Several transgender inmates, including a convicted MS-13 gang member, are lining up to join a class action lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union to prevent the Trump administration’s implementation of a new prison policy that would cut off their access to taxpayer-funded procedures.
Plaintiffs in the case Kingdom v. Trump successfully secured a preliminary injunction in June that partially blocks the enforcement of President Donald Trump’s executive order on “Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”
The presidential mandate, in part, directed officials to stop expending federal funds on the medical modification of prisoners who identify as transgender.
However, the injunctive relief in Kingdom, which applies classwide, requires the Federal Bureau of Prisons to continue to provide “gender-affirming care” free of charge in accordance with Biden-era transgender accommodation policies.
The litigation is now complicating the rollout of a Bureau of Prisons policy revision, issued in February, that would end all complimentary in-prison access to hormonal drugs and cosmetic surgeries for gender-affirmation purposes.
If allowed to be fully implemented, the recently revised guidelines are estimated to save taxpayers well over a million dollars that otherwise would have been spent on cross-sex hormones, breast implants, and genital modification surgery.
The policy, seen by supporters as a waste-slashing initiative, is expected to generate at least $1.6 million in savings from surgeries alone based on estimates from eight existing surgical requests.
Notably, the preliminary injunction does not cover surgical intervention, but simply stops the provision of testosterone suppressants and estrogen injections, as well as wigs, cosmetics, and other nonmedical items worn as part of the “social transitioning” process.
MS-13 member claims protection under preliminary injunction
The transgender prisoners trying to join the Kingdom case as certified class members include Oscar Contreras Aguilar, an inmate from El Salvador and an associate of MS-13.
Contreras Aguilar, gang name “Atrevido,” was convicted in the 2016 murder of a juvenile victim in Virginia.
According to charging documents, Contreras Aguilar conspired with other MS-13 members to lure a 14-year-old boy believed to be cooperating with law enforcement to a park in Fairfax County, where the teenager was held down, slain, and buried by the Salvadoran gang.
Video footage of the brutal attack showed the gang killing the child with multiple weapons, including a kitchen knife and a machete.
Contreras Aguilar allegedly ordered the hit job, instructing lower-ranking members to travel to Virginia to carry out the murder plot.
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Contreras Aguilar, a biological man, is currently incarcerated at USP Coleman II, a high-security men’s penitentiary in Florida.
The convicted MS-13 gangster, who began identifying as a woman named “Fendi G. Skyy” at some point behind bars, launched a separate lawsuit last year accusing prison officials of anti-transgender discrimination by using biologically accurate pronouns, assigning male guards to conduct pat-downs, and taking away the availability of female underwear.
“As a direct result of defendant Trump’s E.O. 14168, and the BOP’s implementation of that order, Plaintiff is now being forced by BOP staff to wear male undergarments,” Contreras Aguilar claimed in a handwritten complaint. “BOP staff are now deliberately and maliciously, with the intent to harass, misgendering Plaintiff by referring to her using male pronouns such as ‘he,’ ‘him,’ ‘his,’ and/or words to that effect.”
The civil rights complaint said those policy changes have caused extreme emotional distress to the point that Contreras Aguilar is “constantly crying” and even contemplating suicide.
In October, Judge Mary S. Scriven, an appointee of former President George W. Bush overseeing Contreras Aguilar’s case, quietly granted a stay during the fall government shutdown, leaving in place pending its conclusion a court order directing only female correctional officers to perform pat-downs and strip searches of Contreras Aguilar in the interim.
Attorneys for the federal government were only able to file a motion to reopen the case once Congress appropriated Justice Department funds.
Contreras Aguilar has since latched on to the Kingdom case and submitted a March 11 filing self-identifying as a member of the class covered under the June preliminary injunction.
“As of the date of this writing, I am the only transgender female inmate at USP Coleman II and perhaps even the whole BOP who has a special I.D. card stating that only female staff may pat or strip search me,” Contreras Aguilar wrote in the Kingdom case.
Contreras Aguilar, however, focused on an alleged lack of social accommodations, such as bras, “panties,” and makeup, that are supposed to be made available for free to female-identifying class members pursuant to the preliminary junction.
“The FBOP, USP Coleman II, continues to refuse to provide us transgender girls (members of the class) access to social accommodations,” Contreras Aguilar alleged, urging the court to hold Trump’s Department of Justice in contempt and impose sanctions accordingly.
Kingdom co-plaintiff accused of committing perjury
Contreras Aguilar joins several transgender inmates who are alleging that the Trump administration is actively violating the preliminary injunction. The federal government has recently called into question the veracity of their accusations.
DOJ officials have countered that one of the original co-plaintiffs in the Kingdom case lied in the court record, potentially perjuring themselves, about BOP not honoring the judge’s ruling.
In a March 16 motion for reconsideration of the protective order, the DOJ said the order is premised on “unsubstantiated retaliation allegations.”
Intervening plaintiff Jeremy “Grace” Pinson, according to DOJ attorneys arguing the case, submitted contradictory declarations showing that the BOP has not, as the litigant alleged, abruptly terminated the inmate’s hormone medication as punishment for participating in the civil suit.
Pinson testified under the penalty of perjury that Dr. Lawrence Sichel, the medical director at FCI Butner, was instructed to immediately withdraw hormone therapy in compliance with the BOP policy, suggesting that prison staff ordered so as an act of retaliation.
Warden Scott Garland reported that after he requested an investigation into Pinson’s allegations, which involved a review of relevant camera footage and interviews with staff members named in the declaration, he found that the institution’s physician did not make those statements.
BOP medical records submitted in support of the government’s motion also showed that Pinson’s daily hormone dosages have continued uninterrupted.
In response to the government’s findings, the ACLU claimed, “But that misconstrues Ms. Pinson’s testimony; she did not state that the hormone therapy was already cut off; but rather that she was told that it would be cut off in the future, and that this directive came from the Central Office.”
“That was not Pinson’s declaration,” the DOJ countered. “Pinson clearly alleged that BOP told her that hormones would be terminated ‘immediately’ and that Pinson ‘would not receive the next injection of … estrogen.’”
Indeed, Pinson’s sworn statements claimed that Sichel was “directed by Central Office just to my cell immediately and give me a copy of the [BOP] policy and to terminate my hormone therapy immediately.”
The plaintiff’s declaration also alleged Pinson was locked in solitary confinement filled with feces and urine and that a lieutenant threatened Pinson for getting involved in the litigation:
“Before I got in, Lt. Teague stopped me in front of the cell and said, ‘I’ve told you before, and I’ll tell you again, I don’t give a f**k what that judge says, I do what I want.’ I understood him to be referring to Judge Lamberth in this case. He then said, ‘You only have a little bit of time left in here. If you want to make it home alive, you need to stop sending stuff to that f**king judge, or you’re not going to make it.’ He slammed my door closed at the end of that sentence. The cell has someone else’s feces and urine all over it. The officers threw all of my possessions all over the cell. I had to throw away some of my papers because they got feces on them.”
Authorities say surveillance footage of the cell showed that the legal papers were neatly stacked and no human excrement lined the cell walls.
“Indeed, Pinson was seen on video sitting on the cell floor reading and sorting the papers and walking in the cell without shoes on,” the DOJ said. “But just one week later, Pinson states in another declaration that the cell smelled and there was a puddle ‘of what looked like brown water’ next to the table. That is, Pinson’s own story changed dramatically over the course of one week, and yet, Pinson provides no explanation of the contradictions in the declarations.”
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BOP said it had placed Pinson in the Secure Mental Health Unit because of the plaintiff’s repeated infractions, including by allegedly altering prescribed addiction drugs, engaging in sexual acts with another prisoner, and sending fabricated emails from other inmates’ accounts to try to bolster the retaliation allegations.
Pinson, according to BOP, was forging emails under the names of other inmates, alleging that they observed staff “forcibly removing [Pinson] from the cell, stripping the inmate, threatening the inmate, reading the inmate’s legal materials, and placing the inmate in an unsanitary cell.”
“In sum, because there is no evidentiary basis for the Protective Order, the Court should vacate the Order,” the DOJ requested.
The Washington Examiner contacted the ACLU for comment.