Texas Democrat Al Green held a press conference Thursday to pressure the Department of Homeland Security into providing hormone therapy and specialized medical care to transgender illegal immigrants held in ICE detention, a demand that puts taxpayer-funded gender treatments for people in the country unlawfully ahead of the concerns of citizens footing the bill.
Green appeared alongside representatives of the Houston LGBTQ+ Political Caucus and the Montrose Center, a Houston-based organization whose TransWellness program coordinator, Daron Perez, joined the congressman at the podium. Green read aloud from a letter addressed to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, accusing the federal government of creating "hazardous conditions" for transgender illegal immigrants inside ICE facilities.
The letter claimed the government has halted specialized medical care for transgender detainees at no fewer than ten detention centers nationwide. Green offered no list of the facilities and did not name the "experts" he said had warned of health complications from the policy change.
The congressman's most striking argument came when he reached for an analogy. As Breitbart reported, Green told the press conference:
"In this country, if we can provide aid and comfort to the bank robber, to the person who's engaged in mortal combat with Americans, we surely can provide aid and comfort to persons who have committed no crimes, who are in the care, custody, and control of the government. And who need medical attention."
Green described the individuals in ICE custody as people "who have committed no crimes." That framing sidesteps a basic fact his letter left unaddressed. People held by ICE are, by definition, in federal immigration custody, typically because they entered or remained in the United States in violation of immigration law. Crossing the border without authorization is itself a federal offense.
Green added a broader declaration aimed at the administration's policy shift.
"Medical attention should not be denied any person, especially because of who you happen to be."
He went further, saying the government "cannot allow the exception to this to become persons who are associated with the trans community."
At the center of Green's complaint is a policy change. The Biden administration had maintained a practice of reserving certain detention units specifically for transgender women. The Trump administration ended that arrangement. Green's letter alleged that, as a result, transgender women in ICE custody are now housed with men or placed in solitary confinement.
Green did not specify which Biden-era directive established the reserved housing units, when exactly the Trump administration reversed it, or what alternative protocols, if any, replaced it. His letter referenced "deliberate agency policies" but cited no executive orders, memos, or regulatory actions by name.
Daron Perez, the Montrose Center's TransWellness program coordinator, reinforced Green's message at the event:
"Transgender immigrants should not have to wonder, 'Will I receive my hormones? Will my identity be respected? Will I be safe? Will anybody care?'"
Perez also stated that "being detained should never mean losing your dignity, your safety, or access to necessary medical care."
Secretary Mullin and the Department of Homeland Security have not publicly responded to Green's letter or the press conference. It remains unclear whether the letter was formally submitted to Mullin's office or simply read aloud for the cameras.
Green's claims raise a series of questions he did not answer Thursday. Which ten detention centers stopped providing specialized medical care? What specific treatments were halted, hormones, counseling, something else? Who are the unnamed experts warning of complications? And what is the legal or regulatory basis for his demand that ICE provide hormone therapy to detainees?
None of those details appeared in the portions of the letter Green read publicly. Without them, the press conference amounted to a set of assertions wrapped in moral urgency but thin on verifiable specifics.
Green's demand, stripped to its essentials, asks the federal government to spend taxpayer money on hormone treatments and specialized housing accommodations for people who are in federal custody because they are in the country in violation of immigration law. He frames this as a medical-care issue. Many Americans will see it as a priorities issue, one where a sitting congressman is spending his political energy not on the citizens and legal residents in his district, but on ensuring that illegal immigrants receive gender-related medical services behind the walls of a detention facility.
The congressman did not address how much the specialized care would cost, who would pay for it, or why these treatments should take precedence over other demands on a federal immigration system already stretched by record-level enforcement operations.
When elected officials fight harder for the comfort of people who broke the law to get here than for the citizens who follow it, voters are entitled to ask whose side their representative is on.
