The Bureau of Prisons is pushing ahead with plans to move transgender inmates out of prisons that align with their gender identity and into facilities corresponding to their sex at birth. The moves could happen as early as next week, according to federal inmates and a source familiar with the policy who spoke with NPR on condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisal.
This would mean transgender women currently housed in women's facilities would be moved to men's facilities, and vice versa. It's expected that the moves will impact trans inmates regardless of whether they've received gender transition surgery of any kind.
It's a step that has been anticipated with serious concern by many in the trans and legal communities since President Trump signed an executive order that pushed the BOP to make such a move.
The move is already being challenged
A lawsuit filed late Friday afternoon by a dozen transgender women inmates is attempting to block the BOP from moving the federal prison system's trans population.
"If transferred, these people, some of who are post-surgery, would be at an incredibly high risk of assault," said Kara Janssen, the lawyer representing the incarcerated plaintiffs.
Trump's executive order — which states that the federal government recognizes only two sexes, male and female — "provides no room for individualized determinations or discretion, does nothing to further safety and security, and these continued attempts to transfer people and put them in direct harm appear to be motivated by nothing more than hate and cruelty towards this population," she said in an email to NPR.
The BOP has not responded to questions from NPR. The agency has not made information about its new policy publicly available, nor has it publicly announced the planned moves.
The plaintiffs, named in the lawsuit using pseudonyms with their locations redacted, are currently housed in women's facilities but are slated to be transferred.
The lawsuit says that after weeks of being warned that they would be moved imminently, the women were told on Thursday that they were officially on the list to be transferred to a men's prison, where their hormone treatments would be cut off. On Friday, the women were removed from the general population of their prison into segregated housing.
The women fear sexual assault and other abuses if they were to be moved, the lawsuit says, in part because some of the women had been assaulted when previously housed in men's facilities.
For years, the BOP applied an individual assessment to determine the appropriate housing for each transgender inmate, taking into account an individual's safety and security as well as compliance with the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA).
That process was in place until Trump's executive order was signed on Jan. 20. As it relates to trans inmates, the order was successfully challenged in court in two cases where the inmates sued to block the new rules. In one of those lawsuits, for example, a federal judge on Feb. 4 temporarily blocked the transfer of three transgender women plaintiffs to a men's facility. However, those rulings only protected the individuals named in the suits, not the rest of the population of trans inmates within the federal prison system.
It's unclear how many people the BOP hopes to move in total. Previous data from the BOP website indicated there are 1,529 transgender women and 744 transgender men in custody. It's also unclear how many are currently housed in prisons according to their birth sex versus their gender identity. The agency's website has since removed references to its trans population.
Prisons told to prep for moves
As the BOP hopes to follow through with their plans as soon as next week, conference calls with prison officials, prison psychologists and others across the country have been held multiple times in the past few days, said the source familiar with the agency's plans.
The source told NPR that the BOP was expecting a lawsuit, and for a possible court order blocking the moves, but intended to go ahead with the plan anyway. Officials at individual prisons won't begin moving people until they receive the go-ahead from the BOP, the source said, and it's unclear when that would happen. The bureau is well aware of concerns about potential risks of assault, sexual violence and suicides, which have been raised by officials, according to the source.
Efforts are being made at at least one prison to prepare specialized housing units for trans inmates to prevent abuse and assault, the source said, and each individual's security level generally is being considered — for example, an inmate at a low-security prison would only be moved to another low-security federal facility.
AJ Diciesare, a transgender man who is currently housed in a women's prison, does not expect to be moved because his facility corresponds to his assigned sex at birth. But he told NPR he's fearful of what these efforts targeting trans inmates mean for him and others. He's been taking hormones for years and said he worries those will soon be taken away.
"It's not just a physical withdrawal. It's mental anguish," he said, describing how he has felt when he has been taken off the medication.
He's tried to get definitive answers from prison officials on what is happening next, but he's heard nothing. "That's building anguish," he said.
He said he has spoken to the trans women in his prison and has seen fear on their faces ever since they were told that the BOP plans to move them to male facilities next week. Two women he spoke to are considered to have fully undergone the gender-affirming process, including surgeries, Diciesare said. They are still on the list to be moved.
"I understand we broke laws. However, we are still humans. We are still people," Diciesare said.
Lauren McGaughy from KUT/The Texas Newsroom contributed to this report.
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