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      Trans women in Ice custody already suffered sexual harassment and abuse. Then came Covid-19

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      It was August, and Katalina stood sobbing in the middle of the cell at the La Palma immigration detention center. She tried not to touch anything – she had seen guards escort out a man who was coughing and trembling just minutes before.
      It felt like punishment. Shortly before, she had reported being sexually harassed by another detainee in a male unit of the La Palma correctional center in Arizona where they were being held. Now, she was standing in an isolation cell.
      Katalina was worried about contracting Covid-19. The cell she had been placed in hadn’t been cleaned. After standing in the room for five hours, she withdrew her complaint. She had heard that other detainees had spent weeks in segregation after speaking up. It was a risk she wasn’t willing to take.
      When a detainee grabbed her arm and left a bruise a few months later, Katalina didn’t say anything either.
      Covid has torn through immigration detention centers across the United States. Since the start of the pandemic, at least 7,202 people held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) have been infected with the virus, and at least eight have died. LGBTQ+ populations in immigration custody have echoed the stories of other detainees who have complained that Ice has failed to institute adequate protocols to curb the spread of the virus and has not provided ample protective equipment and medical care. But LGBTQ+ people in La Palma say the pandemic has created further challenges, making it harder for them to escape the gender-based harassment and violence many of them have long faced while locked up. More

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      'I feel pride': incarcerated residents of Washington DC register to vote for first time

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      On a Wednesday afternoon earlier this month, Tony Lewis Sr, a former Washington DC drug dealer in his 32nd year of a life sentence, didn’t imagine anything exciting was in the cards. Then a prison counselor at the correctional institute in Maryland told him his voter registration form had arrived.“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” he told his son, Tony Lewis Jr, via text message. “I feel pride today, I feel like a real man, a citizen of my community and city.”Lewis Sr’s joy stemmed from legislation passed by DC’s council in July, extending the right to vote to incarcerated residents for the first time, a right that only Maine and Vermont currently allow. The DC Board of Elections says it has sent registration applications to 2,400 people in prison since the law passed, allowing them to vote in November’s presidential election. That number is lower than the 4,500 DC residents who were believed to be incarcerated earlier this year, a discrepancy likely in part due to prisoners being released because of Covid-19.But pinpointing an exact number is also difficult for DC officials because, unlike states, the nation’s capital doesn’t have its own prison system, meaning its incarcerated residents are scattered in over 100 federal facilities across the country.“We have no information other than the information we’ve been provided,” said Alice Miller, the executive director of the DC Board of Elections. “This is [the number the Federal Bureau of Prisons] gave us. This is what they identified.”Despite these complications, advocates of voting rights for felons have hailed DC’s new legislation as hugely significant in the precedent it sets in reversing the suppression of votes of Black Americans like Lewis Sr, nationwide. US restrictions on voting rights for felons are among the world’s harshest, and many were created to disenfranchise Black Americans after they gained voting rights in the Jim Crow era.According to the Sentencing Project, an advocacy and research organization, Black American adults are over four times more likely to lose their voting rights than other Americans, and overall, 2.2 million Black Americans are banned from voting. More

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      Rashida Tlaib pushes to free US inmates from coronavirus 'death sentence’

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      Rashida Tlaib pushes to free US inmates from coronavirus ‘death sentence’ Exclusive: Democratic congresswoman tells Guardian that keeping prisoners locked up ‘is hurting the most vulnerable’ Representative Rashida Tlaib addresses a rally in Detroit, Michigan, on 6 June, protesting against racial inequality in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. Photograph: Rebecca Cook/Reuters US prisons and […] More

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      Inmate details alarming conditions at Oregon prison amid coronavirus pandemic

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      Some north-west states were informed of social distancing practices, but accounts from inmates and advocates say their implementation may be scattered Coronavirus – live US updates Live global updates See all our coronavirus coverage Prisonprotests in Oregon and Washington highlighted concerns among inmates about the way authorities there are managing their safety amid the coronavirus […] More