In recent days, her health has worsened, and she has had a fever for several days. She was transferred to Unit 22 for medical evaluation, where she was told she needed to be treated “at an off-site hospital, but no steps were taken to secure an appointment at a hospital where her more complex medical needs could be addressed,” the report states. Claudia Vázquez Haro, president of OTRANS, told Presentes that Jazmín has been requesting treatment at a specialized hospital for three months, but “the State is ignoring her.” She added, “Every day that passes, her life deteriorates in this situation of confinement. We are concerned because the lack of healthcare has been the cause of death for three of our fellow inmates.”

“This is not an isolated case.”

Fabián Bernal, deputy director of the Detention Center Inspection Program of the Provincial Commission for Memory (CPM), told Presentes that they will support OTRANS Argentina's legal complaint. “It's a serious allegation, but it's not an isolated incident: in that prison, there's a policy of neglecting healthcare for all detainees, which is exacerbated in the cases of transgender people,” he emphasized. The CPM is calling on the Ministry of Health to assume responsibility for the care of incarcerated individuals. “We understand that the way healthcare operates within prison settings only generates constant neglect and a lack of access to the right to health.”

[READ ALSO: A ruling urges guaranteeing the health of trans and transvestite people detained in Florencio Varela]

“This is a systematic plan of social cleansing.”

In 2017, three trans women died in the context of confinement in that same prison: Pamela Macedo Panduro (29 years old), Angie Velázquez Ramírez (36 years old) and Demaris Becerra (40 years old). All of them were Peruvian migrants and members of OTRANS. The organization has been denouncing these as arbitrary arrests and fabricated charges, followed by degrading treatment, lack of access to healthcare, and ultimately, death.

[READ ALSO: Demands for Justice for the Death of a Trans Woman Detained in Florencio Varela] 

“For two years we have been denouncing this systematic plan of social cleansing where our comrades are arrested on fabricated drug charges, which in most cases are for personal use. They are imprisoned on inflated charges as if they were drug traffickers, and then the justice system ignores all requests to respect the rights of those detained in pretrial detention. That is why the deaths occur. The combination of pretrial detention with inflated penalties and deaf ears to the complaints made about detention conditions is a deadly combination,” Luciana Sánchez, a lawyer from the Impossible Litigation legal area of ​​the Collective for Diversity (COPADI), which provides legal representation to OTRANS, told Presentes.

[READ ALSO: The UN demands that Argentina put a stop to the persecution of transvestites and trans people]

OTRANS Argentina has been requesting the easing of preventive detentions for trans women held in the Florencio Varela prison because they believe the place does not have the necessary conditions to guarantee the rights of the detained transvestites and trans people.

[READ ALSO: Demands for justice for the death of a trans woman detained in Florencio Varela]

The lawyer said that the La Plata courts and the Buenos Aires provincial executive branch are aware of the suffering endured by incarcerated trans women. “That’s why, more than two years after we began filing these complaints, we can speak concretely of a systematic plan with state complicity. When a public official can foresee the lethal outcome of their policies and does nothing to prevent it, we are talking about crimes, not accidents,” she said.