Trump’s Anti-Trans Order Sows Confusion, Chaos in Federal Prisons

Filed
6:00 a.m. EST

02.11.2025

With out steerage from the Bureau of Prisons, trans individuals are “instructed one factor from one workers individual and a completely totally different factor from one other.”

First, President Donald Trump issued an government order prohibiting the usage of federal funds for gender-affirming care. Then, in response to a lawsuit from prisoners, a choose briefly blocked the order. The end result, say workers and incarcerated transgender individuals, has been chaos and uncertainty as insurance policies are adopted and utilized erratically all through the federal jail system.

At a federal ladies’s jail, all of the transgender ladies had been rounded up and positioned right into a particular segregated unit shortly after Trump’s Jan. 20 order. The warden instructed them they “would all be transferred to males’s services and that the paperwork for these transfers was already being processed,” one of many ladies mentioned in a courtroom submitting, which didn’t title the jail. A couple of days later, they had been moved again into the jail’s common inhabitants, with no clarification.

At one other federal ladies’s jail in Texas, a transgender man was due for a testosterone injection, however his nurse wasn’t certain what to do. The ability’s warden “was saying the insurance policies could be this, or could be that, however we haven’t gotten something in writing but,” mentioned the nurse, who spoke on the situation she not be named as a result of she is just not approved to talk to the press. Lastly, after consulting with the ability’s pharmacist, she gave the person his medicine. “I’d moderately ask forgiveness than permission,” she mentioned.

And at FCI Seagoville, a males’s jail in Texas, an unsigned memo went out final week saying that the handfuls of transgender ladies housed there must flip of their ladies’s clothes and undergarments. They might additionally now not be capable to purchase make-up or different ladies’s gadgets from the commissary, or have entry to group remedy. Inside per week, that memo was rescinded.

The Bureau of Prisons has not issued formal steerage to its workers about implement Trump’s order “defending ladies from gender ideology extremism and restoring organic fact to the federal authorities,” based on a number of present and former company staffers who spoke to The Marshall Venture on the situation of anonymity as a result of they weren’t approved to talk to the press. “Everyone seems to be afraid to say or do something,” mentioned one former high bureau official. The chief workforce on the bureau desires steerage from the Justice Division, “as a result of they’re afraid of getting fired. DOJ is in turmoil.”

Transgender individuals in federal jail are “being instructed one factor from one workers individual and a completely totally different factor from one other,” mentioned Shawn Meerkamper, an legal professional on the Transgender Regulation Middle, a nonprofit that does authorized and advocacy work on behalf of the transgender neighborhood. Meerkamper described the scenario as whiplash.

Trump’s government order instructed federal businesses to cease recognizing transgender individuals and prohibited the usage of federal funds for prisoners’ gender-affirming care. It particularly instructed the legal professional common and the secretary of Homeland Safety to “be certain that males should not detained in ladies’s prisons” or immigration detention facilities.

The memo distributed on the jail in Seagoville, Texas, mentioned “The Federal Bureau of Prisons intends to adjust to the Government Order in all respects.”

However the bureau’s management in Washington, D.C. had not approved the coverage outlined within the memo, based on a staffer at Seagoville, who spoke on the situation that they not be recognized as a result of they weren’t permitted to discuss the memo. “Any person simply type of bought the cart earlier than the horse and determined, ‘Let’s do that,’” they mentioned.

Comparable directives went out to prisoners and workers at a federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, based on an individual aware of that establishment.

“Some other male joints make the trans inmates flip of their laundry issued clothes, bras, and panties?” a Bureau of Prisons staffer wrote on a non-public Fb group for federal jail workers. “We had one go on suicide watch over it.” This worker didn’t reply to emails searching for extra info, however three days later posted once more: “Properly Everybody, they gave again the undergarments and clothes yesterday.”

The overwhelming majority of the 1,500 transgender ladies incarcerated in federal prisons are housed in males’s prisons. Underneath each the Biden administration and the primary Trump administration, they’ve had entry to lodging like ladies’s clothes and toiletry gadgets and permission to solely be patted down by workers of the identical gender.

One bureau worker who disagreed with Trump’s order mentioned these lodging had been affordable. “There’s no extremism concerned in giving an inmate a bra,” mentioned a bureau caseworker who is just not approved to talk to the press.

Simply 16 trans ladies are presently housed in ladies’s prisons, based on paperwork the bureau filed in federal courtroom as a part of the latest lawsuit. Every of them was moved to a ladies’s jail solely after present process a prolonged course of overseen by a panel of specialists on the Bureau of Prisons known as the Transgender Government Council. In the previous couple of weeks, a message went out to transgender people who they may now not talk with the council, based on attorneys for transgender ladies in each ladies’s and males’s services.

Since no less than 2022, the council has met month-to-month “to supply recommendation and steerage on distinctive measures associated to therapy and administration wants of transgender inmates,” based on a coverage doc that has since been faraway from the bureau’s web site. Some transgender individuals and their advocates consider the council has been disbanded. The Bureau of Prisons didn’t reply to questions concerning the council or insurance policies relating to look after transgender individuals in its custody.

Final week, the bureau’s performing director, William Lothrop, despatched a message to the company’s six regional administrators relating to transgender prisoners and famous that the bureau’s well being providers division and reentry providers division had been working with the bureau’s legal professionals “to finalize language relating to medical and psychological well being care.”

Along with adjustments to well being care and housing, transgender individuals have reported different smaller ways in which Trump’s order has upended their lives in prisons. Many officers have stopped utilizing individuals’s most popular names and pronouns, based on prisoners and workers. Some prisoners additionally report being taunted and disrespected by workers, who they consider have been emboldened by the president’s order.

Jenni Stallcup, a transgender lady incarcerated on the penitentiary in Coleman, Florida, mentioned, “I’ve already skilled the ugly ‘vibes.’ A workers member the opposite day even known as out, as I used to be on the sidewalk, telling me to ‘Be prepared…you might have another month and no extra make-up.’”

An earlier model of this story incorrectly recognized the situation the place a Bureau of Prisons worker works.