“[T]he past administration’s manipulation of supposed medical guidelines … were based on junk science,”  Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division stated in a press release. “There has never been an Eighth Amendment right for inmates to demand elective and experimental surgeries. States’ limited resources need not be wasted to provide these dubious surgeries to inmates.” 

In December 2023, a woman identified as Jane Doe filed a lawsuit against GDC alleging repeated violations of her Eighth Amendment rights, including denial of medically necessary care as well as being housed in men’s prisons. She has been in GDC custody since 1992. 

In January 2024, the DOJ under former president Joe Biden’s administration had filed a statement of interest in Doe v. Georgia Department of Corrections that validated Doe’s assertion that treatment for gender dysphoria is a protected right under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“[T]he Eighth Amendment requires prison officials to provide incarcerated people with adequate medical care for serious medical conditions,” the DOJ wrote in that statement. “It is well established that gender dysphoria is a serious medical condition. Prison officials demonstrate deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of serious harm—and thus violate the Eighth Amendment—when they categorically refuse to provide medically necessary gender-affirming surgery to an incarcerated individual with gender dysphoria.”

“Plaintiff alleges that the denial of a subcutaneous mastectomy violated the Eighth Amendment,” the DOJ stated. “It does not.”

The DOJ can file statements of interest in any federal court cases that prompt the department to clarify or reaffirm its current stance on an issue. They’re submitted in connection to specific cases, but they set the tone for how the nation’s top law enforcement agency sees the law applying to all cases involving similar claims.

Ronnie Fuller has been incarcerated in GDC women’s prisons since 2003. In January he sued the department, alleging Eighth Amendment violations from being denied access to a mastectomy. His argument cites the DOJ’s 2024 statement of interest for Doe’s case. 

“Neither the ADA nor the Eighth Amendment require state prisons to provide surgical interventions to inmates in response to a gender-dysphoria diagnosis,” the DOJ claimed in its April 25 statement of interest in Fuller’s case. “Plaintiff alleges that the denial of a subcutaneous mastectomy violated the Eighth Amendment. It does not. Where there are multiple options available, a prisoner’s preferred option does not rise to the level of an Eighth Amendment violation.”

The DOJ went on to explain that its 2024 statement cited by Fuller was incorrect.

Withdrawing a statement of interest is a fairly bold move, and can have substantial influence on the body of case law for a given issue. It would not be surprising if the DOJ files a similar statement in every case brought by someone seeking gender dysphoria treatment from a corrections department, or at least every case that becomes prominent in the public eye.

Most GDC prisoners with gender dysphoria are not currently suing the department over surgery access, but the impact of these DOJ statements will not be limited to only those circumstances. It will bolster the denial or rollback of trans rights at every level. Not just access to surgery, but to hormone-replacement therapy and group therapy. It will impact how staff respond to complaints of sexual assault.

Despite the escalating politicization of trans rights under the current administration, the consensus of scientific and medical research going back decades has overwhelmingly been that treatment for gender dysphoria, for those who wish to pursue it, is effective and in many cases life-saving.

The DOJ actions come amid the current administration’s push to delegitimize gender dysphoria and redefine gender-affirming procedures as elective. Only medically necessary care must be covered by insurers for patients in the free world, or provided by corrections departments for patients in their custody.

Image via Virginia Department of Health

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I live in Georgia, which like most states prohibits hiring managers from asking about your criminal-legal history until after they’ve given you a job offer. That offer can be conditional on the results of a background check, or a drug test, or what have you. I’d told the Walmart interviewers that I’d been convicted of a felony and that I was on the sex offender registry. And they were the first of many to reply that it’d be fine. 

Some were slick about it. A Hyundai dealership, for example, didn’t send me an offer letter, but told me I’d get one as soon as the background check came back, and that my record would be no problem. Then they ghosted me. But at others, the process got a lot further along.

TTEC, a third-party tech support company, hired me as a luxury retail customer support specialist. I made sure they knew in no uncertain terms that I had done sex work, been in prison and was in compliance with the restrictions currently imposed on me by the sex offender registry.

I was told that would be no problem, they wanted to move forward even though the background check hadn’t come in yet. I was given my schedule, system log-ins, training guides, everything, but before I even started I was again terminated for “failing” the background check. Then for the next two weeks I kept getting emails about my onboarding.

Conditional job offers are common, and employers are allowed to rescind those offers based solely on the results. But this position was remote; my only contact with customers would have been over the phone. I’m bilingual with sparkling interpersonal skills. If the registry disqualifies me from working from home, where am I supposed to work from?

I started the job on Monday. I “failed” the background check on Tuesday. 

A friend told me his wife, a Sally Beauty store manager, had recently lost her assistant store manager and was looking to hire a new one. That interview went great. She and I hit it off, we had things in common, we even had a personal moment where we both teared up about the political attacks on trans people. When I explained my criminal-legal history she said as long as I didn’t have any convictions for shoplifting or fraud or things like that, it’d be no problem.

The next round interview with a different manager went similarly. When I got my offer letter, I reminded them they were going to see complications on the background check. Even though it hadn’t come through yet, they wanted to move forward. They’d said that I wouldn’t even show up in the scheduling system until the background check cleared, so a few days later when I did show up in the system, they asked if I could start Monday. None of us had gotten any update on the background check itself, but they said we should think positive and get going in the meantime. So I did start the job on Monday. I “failed” the background check on Tuesday. 

After a notice of adverse action like this you have a week to contest the findings if they’re inaccurate, or contextualize them with evidence of your rehabilitation. This job had a lot of potential for advancement, and it felt like a path forward was finally opening up for me. So I sent letters of support and links to my professional work, explained every detail of my conviction and basically asked them not to judge me for being on the registry. And for the next week I kept going to work.

But the following Tuesday, when I got to the store that morning nobody said a word to me. After I clocked in the store manager came over and said I had to leave the premises; I’d been terminated, effective immediately. But she still sat with me for a moment and let me cry. I hate to say it, but honestly in that moment I missed prison. 

This company was willing to disregard the background check—when the district attorney stepped in.

When someone runs a background check on you, you’re entitled to a copy. I’ve read all of mine, and none of them have mentioned my actual conviction. They always just say that a database showed I’m registered as a sex offender, and that the source used for the search was my name and my address. No one even needed confirmation that my felony record had nothing to do with shoplifting or fraud in order to fire me from a retail job; only that I’m on the sex offender registry.

It’s hard to make an argument that the system truly wants people on the registry to rejoin society after prison. The Sally Beauty managers even did a phone call with HR where they went to bat for me. They wanted me to work there, I wanted me to work there, I was already doing the job that my record supposedly made me unfit to do, but none of that mattered. 

Surge Staffing hired me as a workforce manager position based just across the Alabama state line. During the first interview I didn’t get into all the details—I just said that I’d gotten into trouble when I was younger, and it was kind of serious, and it had been creating hurdles for me in my professional trajectory.

But when I got my offer letter, I called the woman who’d sent it and laid it all out—how I’d grown up in the sex work industry, how I was arrested at 19, that I’d spent most of my adult life in prison, that I was on parole, that I was on the registry, and that I really wanted this job but needed to know if my background was going to be a problem. And for a moment it seemed like it wouldn’t be.

They escalated the issue to a national HR manager, and at that level agreed to disregard the background check—when the district attorney stepped in to notify them that my employment would be in violation of the registry distance restrictions.

My contact at the company said they’d find me something in the district where I currently live, and it probably wouldn’t pay as well but I’d be able to work my way up; they’d get back to me with the details in a day or so. And that was the last I heard from them.

Image via City of Philadelphia

The post Background Checks Keep Saying I Can’t Do Jobs I Was Already Hired For appeared first on Filter.

The bill pertains to registrants trying to move to a new county, potentially as they’re getting off the SOR. As of March 26, it appears to be in the Senate Judiciary Committee. It proposes a handful of brief changes to the state code covering SOR, mainly the following:

“Such petition [for removal from SOR] shall be served on the district attorney of the jurisdiction where the petition is filed, the sheriff of the county where the petition is filed, the sheriff of the county where the individual resides, the sheriff of the county of intended residence, and the chief superior court judge of the county of intended residence.”

In Georgia, registrants are what we call “booted up.” It means that one way or another, on paper our sentence is always the maximum sentence. Even if you only have to do five years in prison, your actual sentence is probably 15 or 20 years, with the remainder being served under community supervision. In my case, now that I’m off parole I begin my 16 years on probation.

We don’t become eligible to apply for termination from the registry until we’ve completed the entirety of our sentence—plus an additional five-year waiting period, during which we still need to have zero run-ins with the law. And that represents an improvement; up until 2024 the waiting period was 10 years.

Currently, Georgia law states that the court will hold a hearing for a petition for registry removal if one is requested by the petitioner. But under the proposed changes, the sheriff and chief judge of the intended county of residence could also request a hearing. And of course it won’t be because they want to welcome the petitioner into the new county or support their removal from the registry.

It’s also important to note that notifying local sheriff’s department of your movements isn’t as banal as it sounds. The deputies you have to interact with are, more likely than not, going to be nasty. They hate you on sight, and they know you have no recourse no matter what they do.

Image via Sacramento County Probation Department

The post Georgia Suggests Making Sex Offender Registry Removal More Confusing appeared first on Filter.

On March 14, Rhode Island became the latest state to introduce a sex work decrim bill. S0810 would repeal large portions of state law criminalizing “commercial sexual activity.” But it also would add human trafficking as a racketeering activity, a category of criminalized activity that in Rhode Island currently comprises “any act or threat involving” murder, kidnapping, gambling, arson, robbery, bribery, extortion, larceny, prostitution, felony drug distribution or child exploitation. The bill would remove “prostitution,” and swap in “human trafficking” in its stead.

Similarly, the legal parameters of child abuse would no longer include any actions by a caretaker that “allows, permits or encourages the child to engage in prostitution.” Instead, it would include anything that “[s]ubjects or allows the child to be subjected to any of the … human trafficking offenses.”

By March 18 the bill had already appeared stalled, as a Senate committee recommended it “be held for further study.”

No state has decriminalized both the purchase and provision of consensual sex.

Sex work is consensual. Sex trafficking, by contrast, involves force or coercion. But those lines are not always black and white, and it’s very easy for law enforcement to capitalize on that and arrest people doing survival sex work—often trans women of color—charge them with trafficking and make it sound like victims of actual trafficking had been rescued. Human trafficking is a real and serious problem, but many people being prosecuted for it are sex workers who are neither forced to do that work nor forcing anyone else to do it.

In Illinois, which previously downgraded sex work from a felony to a misdemeanor, multiple proposals related to criminal penalties around sex work have been sitting in the House since mid-February. One would repeal the statutes criminalizing “prostitution,” and create a pathway for record expungement. Another would create a Sex Workers’ Bill of Rights Act under which people in the sex trade would receive the same labor protections the state extends to other workers, including minimum wage and workers’ compensation.

But those aren’t the only ones. Another bill proposed in February would make people facing human trafficking charges ineligible for pretrial release, meaning they’d sit in jail for months or even years before going to court. Under another proposal, people facing charges involving human trafficking or grooming of a minor would be ineligible for plea deals—people facing those charges wouldn’t be allowed to serve time for anything less serious instead. Prosecutors wouldn’t even be allowed to offer them a deal. And another bill would introduce mandatory minimums for human trafficking, in some cases up to 60 years.

Most sex workers I’ve known would be best described as “self-employed entrepreneurs.”

Maine partially decriminalized sex work in 2023, and Nevada has exemptions for brothels, but no state has decriminalized both the purchase and provision of consensual sex.

When I was doing survival sex work in Baltimore as a minor, it’s true that I was in desperate circumstances but I was also capitalizing on my sexual appeal by choice. I didn’t have a pimp. I wasn’t being “groomed” at that time, nor were the girls I was working with. We were in the trade of our own volition. But the vast majority of my adult life so far has been spent behind bars because I was prosecuted not for sex work, but for sex trafficking—I was arrested at 19 working with another trans girl who was 17.

Most sex workers I’ve known would be best described as “self-employed entrepreneurs.” Some sex workers are in objectively desperate circumstances, but that isn’t the only reason people work in the trade. If someone can make, even charging on the low end, $250 or maybe $300 for 30 minutes of work—or $400 for one hour‚ that’s a couple of days’ worth of work at pretty much any other job. Painting all sex workers as victims erases the reality that people have good reason for choosing the work even when they had other options.

Anyone under 18 who engages in sex work of their own volition cannot legally consent and is automatically a “trafficking victim.” Yet many underage sex workers who enter the trade by choice—not all of them, but many of them—do so because of their circumstances, because the government has in some way failed to protect them and left them to fend for themselves.

Image (cropped) via Federal Bureau of Investigation

The post States Move to Decrim Sex Work, But Add On “Human Trafficking” Penalties appeared first on Filter.

Conversion therapy, also known as reparative therapy, is an unscientific practice that purports to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. It is not a legitimate medical therapy, and about half the states have banned it in some capacity.

We’re not just talking about a practice that’s controversial or unpopular. We’re talking about a practice that Colorado and other states have had very solid legal and medical reason to outlaw. Historically it’s been used to justify a slew of pseudoscientific treatments that border on torture, including from ice baths to electroshock therapy to chemical castration. It’s repeatedly been shown to increase risk of suicide. Those who don’t have a problem with the idea of subjecting LGBTQ+ youth to trauma should at least question why they’re supporting something that increases substance use, is bad for the economy and, at the of the day, doesn’t actually work. It’s quackery, not science.

When we pathologize something, when we say it’s an illness that needs to be cured, what’s the next step? Prevention.

Some conversion therapy is based in the idea that the patient is fundamentally heterosexual and cisgender but has been corrupted, and needs therapy to restore them to their true nature. Or that LGBTQ+ people are sick, and conversion therapy is the treatment.

When we pathologize something, when we say it’s an illness that needs to be cured, what’s the next step? Prevention. Coerced treatment. Involuntary hospitalization. Mass incarceration and the introduction of whatever laws can be passed to strip people of their civil rights and put them in the custody of the state. We see a similar trajectory playing out for people who use drugs.

The specific medicalization of transgender identity, while fraught, has had some benefits—or been a necessary evil, depending on how you look at it—because while gender identity is not a health condition, gender dysphoria can often be alleviated with access to the right health care. But the crux of this is that gender-affirming care is voluntary, and despite conservative rhetoric is not something teenagers are being pressured into against their best interests. Which is often the case for those who go through conversion therapy. The practice typically focuses on LGBTQ+ youth, particularly those from conservative religious families in low-income communities.

There’s plenty of scientific literature validating gender dysphoria as a medical condition for which there are evidence-based treatments that are effective, if that’s what the patient wants to pursue. Yet for those of us who do so, at every stage in the process medical providers question our judgment and ability to consent. If those tactics are permissible to use against patients pursuing, of their own volition, a legitimate medical treatment, why are they not applied to conversion therapy?

Striking down conversion therapy bans sets the stage for compulsory treatment.

Striking down conversion therapy bans sets the stage for compulsory treatment. And declaring LGBTQ+ identity to be a mental illness that warrants institutionalization makes it easier and easier to criminalize. Texas, for example, recently introduced a bill to criminalize “gender identity fraud.” It’s safe to assume that over the course of President Donald Trump’s second term, we’ll see a succession of legal precedents that facilitate the policing of LGBTQ+ identity and enforce heteronormative standards with the threat of incarceration.

My fear is not just that the Supreme Court will rule against the Colorado ban, but that the justices will tailor their ruling very broadly and open the doors even wider as we usher in a very wonderful era for anyone wanting to set public policy based on religious ideology.

First Amendment protections are often cited in support of cases like this one—that therapists should be able to practice conversion therapy as a matter of religious freedom. Yet the people who are avid supporters of the First Amendment in that context are often the same people who want to take away freedom of expression from anyone who does not share the opinion that gender is a binary.

Correction, March 13: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Louisiana had also introduced a “gender identity fraud” bill.

Image via Supreme Court of the United States

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Senate Bill 185 was introduced February 18 by no fewer than 21 Republican sponsors, and on February 26 received a favorable report from the Committee on Public Safety. The bill will next be reviewed by the full Senate. Republicans have a trifecta in the state, controlling both chambers of the legislature and the governor’s office.

SB 185 would prohibit use of state funds to provide anyone in the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) prison system, including state prisoners being housed in county jails, with the following treatments:

(A) Sex reassignment surgeries or any other surgical procedures that are performed for the purpose of altering primary or secondary sexual characteristics;
(B) Hormone replacement therapies; and
(C) Cosmetic procedures or prosthetics intended to alter the appearance of primary or secondary sexual characteristics.

Short-term HRT could still be prescribed to patients currently receiving it, but only for the explicit purpose of tapering them off. Essentially, the legislation would compel GDC to begin medically detransitioning anyone receiving any form of gender-affirming health care, despite seeming to acknowledge that care as medically necessary. Among its limited exemptions:

Treatments for medical conditions where such treatments are considered medically necessary, provided that such condition is not gender dysphoria or the purpose of such treatment is not for sex reassignment.

“GDC has a well-established history of violating human rights,” State Representative Park Cannon (D–Atlanta) testified at a Committee on Public Safety hearing February 25. “The last thing we need to do is legislate away health care for these vulnerable folks in Georgia prisons. Being without care in the prison system is a reality that many are facing right now. And I do believe that this bill, if it becomes law, will face legal challenges.”

“[Denying prisoners] access to essential medical care is not only inhumane, but also a violation of their constitutional rights.”

One of the legal precedents Cannon cited was my own. I filed Lynch v. Lewis in 2015, after three years of incarceration. Prior to my arrest at age 19 I’d been hustling up access to non-prescribed HRT for about four years, and continued to do so inside GDC. But as I began to fight for legal access, I faced only resistance from GDC and anyone else in a position of authority. Over the next decade and an additional five lawsuits filed before I paroled out in 2023, that never changed.

“This bill exposes the state to costly litigation and undermines the dignity of incarcerated individuals,” Rep. Cannon told Filter. “[Denying] access to essential medical care is not only inhumane, but also a violation of their constitutional rights.”

When introducing Cannon, Committee on Public Safety Chairman John Albers (R) remarked that in 15 years this was the first time he’d had a House representative testify at a Senate hearing.

Cannon, one of only two openly LGBTQ+ members of the Georgia General Assembly, told Filter that GOP leaders don’t make it easy to do so. Senate hearings are scheduled on short notice, rooms double-booked and sign-up sheets guarded “until the last minute.” But as a minority-party House representative she’s found it necessary to begin attending critical hearings whenever she can, even those in the Senate.

“Typically members wait for proposed legislation to come to the chamber in which they serve, but the urgency is such that I cannot wait,” she said. “The cards are stacked so that the GOP make the schedules for the committees … and so it was highly likely that when the bill comes to the House side it would be in its original terrible state. So the goal is to legislatively get ahead of the process.”

Image via Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission

The post Georgia Moves to Ban All Transgender Health Care in State Prisons appeared first on Filter.

The Worcester City Council voted to approve the new resolution on February 11. It comes amid the barrage of attacks President Trump has launched against trans people during the first weeks of his second term, but was specifically prompted by allegations from Thu Nguyen, Worcester’s first openly nonbinary city councillor, of bigotry from fellow council members. These reportedly included being referred to by Councilor Candy Mero-Carlson as “it.”

Worcester has pledged to not cooperate with policies targeting trans and gender-diverse residents. While it won’t expand any rights or add any services, it means the city will not expend resources on prosecuting anyone for charges related to pursuing gender-affirming care.

The concept is borrowed from the immigrant rights movement, which has seen many cities in the United States pledge to resist or limit enforcement of anti-immigrant policies. Trump’s first term prompted a resurgence in sanctuary-city declarations amid Immigrations and Customs Enforcement deportations. 

Worcester isn’t the first to declare itself a trans sanctuary city, but the practice is still not common.

West Hollywood, Sacramento and San Francisco all made similar declarations in 2024. In some cases the declaration is a response to attacks on trans people at the state level, as when Kansas City became a sanctuary city in 2023. In others, such as when Ithaca, New York, passed a similar resolution later that year, it’s a statement of solidarity inspired by state-level policies that protect trans rights.

Sanctuary policies are largely symbolic, but that symbolism can foster a more welcoming environment in a time of uncertainty and fear.

“Our transgender community is under siege from multiple fronts—discriminatory laws, societal prejudice and systemic barriers to essential services,” Amore Cano, co-founder and vice president of the Atlanta-based trans and immigrant rights organization Poder Unides, told Filter. “Establishing sanctuary cities in Georgia would be a monumental step in affirming our right to exist and thrive without fear.”

Sanctuary policies are largely symbolic gestures, but that symbolism can foster a more inclusive and welcoming environment for trans residents in a time of uncertainty and fear. Georgia, for example, has proposed at least seven bills that would be detrimental for LGBTQ+ people in the state. And nationally, at least 29 non-cisgender people were murdered in the US between January and September 2024. Taking a stand against criminalization of gender-affirming health care is taking a stand against the severe psychological distress and risk of self-harm that comes from denying that health care.

By prioritizing the safety and dignity of trans people, jurisdictions can take a stand against discriminatory practices and set a precedent for others to follow.

“When we protect our transgender citizens, we’re not just upholding their rights,” Cano said. “We’re enriching our communities.”

Photograph via City of Worcester

The post Worcester, MA, Joins Short List of Transgender Sanctuary Cities appeared first on Filter.

Trump had directed the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to only incarcerate trans women in men’s facilities and remove their access to vital health care. According to NPR, on February 3 a new policy of unknown origin was given to all BOP facilities that currently house trans prisoners. Anyone in a men’s facility who had previously been allowed clothing generally reserved for those in women’s facilities was instructed to turn it in, along with certain feminine hygiene products they’d been allowed to purchase from commissary. 

The new policy also reportedly shuttered all therapy groups or other programming designed for people with gender dysphoria, and all trainings that “inculcate or promote gender ideology or have done so in the past.” Prisoners prescribed hormone-replacement therapy were warned they would soon be cut off.

“The information that we’ve been getting [from BOP] is that no guidance is issued when obviously guidance is being issued,” Kara Jansenn, lawyer at a firm representing three trans women who have sued to block their transfer to a men’s facility, told NPR. “People that we’ve spoken to who are transgender and who are in custody are terrified. They’re terrified that they’re going to lose things that they had to fight years for.”

It took me about two years to get bras, and four years to get panties.

I spent nearly 14 years incarcerated in men’s facilities in Georgia. The first time I requested women’s undergarments, officers laughed in my face and told me it’d never happen. It did, but it took about two years to get bras and four years to get panties.

This first requires a diagnosis of gender dysphoria; that alone can take months, as the medical department bounces you to the mental health department and vice versa. It then requires submitting a request to the warden or property officer, who frequently denied mine even after I obtained the gender dysphoria diagnosis. That forced me to file grievances over the denials, which could also take months to process.

That’s for the plain white state-issue undergarments. Access to the property packages—shipments of clothing and hygiene products that prisoners are permitted to purchase through approved vendors—designed for the women’s facilities was an even bigger fight, but worth it because of all the goodies you won’t find in the men’s property packages. Makeup; better skincare products; scented shampoo and conditioner; scrunchies; clothes with little color accents, breaking up the monotony of everything being white and grey. 

“The women were screaming and crying, saying, ‘Where are you taking us?’”

Every women’s deodorant stick or fitted T-shirt represents a hard-won battle against bureaucracy, bigotry and indifference. Mass incarceration depends on replacing individuality with uniformity. Stripping trans people of the items that affirm their identity, trying to make us invisible, is part of that.

“The officers yelled at these women: ‘Come right now, leave your things. You don’t have time to pack,’” a trans man told the Guardian in Spanish, after the Texas women’s prison where he’s currently incarcerated rounded up all the trans women from their cells one by one.

He recalled one officer laughing at a woman trying to pack her bra, telling her she wouldn’t need that where she was going. “The officials were degrading them and saying disgusting things, like: ‘We don’t have to call you women anymore. Where you’re going, you’re going to be a man’ … the women were screaming and crying, saying, ‘Where are you taking us?’”

In multiple cases, some of these actions were reversed days later, with recent memos being rescinded and confiscated items given back. This is not a sign of victory; only more chaos and uncertainty.

Image (cropped) via Federal Bureau of Prisons

The post Chaos for Trans Prisoners as Hard-Won Clothing, Hygiene Items Taken appeared first on Filter.

Senators Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) announced the Prison Staff Safety Enhancement Act on January 29. The January 31 companion bill in the House was announced by Florida Representative Laurel Lee (R). The three sponsors first introduced the legislation last Congress, where it passed unanimously out of the Senate before stalling in the House. It applies specifically to Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) facilities, and would require heightened data collection of the types of incidents in question. 

“This legislation casts incarcerated people as the enemy,” Atteeyah Hollie, deputy director at the Southern Center for Human Rights, told Filter. “And in doing so sends a message that people in custody should be feared, rather than re-integrated.”

In 2019, prompted by “receipt of congressional inquiries,” the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG) undertook what it described as “an evaluation to assess the prevalence and effects of inmate-on-staff sexual harassment, as well as the BOP’s efforts to address this form of inmate behavior.” The department’s 2023 report on its findings referenced its separate work related to sexual abuse of people in BOP custody, both by their peers and by staff, but stated that that was outside the scope of the evaluation.

The report emphasized—several times—that the OIG had been “unable to identify the prevalence and scope of inmate-on-staff sexual harassment.”

That OIG report is the basis for the legislation reintroduced in January. Sexual harassment of staff by prisoners does happen, and as the OIG noted most of the staff being targeted are women. But despite the sponsors’ rhetoric, their bill is mostly justified with a statistic from a survey of BOP staff in which 40 percent of respondents indicated that they had at some point been sexually harassed by someone in their custody. The report mainly emphasized—several times—that the OIG had been “unable to identify the prevalence and scope of inmate-on-staff sexual harassment” due to inconsistent reporting practices, as well as different understandings of which behaviors were encompassed by the term.

In September 2024 Ossoff and Blackburn launched an inquiry prompted by the OIG findings, which led to the proposed legislation. If enacted it would require BOP to implement all recommendations in the report within 90 days, and to continue working with the OIG (both agencies are overseen by the DOJ) to analyze the resulting data.

Particular emphasis is given to “analysis of punishments.” In 2024 Blackburn also introduced legislation that would double the penalties for assaulting BOP correctional officers.

Blackburn and Lee did not respond to Filter’s inquiries. Asked whether Ossoff is currently taking similar steps toward mitigating sexual harassment and assault of people in custody, a representative for his office pointed to a 2022 investigation that found that in at least 19 out of 29 federal women’s prisons, staff have sexually abused people in their custody. In multiple facilities this abuse was recurring, and in some cases perpetrated by senior staff. Hundreds if not more of the BOP sexual abuse cases were backlogged.

Photograph (cropped) via Federal Bureau of Prisons

The post The Prisons Crisis Lawmakers Want to Fix Is “Inmate-on-Staff Sexual Assault” appeared first on Filter.

The move follows one of Trump’s January 20 executive orders, “Protecting the American People Against Invasion.” While the DOJ agencies have more power to conduct investigations and make arrests, deportation itself is still the purview of DHS agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“Other agencies do not have authority to… start the removal proceedings, nor to physically deport them from the United States,” Charles Kuck, an Atlanta-based attorney specializing in immigration law, told Filter. “That happens in the venue of the immigration courts.” 

Though ICE’s enforcement and removal operations already focus heavily on people with drug possession convictions, the DEA’s involvement stands to increase that. The newly deputized agencies within the DOJ have begun coordinating large-scale sweeps in Chicago, and Atlanta and other cities across the country.

Yesterday, @ICEgov arrested nearly 1,000 illegal aliens across the country. Many of these people are violent criminals. These arrests are critical to ensuring the safety of American citizens. https://t.co/mN9bw92FQg

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) January 27, 2025

In a January 26 social media post, ICE reported that it made 956 arrests and lodged 554 detainers—when a jail or prison continues to hold someone already in custody on the agency’s behalf—which according to CNN was higher than any other single-day total the agency has reported on previous posts. On January 27, the ICE reported 1,179 arrests and 853 detainers.

The agency has reportedly been assigned a quota wherein each of its 25 field houses around the country must make at least 75 new arrests each day. This would mean over 1,800 total per day, while prior to Trump’s inauguration the agency was making a few hundred per day on average. A White House spokesperson told the Washington Post that the quotas are “fake news.”

“What we’re gonna see is ICE and these collaborating federal agencies now being forced to go after mom and dad, grandma and grandpa,” Kuck said. “Folks who’ve been here for 20, 30 or 40 years.”

Trump’s other immigration enforcement actions include moving to end birthright citizenship, which a federal court judge has said is unconstitutional, and to revoke citizenship from potentially hundreds of of thousands of people who’d immigrated to the country legally.

“ICE already has a database of 1.5 million people with active deportation orders,” Kuck said. “Even if they focused only on them, they would be busy for the next four years.”

Image (cropped) of January 26 raid via Immigration and Customs Enforcement

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