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Trump Trans Prisoner Orders Will Be ‘Life-Threatening,’ Experts Warn

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On the first day of his second presidential term, Donald Trump issued a series of sweeping executive orders that severely restricted transgender prisoners’ access to safe housing and proper medical care, the Appeal reports. In the president’s most direct attack on imprisoned people, one order bars the federal government from funding gender-affirming care, mandates that trans women be housed in men’s prisons, and instructs the federal government to remove protections for transgender people from Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) guidelines. According  to experts, the consequences could be dire. “This is a life-threatening executive order,” said Julie Abbate, national advocacy director at Just Detention International, an organization that works to end sexual abuse in prisons and jails. “It has immediate consequences to the actual lives and physical, sexual, and social well-being of any transgender person, including those who are locked up.”


According to a recent BOP report, trans people disproportionately face solitary confinement in federal custody. That trend continues in state facilities, where almost 90 percent of surveyed trans people said they were subject to isolation.  A February report from the Vera Institute of Justice and Black and Pink National also detailed the violence trans prisoners face in prison. Out of nearly 300 incarcerated trans people surveyed, 31 percent said violence from fellow prisoners is the principal reason they feel unsafe. Additionally, more than half reported being sexually assaulted during their current prison sentences.  “People will die,” Abbate said. “It’s unconscionable the President of the United States has issued this order. It’s just unconscionable in its cruelty.”

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