April Amaya-Luis, a 43-year-old transgender woman from Mexico, has been in the United States for 25 years. Though out of status currently, she has established a life here, had a job, and married the man she had been with for six years. Now she sits in a males-only prison in Miami, Florida, in solitary confinement she requested for her own safety. It is an ordeal resulting in large part from President Donald Trump’s policies prioritizing deportation of immigrants, weaponizing the belief that only two sexes exist, and a White House tweet containing a falsehood about her criminal record.
Amaya-Luis pled guilty in January 2025 to second degree assault, receiving six months’ probation and no jail time. In her 25 years of being in the United States, it was her first ever criminal interaction. She was complying with the law by checking in with her parole officer in Kent County, Maryland on Feb. 4, 2025. It was there the real ordeal began for her, her husband, and family.
At the parole check-in on Feb. 4, she was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers for being in the country illegally. ICE officers brought her to the hold room in Downtown Baltimore’s ICE field office. According to Rachel Girod, her attorney, the immigrants’ rights group Amica confirmed that 72 hours is the maximum length of time ICE can keep someone in the hold room.
Amaya-Luis was in the hold room for seven days. There are no beds or cots, only benches attached to the wall. “It’s not meant to be anywhere that you are for more than a couple of hours, and usually it’s not,” Girod said.
Girod told Fishbowl that in addition to pleading guilty to “offensive touching,” which is considered second-degree assault, Amaya-Luis pled not guilty to an agreed statement of facts with the prosecutor and received Probation Before Judgement (PBJ). “For Maryland purposes, [the PBJ] is not a conviction. For immigration purposes, it is one, but not a deportable conviction.”
On the day after her arrest by ICE, The White House tweeted this, using April’s deadname:
“MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN: Victor Amaya-Luis, a Mexican national, was arrested by ICE Baltimore on February 4, 2025. Conviction: Assault stemming from sex abuse of a minor. Amaya-Luis received six months’ probation.”
As of this writing, the tweet had 218 “likes,” 46 retweets, five comments, and nearly 7,900 views.
The falsehood? Amaya-Luis’ conviction had nothing to do with a minor. The alleged victim was an adult.
“[The White House] posted a male name with a photo of an individual presenting as female and stated that she had a conviction that stemmed from child sexual abuse,” Girod said. “Some of the most harmful narratives around trans people have to do with their sexual demons, deviancy, and being a danger to your children.”
She surmised that Amaya-Luis being an immigrant feeds that harmful narrative in a way that exacerbates the danger she faces.
“[W]hat’s so disturbing about it, aside from the transphobic nature of the post, is the defamatory nature of the post,” Girod said. “There was no allegation at any point that a child had anything to do with this case, or that a child was even in the vicinity. The alleged victim in this case was an adult and there’s nothing about a child anywhere in any of the police reports whatsoever…. There was never, ever a charge of child sexual assault.”
Regarding the week-long hold in Baltimore’s ICE Field Office, Girod said that Maryland’s Dignity Not Detention Act essentially ended all contracts that enabled ICE to have private detention facilities in this state. Therefore, she estimated that around 90% of the time when ICE arrests someone in Maryland, they are transferred to an adjacent state with ICE detention facilities, like Pennsylvania or Virginia.
After Amaya-Luis spent seven days in Baltimore’s hold room without being transferred, Girod filed a motion with the Baltimore immigration court. Within hours, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) filed a notice that they were moving Amaya-Luis to Florida.
“So early Wednesday morning, her husband got a call from her that she arrived at the Krome North Service Processing Center, which is an all-male facility in Miami, Florida,” Girod said.
Most of the facilities in adjoining states with which Girod has worked have all-male units and all-female units within the same facility, so sending Amaya-Luis to an all-male facility is causing great concern for her and her family.
“We have no confidence that that wasn’t intentional,” Girod said.
As soon as Amaya-Luis arrived at the Florida facility, she requested and received protective custody. As a trans woman in an all-male facility, she fears for her safety. The White House tweet falsely stating she’d been convicted of child sexual assault endangers her further. So, for nearly a week, she has been experiencing conditions much like solitary confinement and awaits her bond hearing with an immigration judge next week.
Handling the case from such a long distance has been a challenge for attorney and client alike.
“Most of my communication with ICE officers has always felt very transactional and innocuous, if not pleasant, and [in this case] it has been lacking in the pleasantries and helpfulness,” Girod told Fishbowl. “It’s definitely been harder to have contact with her.”
For example, legal calls have been very difficult for Girod to schedule with Amaya-Luis. Legal/attorney calls are different from regular facility calls an inmate makes in that the facility must call the attorney, the inmate must be brought to a private space where they are guaranteed to not be charged for the call, and it will not be on a recorded line, so that it can be confidential and privileged.
“Usually what happens is that we’ll reach out to the facility and tell them our availability, and they’ll get back to us within a day or so,” Girod explained about setting up legal calls. Not so at the Krome facility. Her multiple requests for a legal call were repeatedly dodged, and she continued to push hard for one.
Eventually, she got a call from Amaya-Luis, not the facility, so Girod assumed it was not a legal call being made in a private setting or on a non-recorded line, which she mentioned to Amaya-Luis. The next day Girod received an email from ICE informing her that the previous day’s call was a confidential call, and Girod shouldn’t have assumed it was not.
Adding to the tremendous difficulty for Amaya-Luis is the fact that before The White House’s tweet, not many people in her life knew about her gender identity. Girod explained that it’s been a very private topic for her, and until now, she has always had the choice of whether to talk about it and to whom. That choice is now gone.
If Amaya-Luis is released after her bond hearing next week, her family will have to travel down to Florida to pick her up. Her husband, Tyler Schelts —born and raised in Maryland — is deeply worried about her and described how much she is missed by the whole family.
“It has been emotionally draining everyday knowing she is not home,” Schelts told Fishbowl via email. “There have been many days when I would come home in tears because she was taken. April is the most kindhearted person I’ve ever met. She puts me and others before herself. She always participates in family events with nieces and nephews extended family (Aunts and Uncles) Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving and birthday parties. To have her taken away from me and my family has been devastating. We all miss and love her so much. April has changed as a person through all this, and she really misses home and family.”
Schelts has started a GoFundMe page to raise funds for his wife.
The White House account should be charged with slander! It’s all to prop up their numbers of deporting “the worst criminals”. Smoke & mirrors. I feel for the family.
Can not donate but did share . Sorry u r all dealing with this.
Unfortunately there will be many more caught up in this type of situation. The last administration was reckless with regards to illegal immigration. There needs to be a correction.