The Biden administration is launching a transgender surgery program for federal inmates in Fort Worth.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) is pursuing a contract for “gender reassignment” surgeries at two Federal Medical Centers (FMC) in Fort Worth, according to public documents reviewed by The Dallas Express.
FMC Carswell treats women while FMC Fort Worth treats men.
Randilee Giamusso, a spokeswoman for FBOP, told DX that the DFW area was selected for transgender inmates because it has medical facilities for both sexes.
“The Federal Bureau of Prisons is pursuing a contract for gender-affirming surgery in Texas, as the Dallas-Fort Worth area is home to both male and female Federal Medical Centers,” she told DX. “This will allow us to provide specialized and comprehensive care at a facility already equipped to care for individuals with complex medical considerations.”
Giamusso did not respond to questions regarding whether FBOP plans to conduct all gender reassignment surgeries for inmates at the two Fort Worth facilities.
The pending Fort Worth transgender inmate program follows years of planning by the Biden administration that eventually led to federally-funded gender reassignment surgeries.
FBOP issued a $1.5 million contract in July 2021 with The Change Companies to develop a transgender program for federal inmates, according to Fox News.
The Biden administration announced in January 2022 that it reinstated the Transgender Offender Manual at the FBOP, according to the 19th News Network. The policy allows federal officials to grant transgender inmates access to the jail of their preferred sex. The manual was initially launched under the Obama administration but ended under the Trump administration.
Giamusso said that FBOP does not approve all requests from transgender inmates, which are reviewed on an individual basis.
“Individuals in our custody receive medically necessary and clinically appropriate care, including gender-affirming treatment, based on their individual needs,” she told DX. “As with all individuals in our custody, transgender individuals are housed in institutions according to their medical and custody requirements.”
The federal government provided the first gender reassignment surgery for an inmate in December 2022, the 19th reported. The surgery was reportedly performed on Donna Langan, a transgender woman. Langan was imprisoned for robbing a bank when he was living as a neo-Nazi man, according to Fox News.
An FBOP contract reviewed by DX backs the report of the first federally funded gender reassignment surgery. In December 2022, the agency issued an $84,078 contract at FMC Carswell with Dr. Dany Hanna, a TikTok-famous Dallas surgeon who specializes in gender reassignment surgeries.
Hanna markets available procedures for self-identified nonbinary patients, which includes a “nullification surgery” that removes the appearance of any genitalia. His office did not respond to a request for comment.
The second federally-funded gender reassignment surgery on an inmate was conducted in March 2023, according to the American Civil Liberty Union (ALCU) Illinois. The transgender woman inmate, Cristina Nichole Iglesias, sued the federal government to get the procedure and was represented by the ACLU.
Iglesias is serving a 20-year sentence for threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction against the British government, according to The Dallas Morning News. She served time at a federal prison in Forth Worth.
The federal government appeared to have accelerated the contract for this surgery without a competitive application process. Public records reviewed by DX show that FBOP certified a Justification for Other than Full and Open Competition (JOFOC) in March 2023 for a contract that provided vaginoplasty and breast augmentation for an inmate.
The JOFOC document revealed the surgery costs, estimated at $200,000. It redacted the name of the inmate patient. Wellpath LLC, a healthcare company that coordinated the gender reassignment surgery at Rush Hospital in Chicago, was awarded the contract.
Wellpath LLC and Rush Hospital did not respond to questions about whether the contract is part of an ongoing partnership with the federal government for gender reassignment surgeries.