Flores had accidentally missed the alarm, which ended the recreational yard time, and found herself mistakenly trapped in another building. She anticipated a reprimand, hoping for a slap on the wrist. Instead, she said, she was humiliated and dehumanized, used as a circus sideshow act for the officers' entertainment. They taunted her, forcing her to deepen her voice one octave after the other. They teased her, challenging her to lower her tone until it reached baritone pitches.
“Why do you sound like a real woman?” they mocked her unrelentingly until she lowered her voice to unnatural levels, hoping appeasing their wishes would mean her return to safety
The officers called in a female lieutenant, a “real” woman by their standards, to compare their voices. Flores' eyes were wet, pricked with tears of humiliation and frustration. After what felt like hours of mortification, with her head hung low, Flores was allowed to go back to her housing unit with an unactionable anger coursing through her. Flores returned to the place where she will live until her 2026 release date, in the general population holding unit at FCI Seagoville, a low-security prison in North Texas for male inmates.
“They were misgendering me the entire time,” she said, her voice breaking as she relived it. “They were questioning how long [ago] I had transitioned, how I was able to [change] my voice. Things that were not ... they didn't have to do anything with what I was called there in the first place. I just felt very humiliated, very much so.”
Flores came out to her family and friends at 12 and started wearing makeup, like many other young girls, at 13. By 15, she had legally changed her name, and at 17, she started taking estrogen. Now, at 22, Flores has lived much of her life as a woman. Despite her government-issued identification indicating that she is a woman, identifying as a woman and presenting as a woman, Flores, along with a couple of dozen other transgender women, is jailed with men.
The women of Seagoville men’s prison are vulnerable to random searches by male officers, stripped of crucial gender-affirming care, penalized for gathering together and misgendered for the sake of cruelty. It wasn’t always this way. Flores has spent time housed with women before, but since a long-winded executive order from the pen of President Donald Trump promised to restore biological truth to the federal government, incarcerated transgender women have been the exception to the standard protection from cruel and unusual punishment.
Flores’ Story
When Flores was arrested in March 2022 for transporting immigrants across the southern border, she was placed in the female tank at Val Verde County Detention Facility, where she lived for 35 days before being released on bond. In that time, Flores never had an issue with another inmate. She says she was a model prisoner and enjoyed the camaraderie and support of the women she was with. But when she was arrested a second time before the election in 2024, Flores was treated differently.“I had to be made to go back to that same facility, and they immediately put me into the SHU,” she said. SHU stands for Special Housing Unit, or solitary confinement. “It took a day or two for me to finally say, ‘Please, I don't want to be here. Why can't I be placed in the female unit?’”
Flores said the officers told her that they didn’t realize she was transgender in 2022 and that the little more than a month she had spent in the women’s tank had been a mistake. Flores was placed in the SHU this time while guards determined what to do with her next. Since 2018, standard protocol has called for inmates to be housed in a prison that aligns with their assigned gender at birth.
“We can't place somebody like you in a female pod,” they told her.
After sentencing and transfer, Flores was moved to Seagoville on Nov. 14, 2024, nine days after Trump won the 2024 presidential election. She expected taunts and misgendering from the other inmates; she knew as a minority member, a large target would be placed on her back, but she held onto faith for protection from systemic abuse. But on Jan. 20, on the first day of his presidency, Trump dealt a cataclysmic blow to transgender federal prisoners under the name “DEFENDING WOMEN FROM GENDER IDEOLOGY EXTREMISM AND RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.”
The all-caps memo strictly outlines sex as “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female” based on gender at conception and “ensure[s] that no Federal funds are expended for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.”
Flores says a memo was plastered on the home screen of the computers accessible to all inmates. That’s how she and the entire prison population found out transgender inmates were required to hand over their prison-provided undergarments.
“I remember walking to [the] laundry with my bras and panties in hand and seeing [correction officers] and seeing male inmates laughing at me,” she said. “And I asked the other girls here if they experienced the same thing. And yes, they said the same thing that they had people laugh at them. It was humorous to see us. We were a joke, basically.”
Flores, like many transgender inmates, through the use of estrogen, has grown breasts, which will not reduce in size even if hormone replacement therapy is delayed. Some of the women have had breast augmentations before sentencing. Though they were allowed to keep any specially ordered undergarments available through the prison catalog, purchased for an additional fee, women without means to buy them are left with nothing, forced to bear the imprints of their chests in a men’s prison in the thin, rough and taut cotton of a constrictive man’s uniform designed for a flat chest.
Taking away prison-issued bras and panties was just the first step in transgender erasure, Flores said.
“If you just take away things to make our time harder, well, now you're just being very cruel and [making] serving our time harder than it needs to be,” she said. “We're already incarcerated. And then taking these items away, you just exacerbate the already harsh conditions and the difficulties we have to face, especially when you're a transgender woman in a men's facility.”
Conditions Worsen
One of the joys of girlhood is the pleasure of pampering. To run your fingers through the softened strands of freshly brushed hair, to feel the dull ends of a makeup brush prick your cheeks as you rouge them with powder blush, to have blackened and spidery, mascara-gooped lashes crawling from the eyelids of your reflection; those are the immutable joys of femininity for many women. And they are the joys Flores had enjoyed most of her life, even while confined at Seagoville, until January.
After arriving in early November, she spent most of the money on her prison card on makeup and hair products. She braided her long, dark waves into new styles and played with the few hair products available within the prison. In her mind, it was one of the few ways of finding beauty and individuality in a place that whittles her existence down to a number.
“Some of my favorite products I used to purchase in the commissary were hair products,” she said. “There were pomades, there was styling foam, very obviously feminine products that are no longer available to us.”
At the commissary, the prison store where inmates use their own money to purchase additional luxuries, Flores bought makeup brushes, mascara and a treasured eyeshadow compact. The products were far from affordable. She estimates that bargain quality had cost her a markup value of $20 per item, but the sparse items were worth buying to clutch onto the last remnants of her femininity. Like the starter makeup kits little girls play with, the simple products were Flores’ last grasp for some normalcy.
But officers removed those sorts of products from the Seagoville shelves, and the last makeup crumbs, with the metal base pan peeking through weakened layers of product, are all Flores has left for the remaining eight months of her stint.
“I'm a big makeup lover,” Flores said. “I've been doing makeup since I was 13, and it's a great way that I used to express myself and build my confidence. Without it, it's a bit disheartening. They have allowed us to keep our makeup that we've already purchased when it was still available. But once that makeup runs out, there won't be any new ones to buy.”
The removal of the products seems to serve no purpose other than to eradicate the joy and feminine expression of transgender inmates.
“[We] are already going to deal with stuff from staff and other male inmates,” she said. “At least when you have these things available to you, it can relieve that.”
Flores says the presence of makeup and hair products at the commissary was acknowledgment enough, and solidified an unspoken protection for transgender inmates. When the items disappeared, a door for increased harassment was cracked and burst wide open with the removal of the only accountability system.
Transgender inmates were allowed to file grievances with the prison enabled by the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA); it was a way to document inappropriate behavior, and gave a voice to the women. PREA, passed in 2003, mandates a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment and abuse within prisons. Flores says that since January, the misgendering of transgender inmates no longer constitutes a PREA violation at Seagoville. Misgendering and deadnaming are not explicit violations of PREA, but umbrella inclusions banning harassment once covered them.
“There were policies in place to file grievances against staff members who are discriminatory, like calling us ‘he’ or stuff like that,” she said. “But now that's not even the case anymore. So now these staff members can call us whatever they want, and we can't really say anything about it.”
Flores, though a woman by every definition except chromosomal, is misgendered regularly by her fellow inmates and the officers overseeing them alike. In one instance, Flores found herself back in the lieutenant’s office right after New Year’s Eve after she had been falsely identified as the target of a prison yard scrap. As she tried to clarify the situation and assert that she had not been attacked, she was distracted by the stabbing sound of the word “he.” Each time she begged the officer to use “she,” the officer ignored her.
“He's like, ‘Shut up. I can call you whatever I want,’” she said.
Another officer entered the room and accused transgender inmates of being “entitled.” He dared her to file more grievances and emphasized their futility.
“‘You guys don't deserve anything like that, and you guys can write me up as much as you want, but guess what? You’ll never win with me because I dot my I’s and I cross my T’s,’” Flores quoted him.
Flores hasn’t stopped thinking about that day in January and the threats since.
"[Being misgendered is] definitely embarrassing if it's done in front of other people,” she said. “If [correctional officers] call me ‘he’ in front of other inmates, all these inmates feel that they can call me ‘he’ as well. It triggers me very much. It's very upsetting because I'm very clearly, very visibly presenting as a female, and I've been so since I was 13."
While words are sure to hurt, the true sticks and stones, Flores said, is the revocation of pink cards, the colloquial term for a PREA protection identification card that disallowed male officers from subjecting transgender inmates to bodily searches.
“[Pink cards] helped a lot of the transgender female inmates here not have to be forced to be touched or groped by a male correctional officer, or having to strip naked in front of a male correctional officer,” she said. “But now those are also taken away as well. So a lot of us who have breasts and have developed a lot from the hormones or surgeries, now we are forced to get naked in front of a man and have to get groped and touched by a man. That's very upsetting for any woman, trans or not.”
Quick Changes
The federal government, never noted for speed, reached a surprising new velocity when Trump began his second term. Based on his first presidential term, a litany of executive orders was anticipated, but the speed and broad-sweeping topics of such orders likely were not. Order after order flew from the Oval Office, with little time for clarification before the next one came out.On his first day, the president fulfilled many of the wishes of his most conservative constituents and set the tone for a presidency with limited permissions and compassion for those who do not fit within conventional identities. Matching the eager haste of the new administration, correctional officers at Seagoville pulled products from the commissary store's shelves in January following a directive from the Department of Justice (DOJ), according to a spokesperson for FCI Seagoville.
Then the trans women of Seagoville, roughly 40, were packed into the prison’s auditorium and told they would be losing all gender-affirming care, starting with their federally provided undergarments. The spokesperson recalls the dissemination of information differently than Flores, who said a computer screen memo told her to turn over her bras and panties.
The next steps were unknown, and the women were left to wonder about their hormone therapy, their access to mental health care and their safety.
“They're still giving [estrogen] to us,” Flores said in March. “But it is not a for-sure thing that it will stay like that. It's like an impending doom. We're all pretty scared. That's a scary thing because when you've been on hormones as long as I have and as long as many of these other girls have, when you stop taking them abruptly like that, the changes are very jarring.”
The prison spokesperson said the facility, when ordered, will wean transgender inmates off estrogen to reduce the side effects associated with a cold turkey removal of hormone replacement therapy. For now, the women are receiving their daily doses, which is essential medical care. Transgender women who cease estrogen in one fell swoop will regrow facial hair, experience vocal changes, can get random erections and usually suffer from debilitating depression and anxiety. Transgender women who have undergone bottom surgery, the removal of male genitalia, require lifelong estrogen doses to avoid severe health defects like osteoporosis, or bone density loss.
“Removing essential hormones from post-op trans individuals isn’t a political statement, it’s medical malpractice,” wrote Dr. Helen Webberly on her clinic’s website, GenderGP, an online gender clinic based out of England.
The prison spokesperson confirmed that the prison revoked pink cards. All transgender inmates were reclassified as “male” and lost their ability to file PREA violations against cross-gender searches. All officers were instructed to refer to inmates by their last names only and avoid gender-affirming pronouns.
As officers removed stock from the commissary, other correctional officers were busy clearing cells for the anticipated arrival of transgender inmates who had been authorized to live within women’s prisons. The American Civil Liberties Union estimates the tally of transgender inmates in the U.S. is 2,000. The low-security facility south of Dallas was to be the rehoming location of five women.
A class action lawsuit filed by three transgender inmates who were transferred to a prison in line with their assigned gender at birth in New Jersey, Minnesota and Florida delayed the transfer of any prisoners. But Flores said Seagoville still has the holding space ready for their arrival.
A holding center was prepared for their arrival, according to the prison spokesperson. The prison planned to keep them together to foster community and ease acclimation. Still, Flores said the beds prepared are in the general population, housing the women with more than 1,000 male inmates.
“The rooms that were vacant for them are still vacant. So it's like they're waiting for their arrival. Like they're waiting to bring them. It's a general population that's within my unit, and I'm housed with male inmates. So they will be housed with just everybody else. They're not isolated.”
Women Stick Together
The 38 women of FCI Seagoville men’s prison stick together — at least, the best they can. They may be all each other has. They braid each other’s hair, gossip and bond over their shared and unique experiences behind the prison walls. Flores heard about a support group for the women of Seagoville, but it had already been disbanded before she got there.“Any type of programming or special groups for us, to help us, is now no longer allowed,” Flores said. “So we took it into our own hands. Every Sunday, we have a little tiny transgender support group outside in the recreational yard, just to help one another. But it's not anything official, and we have to be very careful about it, because if a [correctional officer] is walking and sees all of us huddled up together, they will try to tell us to separate or say that we're trying to start something.”
A spokesperson for Seagoville said psychiatrists are available by appointment for all inmates. Still, Flores said the counselors had little experience working with transgender people, and she felt threatened and belittled when she met with hers.
Proper mental health care is crucial for the transgender community, which has a higher than average risk of suicide, and an additional target from the Oval Office places significant risk on the transgender community. According to a report from the University of California Los Angeles, 42% of transgender adults will attempt suicide at least once in their lives. Since feminine products were removed from Seagoville’s commissary, two transgender inmates have been placed on suicide watch.
“Gender affirming care is life-saving,” said Shayna Medley, an attorney with Advocates for Trans Equality. “It's medically necessary. Major medical organizations agree that this includes social transition, so that includes things like gender affirming clothing, undergarments, hairstyles, makeup. The federal government and the prison systems attempt[ing] to deny trans people those gender-affirming items are denying them a form of health care. All people in custody have a constitutional right to basic health care, including trans people.”
Aside from the unnecessary mental toll that removing gender-affirming care can have, it also puts transgender individuals in harm’s way.
“All trans people are at increased risk of violence in custodial settings, but particularly trans women who are housed in men's facilities,” Medley said. “... Trans women are at serious risk of increased violence from both corrections officers and other people inside when they're housed with men.”
Medley said the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel or unusual punishment demands protection from violence, and the gap created by placing women in men’s facilities, placing them at higher risk, is unconstitutional.
“People are supposed to be protected under PREA, under the Eighth Amendment, from risk of violence,” Medley said. “This risk is certainly known to corrections facilities. The failure to protect people from that is unconstitutional.”
Plainly put, the treatment of transgender people within the federal prison system is cruel for the sake of cruelty.
“Several courts have held that denying this type of care, including access to gender affirming clothing and commissary items, discriminates on the basis of sex and the basis of disability. There's really, you know, no justification other than cruelty for denying trans people these items.”
Medley says the attempts to erase the transgender community by the current administration are undeniable. But the lack of empathy for inmates, expressly based on their status as criminals, leaves gaping cracks and facilitates dehumanization.
“Trans people are under attack from the federal government in all areas of life,” she said. “People in custody are often the most overlooked and intentionally [so]. The issues and harms that people in custody face are less likely to receive public attention.”
The removal of commissary items strips transgender women of their femininity. The revocation of pink cards leaves them susceptible to danger. The misgendering belittles and humiliates them. The lack of mental health care and the potential withholding of hormone therapy leave them with sizeable health concerns.
But still, the trans women of Seagoville men’s prison stand together, as they are, women.
“You can take my makeup, you can take my bras, you can take all that stuff. But guess what? I'm still transgender.” Flores said. “And I will always be transgender, and you will have to deal with that. I will never change that for anybody.”
