Judge orders release of migrant trans woman held in male section of ICE facility

A Mexican transgender migrant seeking asylum in the U.S. after allegedly being abducted and raped by cartel members has been ordered released from an all-male Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility by a federal judge on due process grounds.

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Baggio, a President Joe Biden appointee, ordered the migrant released from the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, ruling that the asylum seeker had been deprived of liberty without proper procedural safeguards.

The migrant, a 24-year-old transgender woman identified as “O-J-M” in court documents, was arrested outside a Portland courtroom last month and transferred to the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington. 

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The nonprofit Innovation Law Lab, whose attorneys represent O-J-M, welcomed the move and decried the fact O-J-M was being held at a man’s facility.

“President Trump’s anti-transgender executive order forced her into a men’s facility, and into solitary confinement for her own safety, adding layers of cruelty to an already unconstitutional detention,” a social media post by Innovation Law Lab reads.

“OJM was detained for over a month simply for legally seeking asylum. Seeking asylum is lawful, and a human right. This is a huge victory for our trans and immigrant communities in Oregon.”

O-J-M’s attorneys said O-J-M was abducted and raped in Mexico because of gender identity and sexual orientation and was seeking asylum on those grounds.

O-J-M was arrested in Portland’s immigration court in early June after a judge granted the government’s request to dismiss the asylum case. O-J-M was then transferred to an ICE detention facility in Tacoma, Washington and held there for over 40 days.

But O-J-M’s attorneys filed a habeas petition, a legal motion asking the court to review whether the detention was lawful, saying they were not aware of their client’s location after O-J-M was taken into custody. 

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Under due process standards, especially in asylum cases, attorneys must be able to locate their client and ICE is required to notify or justify sudden detentions and transfers.

In O-J-M’s case, the judge found that ICE’s failure to provide timely, specific information about the migrant’s location and legal status violated fundamental procedural fairness. The judge had also demanded to know why it was deemed immediately necessary.

One of the migrant’s attorneys, Stephen Manning, of Immigrant Law Group, previously told OPB that O-J-M was processed into the Tacoma detention center, but he had not been granted access to her since her transfer.

“They threatened to kill her because O-J-M is a transgender woman,” her habeas petition states, per OPB. “Fearing for her life, she fled and sought asylum in the United States in September 2023.”

Manning told Willamette Weekly that his client had not committed a crime while in the U.S. O-J-M has regularly checked in at ICE offices as instructed.

Oregon sanctuary laws prevent it from having long-term immigration detention facilities, and — aside from temporary holding cells at the Portland ICE office — the nearest immigration detention center is the Tacoma facility.