Question by Chavie: Should US be required to provide illegal Transgender detainees with hormone replacement therapy?
SANTA ANA In the depths of depression, battling hot flashes and desperate about her situation, Monica Freas tried to throw herself from the second floor of the Santa Ana Jail before friends restrained her.
After two decades of taking hormone replacement therapy, the 35-year-old no longer had access to the drugs that made her feel comfortable in her own skin. She begged and pleaded with jailers for months to give her the medication that made her “feel normal,” but they refused.
“I just can’t even look at myself in the mirror anymore,” Freas said in a recent interview while in detention on suspicion of being in the country illegally. She rubbed her face and pointed to the stubble on her cheeks. “For years I tried hard to get to that point and for it all to be taken away.”
She and others have shared their stories with the Heartland Alliance National Immigrant Justice Center, an advocacy group that has filed complaints with the Department of Homeland Security alleging that jailers nationwide have deprived detainees of “adequate health care” by denying them the therapy.
Immigrant-rights groups, the American Medical Association and others in the medical community say hormone replacement therapy is necessary in cases of gender identity disorder. Those with the disorder feel a strong identification with the opposite sex, which causes intense emotional pain and suffering, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Others question whether taxpayers should fund the treatment for a certain population of immigration detainees. While immigration officials say they don’t know the exact cost of providing hormone therapy to detainees, at least one physician puts the price tag at about $ 1,000 per person per year for treatment and monitoring.
It is unclear how many transgender detainees make up the estimated daily immigration detention population of more than 30,000 at nationwide facilities because Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials don’t track such figures, said ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice. The Santa Ana Jail now houses about 40 transgender detainees as part of a contract with ICE.
Over the past few months, Santa Ana Jail has become the primary host for vulnerable and special needs ICE detainees – including transgender detainees – for the Los Angeles area, ICE officials said. The transgender detainees are separated from the regular inmate population for their own safety, officials added.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-illegal immigration think tank, said taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for the treatment.
“It’s one thing if you have a medication that is necessary for you to continue breathing,” he said. “It’s not what this is.”
http://www.ocregister.com/news/detainees-124514-ocprint-therapy-immigration.html    Read more...