According to a report by The Daily Beast, an autopsy which came out on Monday showed evidence that a trans woman who died this past May was beaten shortly before her death. That autopsy shows that the 33-year-old woman, Roxsana Hernández Rodriguez, was likely physically abused after she was detained by ICE while held in a New Mexico detention center that was run by private prison operator CoreCivic. She died nine days after she was transferred to that center, and had been seeking asylum when she fled to the U.S. from Honduras.
In a statement to The Daily Beast, CoreCivic said "we take the health and well-being of those entrusted to our care very seriously,” while adding that they are “committed to providing a safe environment for transgender detainees.”
The cause of Rodriguez's death was "severe complications of dehydration superimposed upon HIV infection," but the autopsy also found bruising that was "typical of handcuff injuries” as well as blunt-force trauma “indicative of blows, and/or kicks, and possible strikes with [a] blunt object."
Forensic pathologist Kris Sperry wrote that Rodriguez's death came after she wasn't given medical care for "diarrhea and vomiting episodes" that lasted over the course of several days while incarcerated at Cibola County Correctional Center.
"There she developed severe diarrhea and vomiting over the course of several days," Sperry wrote. "And finally was emergently hospitalized, then transported to Lovelace Medical Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she remained critically ill until her death."
Back in April, Rodriguez had told Buzzfeed News that she had fled Honduras to escape the country's transphobic violence, and that she had contracted HIV after she was raped there by four members of the MS-13 gang. "Trans people in my neighborhood are killed and chopped into pieces, then dumped inside potato bags," she said at the time. "They kill trans people in Honduras. I’m scared of that."
