ICE Is Treating Trans Immigrants With A New Level Of Cruelty

Arely Westley, an undocumented transgender woman who grew up in New Orleans, spent six months in immigration detention in her youth. She didn’t want anyone else to have to experience the cruelty, confusion and isolation of detention.

After her release, community organizers helped her find safe housing, inspiring her to fight for other trans migrants navigating the system alone. Westley met with trans detainees in immigration facilities across the state to connect them with attorneys, raised commissary funds and campaigned to shut down facilities that had histories of abuse.

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In 2024, she was honored by the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Center — recently renamed the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center — for her work, earning its annual human rights award. At the ceremony, Westley spoke about surviving human trafficking, as well as her horrific experiences while being detained.

When Donald Trump returned to the White House last year after campaigning on a platform that denigrated trans people and immigrants, Westley was working as a campaign director at BreakOut!, an organization helping Black and Latinx trans youth. She was in the process of obtaining a special visa for trafficking survivors and had received gender-affirming surgeries. Her home was a place where she felt safe, and she could be surrounded by her 10 dogs, two cats, bunnies and chickens.

She wasn’t particularly worried when she received a call last January from the New Orleans field office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Over the phone, and in a text message reminder reviewed by HuffPost, Westley’s supervisory officer told her they recognized her role as a community leader and wanted to offer her more lenient supervision. Westley had been granted an Order of Supervision in 2024, which functions similarly to probation and allowed her to live in the U.S. while awaiting final deportation orders and an update on her visa — shortly after winning her award.

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But when Westley reported to the office, agents handcuffed her. Over the next several months, she was detained at a Louisiana facility where she says she was denied access to medical care, spent long stretches in solitary confinement and was subjected to verbal abuse and transphobic harassment. She said medical personnel at the facility told her they didn’t know how to care for her, and she is still recovering from several infections that went untreated during her detention.

Sarah Decker, a senior staff attorney with the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center and Westley’s lawyer, said people living under an Order of Supervision were “very easy targets” during the early days of the Trump administration’s deportation campaign.