A federal judge has ordered the immediate release of Karla Saenz, a transgender Venezuelan migrant and immigrant rights organizer whom LOOKOUT reported on earlier this year, after she was detained by ICE in March, held for more than a month in a men’s unit at the Eloy Detention Center and denied medical care.

The ruling came Tuesday after the government’s lawyers effectively conceded the case. On April 17, government officials named in the case — including the warden of the ICE detention center where Saenz is held — did not contest her central claims that her detention was “arbitrary and capricious,” that the government failed to follow its own regulations before revoking her parole, and that her detention violated her due process rights.

“Respondents have conceded that this Court should grant Ms. Saenz all the relief she has asked for,” her attorneys wrote.

The federal judge, Krissa M. Lanham — a Biden appointee — agreed with Saenz’s lawyers, both federal public defenders who represented her after reading about her case in LOOKOUT. (One of her lawyers, Keith Hilzendeger, was a LOOKOUT board member from 2023 to 2024.)

The ruling can be appealed.

Growing up in Venezuela, Saenz, 26, said she faced violence and constant discrimination for being transgender. She fled first to Colombia, then traveled overland to the United States in 2024 with her partner. After crossing into Texas, she turned herself in to Border Patrol and requested asylum.

Her asylum claim, according to one of the court documents, is based on years of persecution, enslavement and repeated rape. She was kidnapped by two separate gangs — the Revolutionary Armed Forces, or FARC, in Colombia and another gang in Chile, where she went to try to find her sister, who had also been kidnapped. In Colombia, two of her transgender friends were murdered.

Saenz told LOOKOUT that returning to Venezuela would be “suicide.”

Her asylum case is ongoing.

Saenz was arrested March 9 during what she and her supporters say was a routine immigration check-in at a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Midtown Phoenix. She was accompanied by Cristen Pointer, a volunteer with Trans Queer Pueblo, an LGBTQ+ migrant rights group.

Phoenix Trans Migrant Woman Held in Men’s ICE Facility.

Advocates say the Phoenix organizer complied with immigration requirements and suspect her detention as retaliatory.

LOOKOUTJohn Washington (he/him)

Pointer said agents took them both to a back room, told Saenz she had an arrest warrant — but did not produce one — then put her in handcuffs and removed her.

Advocates with Trans Queer Pueblo have consistently argued that Saenz’s detention was in retaliation for her advocacy work, specifically her campaign for the release of Arbella “Yari” Rodríguez Márquez, a queer woman and longtime Phoenix resident who has been held at Eloy for more than a year while living with leukemia that has progressed dramatically in custody, including significant weight loss and other deteriorating health conditions. Yari now struggles to walk and vomits blood daily.

Saenz said she was arrested for advocating for Márquez and others. “They detained me for no other reason than I’m trans, Black and a migrant,” she said. “For speaking out, for not being scared.”

ICE officials said in a statement to LOOKOUT that she was “not complying with the conditions of release.” She and her supporters, as well as her attorneys, dispute that account, saying she had consistently complied with her supervision requirements.

Her attorneys argued that the parole revocation was made without notice or an opportunity to contest it and without following the agency’s own procedural rules. The government never directly disputed those charges, which her legal team argued amounted to a concession.

Saenz spent her time in detention in a men’s unit at Eloy after what she described as five days in solitary confinement — a claim ICE called “categorically false” in an emailed statement. ICE also defended the placement, citing President Donald Trump’s executive order declaring that the federal government recognizes only two sexes.

Inside Eloy, Saenz told LOOKOUT she was denied the hormone therapy she has taken for years, as well as medication for a chronic illness. She described being harassed by both guards and fellow detainees.

Trump Has Promoted More Deportations. One Couple’s Story Highlights the Human Toll.

As immigration took center stage, a Phoenix woman’s trip to the nation’s capital spotlighted her detained partner’s declining health and broader criticisms about LGBTQ+ safety in custody.

LOOKOUTJohn Washington (he/him)

One guard, she said, threatened to force her to shower in front of men. She said she often stayed in her cell to avoid confrontation and did not shower for her first two days in the men’s unit because she lacked privacy. “It’s been inhuman treatment to have to live with so many men, to live with so much discrimination and transphobia,” she said.

Emem Maurus of the Transgender Law Center told LOOKOUT that the Trump administration’s decision to stop tracking transgender detainees has made it nearly impossible for advocates to monitor conditions or push for protections. “Now that nobody’s being classified as trans, we can’t even look in certain detention centers for them,” Maurus said. “It’s just harder to find them. It’s harder to advocate for them.”

A 2015 ICE memorandum directed the agency to provide a “respectful, safe, and secure environment” for transgender detainees and prohibited discrimination based on gender identity. It also mandated tracking transgender people detained by ICE. That standard has not been enforced under the current administration.

Saenz and advocates with Trans Queer Pueblo say other transgender people remain detained at Eloy and elsewhere under dire conditions. Maurus said their current invisibility “pushes a lot of people to self-deport, even when they probably had options, because they’re thinking, ‘I don’t want to die in here.’”

In her petition, Saenz asked not only for her release but also for an injunction preventing ICE from re-detaining her without complying with due process requirements.

Saenz’s partner told LOOKOUT after learning of her impending release: “Tomorrow my life is being freed.”

For Saenz, the ruling closes a chapter that began with a check-in and turned into more than a month of what she and her advocates described as deliberately punitive, torturous confinement. She vowed to keep fighting — for herself and for others like her locked inside the detention system.

“I’m speaking for them,” she said. “I’m fighting for them.”

LOOKOUT has reached out to ICE for comment on the court ruling.