by Hamed Aleaziz

A transgender immigrant locked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a private, remote New Mexico jail told staff she was bleeding from her rectum — and then had to wait 13 days for urgent medical care, according to a secret memo sent by a top Department of Homeland Security official to ICE leadership and obtained by BuzzFeed News. When the woman was finally tested, the memo said, “it was determined she had HIV.”

“The negligence of addressing a medical emergency such as this not only placed the infected detainee at risk for severe medical complications,” wrote Dana Salvano-Dunn, director of the compliance branch for the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, “but it also exposed other detainees and facility and ICE staff to an infectious and potentially deadly disease.”

The Aug. 21, 2019, email revealed how immigrants at Cibola County Correctional Center — the only immigration jail with dedicated space for transgender women in the US — sometimes waited up to 17 days for urgently needed medical care, were exposed to poor sanitation and quarantine practices during a chickenpox and mumps outbreak, and didn’t get medications as directed by a doctor for illnesses such as diabetes, epilepsy, and tuberculosis. The advisers also said they saw immigrants in the transgender unit housed in an area that was not “appropriately cleaned and sanitized,” potentially contributing to the spread of infectious diseases.

ICE transferred a portion of its detainees at Cibola — 27 trans women and 15 others with chronic medical issues — out of the facility in January, roughly five months after the urgent email was sent detailing “the seriousness of the concerns raised.” Despite the concerns in August 2019, ICE had an average daily population of more than 100 detainees at Cibola every month through January, according to agency data reviewed by BuzzFeed News. As of Feb. 28, there were still 30 ICE detainees in the facility, according to the agency. Read more via Buzzfeed