The Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-wing organization that has found itself as the subject of a massive federal indictment, previously urged the Biden administration to release a transgender immigrant convicted of sexually assaulting a child, according to documents obtained by the Oversight Project.
In a 2021 email obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, a then-SPLC attorney asked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to “release” the detainee “as soon as possible” due to the transgender-identifying woman’s “hypertension and severe anxiety,” citing a COVID-era lawsuit that resulted in the release of some immigrants with certain comorbidities.
The SPLC attorney argued that the individual, a female who identifies as a male, “does not fall within the administration’s public safety enforcement priority” and must be released due to trauma she had experienced related to her transgender identity.
The immigrant, who held a Green Card, had previously served more than eight years behind bars for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl. At the time, the transgender-identifying woman was 19-years-old. They had a two-year online relationship before the woman drove to meet the minor victim in 2011.
At the time, the Filipino national learned that the girl had lied about her age and revealed that she was just 14 years old. Still, the transgender-identifying woman proceeded with the meet-up where “they engaged in sexual conduct,” the email stated.
In 2021, DHS got an e-mail from the Southern Poverty Law Center, Mich Gonzalez (pronouns el/he/they), requesting an early release for this biological woman who engaged in statutory rape of a minor girl. pic.twitter.com/iGj3er47vn
— Oversight Project (@ItsYourGov) August 7, 2025
“Although conviction on its face appears grave and justly concerning,” the SPLC attorney wrote to Homeland Security officials, adding that there was a need to present “additional context” that included the detainee’s feeling of isolation as a child “with respect to his gender identity.”
In a July 6, 2021, email, a Homeland Security official responded that “career officials determined” that the detainee “should be released” with a tracking device.
The SPLC, which has long advocated against so-called hate groups, was the subject of a federal indictment announced Tuesday that accused the group of secretly giving millions of dollars to white supremacist groups.
A grand jury indicted the SPLC on multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering over its informant practices, Justice Department officials announced late Tuesday.
The SPLC “secretly funneled more than $3 million in funds to white supremacist & extremist groups,” such as Aryan Nations, members of the Ku Klux Klan, and a member of the leadership group that planned the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, the indictment said.
“It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said Tuesday.
The SPLC has labeled its political opponents as racists and maintains a “hate map” that places the conservative parental rights group Moms for Liberty alongside the Ku Klux Klan.
