This is Roxsana Hernández. In May of this year, Roxsana was gang-raped while walking home in her hometown in Honduras and subsequently was diagnosed with HIV. In search of safety, she joined a caravan organized by Pueblo Sin Fronteras to seek asylum in the United States. When she reached the border, she was incarcerated in immigration detention, including being imprisoned for five days in the detention facility called the “hielera,” or “ice box,” where detainees are kept in freezing temperatures with no blankets or furniture, without adequate food, and with the lights on 24 hours a day. Roxsana was then hospitalized for pneumonia and HIV-related complications, and she died in the hospital. Her friend remembered her as a “respectful person, always giving the other girls advice and sharing her food.” The conditions that led to Roxsana’s death are the same conditions that led to the deaths of every other trans person on the TDOR list this year, which is so long that it takes an hour and a half to read aloud. Building a world where Roxsana could thrive is going to take more than getting your cis colleagues to put their pronouns in their email signatures. Trans justice is gender justice is racial justice is queer justice is disability justice is economic justice is labor justice is sex worker justice is immigrant justice is climate justice. The systems of power that dehumanize us and our comrades are inextricably intertwined and so too are our liberations. Roxsana, I’m sorry. May your memory be a blessing. May you rest in power. May you never thirst. #abolishice #dismantleprisons #nobordersnowalls#TDOR
