Jan 25, 2017
This is not the time for despair, but for resistance, resilience, and action. We must be a refuge to each other as President Trump attempts to destroy any official refuge the U.S. would offer us.
seen from Singapore
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seen from Türkiye
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seen from United States
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seen from United States
This is not the time for despair, but for resistance, resilience, and action. We must be a refuge to each other as President Trump attempts to destroy any official refuge the U.S. would offer us.
#Repost @translawcenter (@get_repost) ・・・ #transimmigrants, know your rights! Full resource on preparing for ICE raids and credible fear interviews here: http://bit.ly/2wOrQrE #heretostay
“Dealing with an ankle monitor you don’t feel free even in the outside. You have a specific time that you can go out and you have to ask for permission. You still feel like you’re imprisoned. That’s not living.” -Excerpt from Angela’s letter
Artist statement: “In my work I aim to catch the spontaneity of what I'm feeling with or without words. A line that really stuck out to me [in the letter] was: to get to this country, one suffers a lot. It says a lot in one sentence. I wanted to make a design based image that incorporates an image of perceived freedom (lines in the flag) and incarceration (prison bars) together.” -Ebin Lee
Connect with this artist on: Instagram Website
Visions From The Inside is a collaborative project between visual artists and immigrants facing the for-profit detention monster.
Post 10 - Reflection
I originally chose this topic because I knew that it was something that was oftentimes looked past in our communities. Over the course of 3 years in Gender and Women’s Studies courses at UIC, I have only had one professor who spoke about the experiences of trans people (specifically trans women) in US immigrant detention centers, yet I have learned extensively about the experiences of trans people in US prisons. I wondered why this topic was looked over, and wanted to work independently to further understand how trans immigrants were still being held, abused, and neglected in immigrant detention centers. Many immigrants who are LGBTQ come to the United States in hopes of seeking asylum - they are merely trying to escape the potentially life-threatening danger that they faced in their countries of origin. Yet when they arrive in the United States, they are unable to find employment, housing or resources because many of them are undocumented (and all of them are trans). Instead, many of them end up being arrested, either by ICE or the police, and put into these detention centers. When they arrive in detention, they end up facing many of the horrors they faced in the countries they fled from, instead of finding the safety that they came to the United States in search of.
As we know, the topic of immigration in the United States is an incredible hot topic, as is the topic of trans rights. I believe that this issue has yet to be addressed simply because the issues of immigration and trans rights are in the process of being addressed. The experiences of trans immigrants are the experiences of individuals who are experiencing oppressions from many different angles. In order for the experiences and rights of trans immigrants to be acknowledged by society and the forces that govern us, the issues of immigration and trans rights must first be acknowledged by all. The real issue is that the longer that we wait to address this issue, there are trans men and women across the country in immigrant detention centers being held, abused and neglected. One thing that gives me hope is the number of organizations that I found that are working to free trans people from immigrant detention centers. As I leave UIC and move forward in my career, I hope to find a way to help to bring this issue to more people’s attention, in hopes of bringing about change as soon as humanly possible. Until change occurs, trans people will continue to suffer, and that is something that everyone should see issue with.
POST 7
WORKS CITED:
Homan, Thomas. U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Further Guidance Concerning the Care of Transgender Detainees. Washington, DC: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 2015. Print.
"ICE Issues New Guidance on the Care of Transgender Individuals in Custody." U.S. Department of Homeland Security. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 29 June 2015. Web. 12 Apr. 2016. <https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ice-issues-new-guidance-care-transgender-individuals-custody>.
Villarreal, Yezmin. "ICE: Transgender Immigrants to Be Detained According to Gender Identity." ICE: Transgender Immigrants to Be Detained According to Gender Identity | Advocate.com. Advocate, 17 Nov. 2015. Web. 12 Apr. 2016. <http://www.advocate.com/politics/transgender/2015/06/29/ice-transgender-immigrants-be-detained-according-gender-identity>.
Post 6
WORKS CITED:
"Programs." Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Apr. 2016. <http://familiatqlm.org/programs/>.
Post 3 **TRIGGER WARNING - Violence & Sexual Assault**
WORKS CITED:
Anderson, Laurel. "Punishing the Innocent: How the Classification of Male-to-Female Transgender Individuals in Immigration Detention Constitutes Illegal Punishment Under the Fifth Amendment." Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice 25.1 (2010): 1. Web.
"Trans Migrations: Exploring Life at the Intersection of Transgender Identity and Immigration." Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity 1.2 (2014): 170-80. Web.
I will be doing my blog project on the experiences of, and [lack of] policy protecting, transgender immigrant detainees held in US detention centers. This topic relates to transgender studies because it focuses on the experiences of an incredibly under-represented group of transpeople. The majority of people being held in detention centers are not dangerous, and they are not criminals; many are seeking asylum from troublesome conditions in their homelands, while others are elderly, ill, unaccompanied minors, and family members of US citizens. These detentions centers (much like prisons) do not know how to actually protect transpeople, so they oftentimes put them in solitary confinement. Like prisons, detention centers put transpeople in serious harms way by putting transwomen in the men's centers, and transmen in the women's centers. Many people know about the issues that transpeople face in US prisons, but I think that it is important to let people know what our US government is putting trans immigrants through in detention centers on US soil.
Image from Time.com