An incarcerated transgender woman says she was forcibly transferred to a men’s lockup, thrown into solitary confinement, and made to feel like a “zoo animal,” after federal corrections officials carried out Donald Trump’s executive order directing them to house trans women in men’s facilities, according to a newly filed federal lawsuit.
And although Jane Jones is now back in the low-security women’s camp where she had been previously, significant damage has already been done.
“I live in fear that I may, at any time, be transferred to a men’s facility, as I was once before,” Jones wrote in an affidavit filed alongside her suit.
“Now, every time I hear the intercom, I have a physical reaction out of fear of being transferred,” she said. “On one occasion, my name was called over the intercom and I began crying uncontrollably. And, any time the intercom is turned on, as I wait to see if my name will be called, I break out in sweats, my heart rate goes up, and I get nauseous. This is very unlike me; I have never had these symptoms before.”
Now, she is asking a judge to issue a permanent injunction to make sure it won’t happen again.
When Jones (not her real name), a non-violent offender who long ago underwent top and bottom surgery and has been living as a woman for years, was first told she was being moved, her lawsuit says she asked officers if she could bring what remained of her hormone therapy medications, and they said yes. However, the suit alleges, they told her that she would not be allowed to renew her prescription once the existing supply ran out.
Once there, Jones was placed in a tiny one-person cell in the “special housing unit,” where she “had no one to talk to and was not allowed to go outside or engage in any recreation whatsoever,” she wrote in an affidavit submitted to the court on Tuesday. “While I was able to call my wife once a day, I had no access to email, and our calls were cut short. I was only provided with men’s toiletries.”
Jones says in the affidavit that she was kept under 24/7 video surveillance, was watched by male corrections officers when she showered and used the toilet, and was given a towel “no bigger than a letter-sized piece of paper.”
“I asked various guards and prison officials why I had been transferred, and who had ordered the transfer,” the affidavit continues. “No one would answer this question; instead, the guards walked by the small window in my cell and looked at me as if I was a zoo animal.”
Eventually, Jones says she got an answer from one of the prison higher-ups, who told her she had been reassigned “because of President Trump’s executive order,” her affidavit states.
“Though I am a resilient person, my mental health began to suffer while I was in the SHU,” it goes on. “I felt completely hopeless, fearful, and extremely anxious. Isolation is very triggering for me given the isolation from family and friends I experienced when I transitioned. It felt as if I was being forcefully detransitioned. I also had no idea how long I would be there, which made me feel completely out of control and depressed.”
Trump signed the executive order rescinding protections for incarcerated trans women on January 20, his first day back in office after losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden.
Jones’ suit, which was filed anonymously, is one of at least three federal complaints from trans inmates seeking to block the Trump administration from sending them into men’s prisons.
Last week, Ronald Reagan-appointed District Judge Royce Lambert temporarily struck down part of Trump’s sweeping executive order on gender as a likely violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Jones, along with the three other trans women who brought claims against Trump over the practice, was returned to the women’s camp, according to her lawsuit.
Lamberth agreed that the women faced a “significantly elevated risk of physical and sexual violence” and “numerous and severe symptoms” without appropriate medical care.
Lawyers for the Department of Justice reported in court documents that 16 transgender women are currently housed in federal women’s prisons, while the vast majority of the more than 2,200 incarcerated trans people are housed in facilities that do not align with their gender.
Of those inmates, 1,506 are trans women, and 724 are trans men, according to the Justice Department.
A lack of gender-accurate housing, compounded by difficulties accessing gender-affirming care, have subjected trans inmates to extreme abuse, The Independent previously reported.
Incarcerated trans people are 10 times more likely to report being sexually victimized as other prisoners, according to federal data.
Two of three incarcerated trans women in one D.C. lawsuit are survivors of sexual assaults in men’s facilities, according to their complaint.
One of those plaintiffs, who has had several affirming surgeries and taken hormones for several years, fears that her “breasts and female genitalia will be exposed,” and that she will be “vulnerable to sexual harassment, assault, and rape” if she is forced into a men’s facility.
She will also “predictably experience worsening gender dysphoria exacerbated by a lack of medical care, which can lead to serious harm, including worsening and dramatically increased risks of suicidality and depression,” according to the lawsuit.
An incarcerated trans woman who sued in Massachusetts similarly claimed she was segregated from the general population at a women’s facility, moved into a special housing unit, and told that she would be transferred to a men’s prison.
On January 25, five days after Trump signed his executive order, prison records suddenly classified her as “male,” according to her lawsuit. She remains in the special housing unit, pending transfer.
Since taking office, Trump has signed executive orders to remove transgender service members from the U.S. armed forces, prevent people under 19 years old from accessing gender-affirming care, and prohibit trans women and girls from competing in women’s sports. His Day One order seeks to effectively erase the concept of gender from the federal government by ordering agencies to only recognize male or female sexes as assigned at birth.
Jones’ affidavit says she is “female in all respects,” and will not be safe in a men’s prison. Her body no longer produces male hormones, and if she is forced to stop taking female ones, she will lose bone mass, blood pressure regulation, and experience “extreme emotional distress and… physical harm,” she writes.
As Jones’ affidavit concludes, “A woman with full female anatomy has no place in a men’s facility.”
The Independent has requested comment from the US Bureau of Prisons.
