This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook.

First, President Donald Trump issued an executive order prohibiting the use of federal funds for gender-affirming care. Then, in response to a lawsuit from prisoners, a judge temporarily blocked the order. The result, say employees and incarcerated transgender people, has been chaos and uncertainty as policies are adopted and applied unevenly throughout the federal prison system.

At a federal women’s prison, all the transgender women were rounded up and placed into a special segregated unit shortly after Trump’s January 20 order. The warden told them they “would all be transferred to men’s facilities and that the paperwork for those transfers was already being processed,” one of the women said in a court filing, which did not name the prison. A few days later, they were moved back into the prison’s general population, with no explanation.

At another federal women’s prison in Texas, a transgender man was due for a testosterone injection, but his nurse wasn’t sure what to do. The facility’s warden “was saying the policies might be this, or might be that, but we haven’t gotten anything in writing yet,” said the nurse, who spoke on the condition she not be named because she is not authorized to speak to the press. Finally, after consulting with the facility’s pharmacist, she gave the man his medication. “I’d rather ask forgiveness than permission,” she said. 

And at FCI Seagoville, a men’s prison in Texas, an unsigned memo went out last week saying that the dozens of transgender women housed there would have to turn in their women’s clothing and undergarments. They would also no longer be able to buy makeup or other women’s items from the commissary, or have access to group therapy. Within a week, that memo was rescinded. 

The Bureau of Prisons has not issued formal guidance to its employees about how to implement Trump’s order “defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government,” according to several current and former agency staffers who spoke to The Marshall Project on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the press. “Everyone is afraid to say or do anything,” said one former top bureau official. The executive team at the bureau wants guidance from the Justice Department, “because they are afraid of getting fired. DOJ is in turmoil.”

Transgender people in federal prison are “being told one thing from one staff person and a totally different thing from another,” said Shawn Meerkamper, an attorney at the Transgender Law Center, a nonprofit that does legal and advocacy work on behalf of the transgender community. Meerkamper described the situation as whiplash. 

Trump’s executive order instructed federal agencies to stop recognizing transgender people and prohibited the use of federal funds for prisoners’ gender-affirming care. It specifically instructed the attorney general and the secretary of Homeland Security to “ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons” or immigration detention centers. 

The memo distributed at the prison in Seagoville, Texas, said “The Federal Bureau of Prisons intends to comply with the Executive Order in all respects.” 

But the bureau’s leadership in Washington, D.C., had not authorized the policy outlined in the memo, according to a staffer at Seagoville, who spoke on the condition that they not be identified because they weren’t permitted to speak about the memo. “Somebody just kind of got the cart before the horse and decided, ‘Let’s do this,’” they said.

Similar directives went out to prisoners and staff at a federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, according to a person familiar with that institution, and to a prison in Sheridan, Oregon, according to a Facebook post written by a person who identified themself as a prison employee there.

“Any other male joints make the trans inmates turn in their laundry issued dresses, bras, and panties?” the staffer wrote on a private Facebook group for federal prison employees. “We had one go on suicide watch over it.” This employee did not respond to emails seeking additional information, but three days later posted again: “Well Everyone, they gave back the undergarments and dresses yesterday.”

The vast majority of the 1,500 transgender women incarcerated in federal prisons are housed in men’s prisons. Under both the Biden administration and the first Trump administration, they have had access to accommodations like women’s clothing and toiletry items and permission to only be patted down by staff of the same gender. 

One bureau employee who disagreed with Trump’s order said these accommodations were reasonable. “There’s no extremism involved in giving an inmate a bra,” said a bureau caseworker who is not authorized to speak to the press.

Just 16 trans women are currently housed in women’s prisons, according to documents the bureau filed in federal court as part of the recent lawsuit. Each of them was moved to a women’s prison only after undergoing a lengthy process overseen by a panel of experts at the Bureau of Prisons called the Transgender Executive Council. In the last few weeks, a message went out to transgender people that they could no longer communicate with the council, according to attorneys for transgender women in both women’s and men’s facilities. 

Since at least 2022, the council has met monthly “to offer advice and guidance on unique measures related to treatment and management needs of transgender inmates,” according to a policy document that has since been removed from the bureau’s website. Some transgender people and their advocates believe the council has been disbanded. The Bureau of Prisons did not respond to questions about the council or policies regarding care for transgender people in its custody.

Last week, the bureau’s acting director, William Lothrop, sent a message to the agency’s six regional directors regarding transgender prisoners and noted that the bureau’s health services division and reentry services division were working with the bureau’s lawyers “to finalize language regarding medical and mental health care.”

In addition to changes to health care and housing, transgender people have reported other smaller ways that Trump’s order has upended their lives in prisons. Many officers have stopped using people’s preferred names and pronouns, according to prisoners and staff. Some prisoners also report being taunted and disrespected by staff, who they believe have been emboldened by the president’s order. 

Jenni Stallcup, a transgender woman incarcerated at the penitentiary in Coleman, Florida, said, “I have already experienced the ugly ‘vibes.’ A staff member the other day even called out, as I was on the sidewalk, telling me to ‘Be ready…you have one more month and no more makeup.’”