ICE: transgender immigrants need hormone therapy

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano had sent a letter to Senate members two months earlier inquiring into how the US government could prioritize its deportation efforts into capturing criminals over regular immigrants. The administration later toted that more than half of its deportations affected those with criminal arrests. One month after this announcement, though, the Applied Research Center released a startling report demonstrating that the US government may not have been as family-friendly as it let off to the American people. Mike Riggs of Reason summarizes: …46,000 parents of children born in the U.S. have been deported in the last six months, with many of them forced to leave their kids behind. Another 5,100 children of undocumented workers, an estimate that the ARC says is conservative, are currently in foster care and unlikely to see their deported parents again. While these statistics were seen as impressive by border proponents, you can bet the GOP will soon enough be openly unhappy about ICE’s new policy. The organization’s recently-released 2011 Operations Manual ICE Performance-Based National Detention Standards states that specially-trained officers will now “inquire into a transgender detainee’s gender self-identification and history of transition-related care, when a detainee self-identifies as transgender.” Detailed guidelines explain further: Transgender detainees who were already receiving hormone therapy when taken into ICE custody shall have continued access. All transgender detainees shall have access to mental health care, and other transgender-related health care and medication based on medical need. Treatment shall follow accepted guidelines regarding medically necessary transition-related care. The manual, which had not been updated since 2008, did not discuss the medical needs of transgender immigrants in the old version. No mention in the new version is made about undocumented immigrants who desire hormone therapy if they did not begin treatment before detainment dates. A few politicians have come out against the provisions as unconstitutional, specifically in regards to the transgender procedures and abortion services. It is currently estimated that the deportation of one undocumented immigrant costs taxpayers between $23,000 and $30,000. ICE requested a budget for over $5.8 billion in fiscal year 2012.