Trans Women in Federal Custody Face the Terror of Being Transferred to Men’s Prisons

Last Friday afternoon, Kara Sternquist, a trans woman in custody at a federal women’s prison in Fort Worth, Texas, was taken from her unit. A guard told Sternquist that she had an unexpected psychiatric appointment in the chapel.

“She was lied to,” said Deviant Ollam, a friend who speaks with her regularly by phone. “Once she was away from everyone else, they took her.”

According to Ollam, Sternquist told him that she is one of almost a dozen trans women who have been taken from the general population at FMC Carswell and moved into an administrative segregation unit that is typically used for inmates on suicide watch. (The Intercept has been unable to reach Sternquist directly, and an official at FMC Carswell declined to answer questions when reached by phone on Monday.)

The women were told they would be moved to a men’s prison, Ollam said, under President Donald Trump’s anti-trans executive order, which directs the Bureau of Prisons to ensure “that males are not detained in women’s prisons” and that inmates don’t receive gender-affirming health care using federal funds. On Monday, Trump issued another bigoted order barring trans people from military service, which was quickly challenged in federal court.

Trans women who are forced to live in men’s prison facilities face disproportionate risk of sexual assault and violence, as the Bureau of Prisons’ manual on trans inmates, issued in 2022, acknowledges.

On Tuesday afternoon, a warden unexpectedly told Sternquist she could return to her unit for now, Ollam told The Intercept. “She’s still very worried but optimistic,” Ollam said after he got off the phone with her.

Sternquist’s four-day ordeal and ongoing uncertainty about where she will serve the rest of her sentence reflects the precarious position of hundreds of trans people in federal prisons, who are being targeted by Trump and his hard-right allies.

“The worst part for her is not knowing what will happen next,” said Allegra Glashausser, Sternquist’s attorney. “She doesn’t know whether she will be held with men. She doesn’t know if she will receive her hormones as scheduled. Everything is uncertain. I am exceptionally worried for Kara’s physical safety and her mental health.”

“Trans people in custody, and trans women, in particular, are bearing the brunt of the immediate harms of this executive order,” said Shayna Medley, a litigation attorney at Advocates for Trans Equality.

This is not Sternquist’s first experience facing a dangerous housing assignment in federal prison.

In 2022, after she was arrested on firearms charges and for possession of fraudulent government badges, Sternquist was initially put into the men’s unit at the notorious MDC Brooklyn facility, even though her passport and driver’s license reflect that she is female.

It took two court orders and the threat of sanctions from a federal judge for the Bureau of Prisons to transfer Sternquist to women’s housing at MDC Brooklyn. “The DOJ and BOP proceed under the misapprehension that court orders are advisory,” wrote Magistrate Judge Sanket Bulsara in a September 2022 order. “Such contumacious conduct risks a contempt sanction.”

In another order, in November 2022, a judge directed the Bureau of Prisons to change Sternquist’s gender marker in prison databases to female. “To fail to do so would only continue to cause the mis-gendering problems that Defendant has faced while in custody,” U.S. District Court Judge Dora Irizarry wrote.

In August 2024, after Sternquist pleaded guilty to the firearms count, Irizarry sentenced her to a prison term of 60 months. The judge’s sentencing order specifically recommended that Sternquist be assigned to FMC Carswell “or another women’s medical facility” and that the Bureau of Prisons “provide gender-affirming and other medical care.”

“It’s moving heaven and earth to get them on the right unit,” Ollam said of the process, even under the Biden administration’s rules, for getting trans inmates placed into the appropriate facility. “If they are moved, they will very likely be lost forever.”

Ollam, who posts video updates about Sternquist’s case and condition, told The Intercept that Sternquist does not know when she will be transferred, but she fears it could happen at any moment. In the meantime, prison officials have started addressing Sternquist and the other trans women by male pronouns, according to Ollam. “When the staff come in, they address them as ‘gentlemen,’” Ollam said.

The Bureau of Prisons did not respond to inquiries about the trans women held at FMC Carswell or plans to transfer them. But another inmate at the facility, Ángel Espinosa-Villegas, who is transmasculine, closely mirrored Ollam’s account in messages sent to friends.

“I don’t know what else to do except sound the alarms.”

On Friday, guards “took the trans women out of every unit,” Espinosa-Villegas wrote in one message that day, which was shared with The Intercept. “You should have seen the evil looks of triumph as they escorted the trans women crying out of here.”

Espinosa-Villegas also wrote about fears among transmasculine inmates that “we’re next on Trump’s list.”

“Now there’s talk about us transmascs getting sent to [administrative segregation] until ‘Trump finds a place for us,’” Espinosa-Villegas wrote. “There’s officers saying that shit. They’ve refused to give me my [testosterone] shots every time I go and ask for them.”

“God watching the trans women get hauled away was evil,” Espinosa-Villegas wrote in another message. “I don’t know what else to do except sound the alarms.”

On Sunday, another trans woman in federal custody — identified in court records by a pseudonym, Maria Moe — filed the first lawsuit challenging the executive order.

“Maria Moe has lived as a woman and has taken hormones continuously since she was a teenager,” reads a complaint filed in federal court in Massachusetts. “During her term of incarceration, she has always been treated as a woman by federal correctional officials and her peers. She has never been housed in a men’s facility and has never stopped taking hormones.”

But last week, like Sternquist and others at FMC Carswell, Moe was removed from the general population of a women’s facility, according to legal filings, which redacted the name of the specific prison. The day after Trump signed the executive order, Moe was confined to the “Special Housing Unit” and “has not been permitted to have contact with others for at least four days.”

Moe’s lawyers argue that the executive order’s provisions about inmate housing violates the Eight Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, among other provisions of the Constitution and federal law, as does the prohibition on providing hormone therapy and other care.

“Transferring Maria Moe to a men’s prison will pose a substantial risk of serious harm, including an extremely high risk of violence and sexual assault from other incarcerated people and BOP staff,” reads her complaint.

Although Moe’s case was quickly sealed, Ollam said he, Sternquist, and the other trans women at FMC Carswell are watching closely, in hopes that the judge overseeing Moe’s challenge might block the executive order nationwide. Last week, a federal judge temporarily blocked another of Trump’s orders regarding birthright citizenship.

“The girls just want their message to be: silence equals death,” Ollam said.