US immigration officials deleted surveillance footage of a transgender asylum-seeker who died while in custody last year, according to internal emails reviewed by BuzzFeed News. Attorneys say the evidence was crucial in a pending wrongful death lawsuit.
Attorneys representing Roxsana Hernández family in a potential lawsuit said that under federal rules, ICE is required to preserve evidence, including electronic information, if it reasonably anticipates it will be part of litigation. The lawyers maintain that ICE should have anticipated being sued over the 33-year-old’s death.
Andrew Free, an attorney working on Hernández’s case along with the Transgender Law Center, said the video would have provided evidence of Hernández's state of health and what condition she was in while in US custody.
"ICE and CoreCivic have consistently denied wrongdoing and stated that they in effect provided Roxsana with all the health care she needed," Free told BuzzFeed News. "The video would be essential and frankly irreplaceable evidence of whether that was true."
ICE said it does not comment on pending litigation.
