Federal immigration authorities have rescinded a policy that provided protections and affirming health care for transgender people held in the Aurora detention center, part of a broader push by the Trump administration to end those guardrails across the country.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials ended the policy earlier this month in a memo amending ICE’s contract with the GEO Group, which operates the Aurora facility. The rescinded plans, instituted in late 2022, required that detainees who were already receiving gender-affirming care continue to receive it while in the facility; that transgender detainees be housed in either specialty units or in areas that match their gender identities; and that facilities establish committees to oversee the detention and treatment of trans people.
The rules also sought to ensure that transgender people could bathe separately and that the guards who monitored them were given specialty training.
Eight people were detained in a transgender unit in the Aurora facility as of last month, according to a report issued by U.S. Rep. Jason Crow’s office. The facility was one of two ICE facilities nationally that provided gender-affirming care, according to immigrant advocates, and detainees had previously been transferred to the facility to receive the treatment.
It’s unclear exactly what impact the change will have on transgender immigrants in the Aurora facility, advocates said. Monique Sherman, managing attorney for the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network’s detention program, said the transgender pod was still in place.
But advocates had heard, she said, that new transgender detainees were being placed in general population housing.
Sherman said attorneys and immigration advocates were trying to figure out if transgender immigrants’ affirming health care was continuing or would end entirely.
“It is a very big concern,” she said. “We are aware of some people who are continuing to get the care that they need. However, we’re also aware of some people who have not received the care that they need until somebody advocated really strongly for them to receive that care.”
Similar policies were rescinded in at least three other ICE detention centers earlier this month, according to agency records reviewed by The Denver Post.
A regional spokesman for ICE referred The Post to a Jan. 20 executive order from newly inaugurated President Donald Trump, rolling back transgender protections. The order required federal agencies to remove policies and regulations “that promoted or otherwise inculcate gender ideology.”
It also required agencies to defund those policies and to stop detaining or imprisoning transgender women in women’s facilities.
A spokesman for GEO referred comment to ICE, which did not respond to questions about the impact of the change on transgender detainees.
Other advocates said hormone therapy hadn’t been offered at the facility for most detainees.
“Most transgender individuals that Casa De Paz has built relationships with at the Aurora detention facility report that no hormone therapy has been offered in the last 18 months,” the organization, which works with people leaving the facility, said in a joint statement with the immigrant rights coalition and the American Friends Service Committee, another advocacy group. “… This denial of treatment left individuals not only distressed emotionally, but also experiencing physical side effects, similar to menopause, from suddenly stopping their treatments.”
The changes to the Aurora contract were part of a monthslong effort by ICE to roll back Biden-era protections for transgender detainees. In addition to the contracts reviewed by The Post, other facilities had similar provisions stripped earlier this year, according to The Intercept.
ICE stopped publicly disclosing how many transgender people are in its custody shortly after Trump took office, the Intercept reported.
The Colorado advocacy groups said that they “expect this memo will intensify the mental and physical health struggles for trans people in detention.”
