Roxsana Hernandez
Roxsana Hernandez was transgender woman living with HIV who fled gang violence in her home country of Honduras and came to the United States to seek asylum with a caravan of transgender migrants from across Latin America in Spring of 2018. Once she was taken into custody by U.S. Custom and Border Protection (“CBP”) in May at the San Ysidro port of entry, she became increasingly ill and died sixteen days later in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”). Roxsana was not hospitalized until she arrived in New Mexico weighing 89 pounds where ICE sent her to be detained in the trans housing unit at Cibola County Correctional Center after being in the custody of the United States for over a week. During that week Roxsana was held in the basement of the port of entry where she slept on the floor for five nights and then sent on a three-day circuitous journey between California and New Mexico by way of six bus trips, one flight, and stops at multiple detention facilities. During this journey Roxsana was detained and transported by seven different private prison companies that contracted with the ICE. None provided her with medical care. When she was finally hospitalized, Roxsana was starving, diagnosed with septic shock, and AIDS. Roxsana died a week after she was hospitalized.
Represented by Transgender Law Center, Grant & Eisenhoffer P.A. and the law office of Daniel Yohalem, the personal representative of Roxsana’s wrongful death estate filed a wrongful death complaint in May 2020 against the United States and the private prison contractors who were responsible for Roxsana’s care and custody, asserting claims for negligence, negligent hiring, supervision and training, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, among others.
After extensive discovery and motion practice against the eight Defendants and Third-Party Defendant—as a result of Defendants’ complex contracting/sub-contracting scheme— the parties settled all claims to the mutual satisfaction of the parties.
Roxsana’s family pursued legal action to seek accountability from the United States’ immigration system in hopes that as a result, other people in immigration detention would timely receive needed medical care. Roxsana’s story sparked public outcry and demands to end the detention of transgender migrants.Roxsana was subjected to are still the norm.