Surveillance video of a transgender asylum-seeker who died in ICE custody has reportedly been deleted while attorneys were still investigating the cause of her death.
According to BuzzFeed, 33-year-old Roxsana Hernández Rodriguez came to the U.S. from Honduras with a migrant caravan in 2018, stayed within ICE custody at a private prison operated by CoreCivic, then died in a hospital in Albuquerque on May 25.
The footage was supposed to help investigators understand what happened during Hernandez's time at the Cibola County Correctional Center in Milan, New Mexico. Attorneys said the video was deleted in the midst of a pending a wrongful death lawsuit, adding that ICE is required to keep evidence and they should have anticipated the lawsuit.
"ICE and CoreCivic have consistently denied wrongdoing and stated that they in effect provided Roxsana with all the health care she needed," Attorney Andrew Free told BuzzFeed News. "The video would be essential and frankly irreplaceable evidence of whether that was true."
Rodriguez's attorneys worked with the Transgender Law Center and used the Freedom of Information Act to release an email exchange between ICE officials discussing the video footage, CNN reported. The Transgender Law Center said the email, along with other documents, proves that Customs and Border Protection and ICE knew about Roxsana’s medical condition, but didn't give the proper treatment.
"Ultimately, they provide insight into the skewed motivations CBP officers and ICE agents have when interacting with a visibly ill person in their custody," the Transgender Law Center wrote.
According to the email, an ICE agent in Washington, D.C. first wrote to an agent in Albuquerque and requested a copy of surveillance footage as part of the agency's internal review of Hernandez's death.
The agent in Albuquerque then said the video is no longer available because the footage is held in memory up to around 90 days.
"They were on notice to preserve any and all video surveillance and it seems they may have failed to do so," Free said in a statement. "We filed suit because we have reason to believe they may be withholding more evidence. The public has the right to know what happened to people who die in the custody of the U.S. government and CoreCivic is not above the law."
According to ICE's Detainee Death Review document released by the Transgender Law Center, Hernandez reported that she was HIV-positive.
The law center said Hernandez didn't get the HIV medication she needed when she was under ICE custody.
“Roxsana needed medical care and yet she was cleared to be incarcerated," Lynly Egyes, TLC’s legal director, said in a statement. "At numerous times throughout her days in immigration enforcement custody, the people she was detained with pleaded for her to receive medical care. It is clear from these records that if immigration enforcement believes that their sole duty is to shuffle people into immigration prisons, that is what they’ll do."
