An incarcerated MS-13 gang member wants to join a class-action lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union to prevent the Trump administration from prohibiting access to sex-change treatments while behind bars.
The ACLU lawsuit includes roughly 2,000 transgender incarcerated people challenging the Trump administration and the Federal Bureau of Prisons after being told that their treatments would be suspended.
President Trump’s January 2025 executive order prevented federal funds from being used for medical procedures to reassign gender.
One transgender prisoner seeking to join the case is Oscar Contreras Aguilar, an El Salvador associate of MS-13 who now goes by Fendi G. Skyy. She was convicted at 20 years old for the murder of a juvenile victim in Virginia in 2016.
Prosecutors say the gang members lured a teenager to his death, believing he was part of a rival gang, then targeted another teen, suspecting that he was cooperating with law enforcement. Ms. Skyy allegedly ordered the hit.
Ms. Skyy, a biological man, is incarcerated at USP Coleman II, a high-security men’s penitentiary in Florida. She began identifying as a woman and took her new name in 2024. She began receiving hormone replacement treatment that July, months before Mr. Trump’s mandate.
As a woman, she refers to herself using female pronouns, looks “very feminine,” and has been harassed, misgendered and called slurs by guards, according to court documents.
She said she was strip-searched by male guards, and was told, “You are not a woman. You are a man in a man’s prison,” and that the president does not allow federal prison guards to treat “queers as women anymore.”
Men who identify as women are often subjected to “harsher, more degrading treatment” than other male prisoners, she said.
She said the Trump administration’s policy changes have caused extreme emotional distress, including suicidal thoughts.
A March 11 filing self-identifies her as a member of the class covered under the June preliminary injunction.
“The FBOP, USP Coleman II, continues to refuse to provide us transgender girls (members of the class) access to social accommodations,” the document reads. It urges the court to hold the Department of Justice in contempt and impose sanctions.
The lawsuit argues that withholding medically necessary treatment for gender dysphoria violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments. Courts have held that denying essential medical care to inmates, including access to sex-change medication and procedures, constitutes such punishment.
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