President Donald Trump has made it a priority to keep men out of women’s sports, bathrooms, and other sex-specific spaces. But thanks to little-known Obama-era regulations, states could be required to house boys in all-girl youth prisons.
Currently, states are barred from imprisoning juvenile inmates on the basis of sex. That means a 17-year-old boy who claims to be “transgender” could be locked up alongside an 11-year-old girl. States that don’t comply with these mandates risk losing crucial federal funding, making even deep-red states comply with the guidance.
Advocates tell The Daily Wire that Trump’s executive orders protecting women’s spaces may not automatically negate these rules. Unless amended, the federal code will continue to force youth prisons to consider housing transgender-identifying males alongside girls, raising serious concerns about their safety.
Amie Ichikawa, a woman who spent nearly five years in a California prison and now advocates to keep males out of female prisons, told The Daily Wire it was “disturbing” that juvenile facilities are blocked from making housing decisions on the basis of sex. She believes it’s even more dangerous than mixing genders in adult prisons.
“Kids in juvenile are extremely vulnerable, and to add mixed sex housing into it, that’s creating a totally unnecessary hurdle to have to jump over,” she said. “It’s setting them up for failure, and it’s just robbing them of any kind of normalcy or ability to focus on healing.”
The regulations for juvenile facilities were first issued by then Attorney General Eric Holder in May 2012 and became law that August. The Obama administration touted the rules as a way to end rape and sexual assault in prisons. But in practice, these regulations could allow for girls, sometimes as young as 12, to be housed alongside physically and legally adult males.