cellmate could defecate. Rivas also said they had access to water for only 20 minutes a day.
“You could hear cries, the cries of common prisoners when they were beaten,” said Rivas.
Rivas told the Blade there was also no access to medical care. He said the psychologists who worked at the prison were “from the government.”
“The first thing that they ask you is whether you want to kill yourself,” he said.
Rivas helped LGBTQ Nicaraguans in exile
Hundreds of people have been killed in Nicaragua since protests against the government of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, began in April 2018 in response to proposed cuts to the country’s social security benefits and the response to a wildfire at the Indio Maíz Biological Reserve on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast.
Rivas before he fled to Costa Rica protested against a gold mine in his hometown that B2Gold, a Canadian company, owns.
He helped create Asociación Hijos del Arco Iris LGBTI, a group in the Costa Rica that helps other LGBTQ Nicaraguans in exile. Rivas returned to Nicaragua in June 2019 in order to take care of his father who later died of cancer.
“I saw him die in the hospital,” Rivas told the Blade. “I was caring for him.”
Rivas said he then returned to his hometown for his father’s funeral.
“Afterwards they saw me and captured me because they had already seen that I was in Nicaragua,” he said.
A billboard in Managua, Nicaragua, on Feb. 27, 2018, promotes Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
Rivas spoke with the Blade less than two weeks after the Nicaraguan government released him and 90 other political prisoners from prison.
Rivas noted Waldemar Sommertag, the papal nuncio in Nicaragua, and the International Committee of the Red Cross played a role in the prisoners’ release, along with pressure from the international community. Rivas said his neighbors continue to protect him, even though he remains under house arrest and government surveillance.
“My neighborhood loves me,” he told the Blade.
Rivas said he does not know what to expect during his next court appearance that is scheduled to take place on Jan. 15.
The screenshot of the Facebook page that Rivas sent to the Blade says he could be sent to El Chipote, a notorious Managua prison in which Ortega himself was once a prisoner, “for about 10 or 20 years without the right to freedom, under the accusation of terrorism and threats to people.” Rivas nevertheless remains defiant.
“Nicaragua is made of vigor and glory,” he said. “Nicaragua is made for freedom.”
LGBTI activists in the Bahamas have joined efforts to help victims of Hurricane Dorian in their country.
Alexus D’Marco, executive director of the D’Marco Organization, on Friday told the Washington Blade her organization is providing support to people who are now living in shelters in the Bahamian capital of Nassau and assessing the specific needs they may have. D’Marco and her colleagues are also tracking missing people and reporting them to Bahamas’ National Emergency Management Agency.
D’Marco, who is also the executive director of the Bahamas Organization of LGBTI Affairs, noted the Rustin Fund for Global Equality and the Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coalition have created a Dorian relief fund.
“CVC has teamed up with the Rustin Fund to get rapid and urgent assistance to our LGBT brothers and sisters in the Bahamas,” reads the fund’s website. “This is a direct lifeline of support managed by CVC through LGBT groups in the Bahamas ensuring emergency funds reach them quickly.”
D’Marco said she and her colleagues are “trying to be here for the long haul.”
“We’re trying to raise funds for adequate shelter to put displaced persons of the LGBTI community, or the vulnerable population,” D’Marco told the Blade from Nassau during a WhatsApp interview. “So, we’re not just focusing in and zeroing in on key populations, but also the elderly, LGBTI persons who have families that are affected.”
Dorian had 185 mph winds when it made landfall in the Abaco Islands on Sept. 2. The Category 5 hurricane remained over Grand Bahama Island for more than 24 hours before it moved away from the Bahamas on Sept. 4.
Bahamian officials say Dorian’s death toll is currently at 43, but this figure is expected to rise significantly.
Hurricane Dorian relief supplies at the Bahamas’ National Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Nassau, Bahamas, on Sept. 4, 2019. (Photo courtesy of Alexus D’Marco)
Erin Greene, an “intersectional human rights advocate” who lives in Nassau, on Friday told the Blade during a WhatsApp interview that some people who live on New Providence, the island on which the city is located, saw up to 3′ of water in their homes. Greene said the situation in Nassau is “relatively fine” compared to that on Grand Bahama and Abaco.
“We dealt with a lot of rain and significant flooding in some areas,” she said.
Greene said her brother and sister-in-law live on Grand Bahama and she knows from social media posts they are “good.” Greene told the Blade she hadn’t heard from a friend “who is a member of the LGBTI family in Abaco.”
“I’ve gotten word that she’s safe, but I’m sure she hasn’t been able to make any communication yet,” she said.
Greene since Dorian has been sharing information about relief efforts on her Facebook page. She has also suggested people should include boxer and boxer briefs for women who may not wear “feminine underwear/panties.”
“For members of the community, particularly gender non-conforming and non-binary people, this is a very basic thing,” Greene told the Blade. “A choice of underwear is a great psychological need for them and could make dealing with a tragedy or travesty of this nature easier simply with the comfort of knowing I can continue to wear the underwear of my choice.”
Both Greene and D’Marco told the Blade they have not heard of any reports of Bahamians denied access to shelter and relief efforts because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
“We are definitely monitoring that situation,” said D’Marco. “We are making ourselves very visible to ensure that this does not happen during this process.”
‘We’re accepting any help’
The Associated Press reported the U.S. Coast Guard has rescued nearly 300 people in the Bahamas since Dorian. The Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line’s Grand Celebration on Saturday brought more than 1,000 Bahamians from Grand Bahama Island to Florida.
D’Marco told the Blade that people who lived on Grand Bahama and Abaco before Dorian have been brought to Nassau and are living in shelters. U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Mark Green is scheduled to travel to the Bahamas on Sunday.
Greene noted to the Blade that Bahamians are increasingly upset with their government’s response to Dorian, even though it has accepted assistance from the other countries that include the U.K. Chef José Andrés and Bethenny Frankel, who recently announced her departure from The Real Housewives of New York City, are among those who have joined the relief effort.
“We’re accepting any help,” Greene told the Blade. “We don’t care if its coming from homophobes. Wherever it’s coming from, we’re accepting help.”
Hurricane renews calls to address climate change
Dorian is the strongest hurricane to ever make landfall in the Bahamas.
Hurricane Irma had 155 mph winds when it made landfall on Little Inagua and South Acklins Islands in the southern Bahamas on Sept. 8, 2017.
Hurricane Matthew caused widespread damage in New Providence and other islands in the Bahamas in October 2016. Hurricane Joaquin was a Category 4 storm when it struck the southern Bahamas in October 2015.
D’Marco said Dorian and the other powerful hurricanes that have made landfall in the Bahamas in recent years underscore the need to talk about the impact of climate change. D’Marco also noted the Organization of American States’ 2020 General Assembly is scheduled to take place in Nassau next summer.
“Access to climate justice is very important,” D’Marco told the Blade. “That conversation must be had.”
Greene agreed.
“We need to center the region and ourselves as the ultimate victims of the behavior and action and dereliction of duty of others, and sustain not just a regional campaign, but a multiregional campaign, a small islands campaign that forces this agenda to the forefront of the global, political sphere,” she said.
A gay man from Chechnya with HIV who asked the Washington Blade not to reveal his identity was leaving a gay bar in Moscow on May 13, 2018, when a group of six men approached him and attacked him. A video from a nearby surveillance camera that he saved to his cell phone shows one of the men punching him in the face.
“He hit me right in the eye,” the man told the Blade on April 23 during an emotional interview in Dupont Circle. “People were standing right here.”
The man, who spoke to the Blade through a gay Russian friend who acted as an interpreter, said during the interview that doctors at a hospital and at a private eye clinic to where he was brought refused to treat him because of his HIV status. The man told the Blade he eventually “bumped into” an Armenian plastic surgeon who placed a titanium mesh around his injured eye ball a month after the attack.
“He caught up with me in the corridors of the hospital and he said what I see tells me that you absolutely need surgery and I can do it for you,” said the man. “He did it.”
The man had been living in Moscow for more than a year when the men attacked him. He flew to Miami on Nov. 10, 2018, and has been living in New York since last December.
“For the longest time, I didn’t want to move to the U.S. because I thought back in Russia I could lay low and disappear from society’s life and somehow the threat to my persona would evaporate overtime,” said the man. “That is why I moved from Chechnya to Moscow and I started experiencing how difficult it is to live outside of your own society.”
Chechnya ‘not safe for gay people’
Chechnya is a predominantly Muslim, semi-autonomous Russian republic in the North Caucasus.
Novaya Gazeta, an independent Russian newspaper, in 2017 reported Chechen authorities had arrested more than 100 men because of their sexual orientation. The Russian LGBT Network, a Russian advocacy group, in January said at least two people have been killed and upwards of 40 people have been detained in the latest anti-LGBTI crackdown in Chechnya that began shortly after the man with whom the Blade spoke arrived in the U.S.
A report the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a Vienna-based group of which the U.S. is a member, released late last year documents extrajudicial killings and other human rights abuses against LGBTI Chechens. President Trump has not publicly condemned the crackdown, but the State Department in January described the reports over additional arrests and deaths as “deeply disturbing.”
The man with whom the Blade spoke said he “stopped going to Chechnya” two years ago because he had begun to receive death threats.
He said he closed his business in Grozny, the Chechen capital. The man added the rest of his family remains in Chechnya.
“It’s not safe for gay people,” he said. “In Chechen society, the topic of sex in general is a taboo. Therefore gay people in Chechen society are never accepted and completely rejected.”
“There are countries in this world where gay people are persecuted, but in these countries’ case the society admits the fact that they have gay people amongst them,” added the man. “Chechnya is the only place on earth that completely rejects the whole fact of the possible existence of gay people.”
Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, a close Kremlin ally who is among the Chechen officials sanctioned by the U.S., in 2017 said during an interview with HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” his republic doesn’t “have any gays.” Russian President Vladimir Putin has either downplayed or dismissed the reports about the anti-LGBTI crackdown in Chechnya.
The Kremlin’s LGBTI rights record, which includes a 2013 law that bans so-called gay propaganda to minors, and Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, continue to spark criticism around the world. The man with whom the Blade spoke said he felt targeted in Moscow because he is gay and Chechen.
“The problem is the threat to life is not just inside Chechnya,” he said. “It travels all over the Russian Federation and beyond into other countries of the world where the Chechen diaspora exists.”
The man with whom the Blade spoke said he was afraid to report any threats he received to the police because it would be “like committing suicide for us.” He also said he was afraid to reach out to LGBTI activists in Moscow and elsewhere, in part, because he was worried other Chechens would learn about him.
“We Chechens are afraid of other Chechens the most,” the man said.
The gay man from Chechnya with HIV with whom the Washington Blade spoke in D.C. on April 23, 2019, currently lives in New York. (Photo by Daniel Schwen; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
The man said a man in New York who is associated with RUSA LGBT, a group of LGBTI Russian speakers and their supporters, began to send “uncontrolled threats” to him after he criticized him for an “offensive and racist” Facebook post that he also described as xenophobic.
He said RUSA LGBT banned him from their event at a gay bar in Manhattan and sent him a cease and desist letter, which he claims is not valid, on April 12 that he showed to the Blade. Yelena Goltzman, founder and co-president of RUSA LGBT, in a lengthy statement denied the man’s allegations.
“The cease and desist letter was, in fact, sent to one of the people in the conflict on the advice of the attorney and the police who were called to the scene after his fourth unprovoked and unwelcomed visit to the workplace of RUSA LGBT’s co-president and as a consequence of his unrelenting harassment on social media,” Goltzman told the Blade on Tuesday.
Goltzman said Facebook “took down his posts about RUSA LGBT and warned him of further consequences.”
“Despite this, he continues to slander and harass RUSA LGBT leaders,” she said. “Unfortunately, we see the information he provided to you may further advance his harassment and slander against our group.”
Goltzman on Wednesday in a follow-up text message to the Blade said the man who the asylum seeker has accused of harassing him “is not a volunteer or a leader of RUSA LGBT and does not represent RUSA LGBT in any way.” The man with whom the Blade spoke on April 23 continues to dispute RUSA LGBT’s claims against him.
In the meantime, his asylum interview took place on Monday in New York. The man told the Blade he hopes “to realize my dream of being free and equal among equals, a worthy citizen and partner” if he were to receive asylum in the U.S.
“I know that in this country I can do this,” he said. “I hope that in the United States law, order and society will not allow any discrimination or threats against me from anyone, regardless of their position in society.”
“I want to start a new life in which there will be no place for xenophobia, transphobia, HIV stigma, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism from anyone,” added the man.
The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday approved a bill that would add sexual orientation and gender identity to federal civil rights laws.
The Equality Act, which U.S. Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) reintroduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in March, passed the committee by a 22-10 vote margin with all Republican committee members voting against it. The openly gay Rhode Island Democrat in a statement after the vote said “fairness and equality are core American values.”
“This bill affirms those values and ensures members of the LGBTQ community can live their lives free from the fear of legal discrimination of any kind,” said Cicilline.
U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who chairs the committee, spoke in favor of the Equality Act at the beginning of the markup, which is the first time one has taken place for the perennial bill.
“This is long-overdue legislation that will explicitly prohibit discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and gender non-conforming Americans and strengthen nondiscrimination protections for women and others,” said the New York Democrat.
Equality Act supporters who spoke on a conference call with reporters on Tuesday agreed with Nadler.
“The American dream is broken when all states are not united,” said Carter Brown, founder of Black Trans Men who said he lost his job in Texas because of his gender identity. “All Americans need permanent, explicit nondiscrimination laws in place and enforced.”
The Equality Act would specifically add gender identity and sexual orientation to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act.
The bill has 240 co-sponsors in the House from both sides of the aisle. U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) has introduced the Equality Act in the U.S. Senate.
“It’s time for Congress to add explicit federal LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections to our nation’s civil rights laws,” said the Human Rights Campaign in a tweet.
Advocates have urged the full House to approve the Equality Act.
