A 27-year-old Honduran father has taken his own life while being held in a family detention centre by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Texas.

According to RAICES, a Texas nonprofit organisation providing legal services to immigrants, the man had been fighting for his family’s freedom from custody. He had been detained at the Karnes detention centre, which has been through a series of chaotic changes since the Trump administration ramped up its programme of family detentions.

The man had reportedly failed an initial asylum screening and then lost an appeal. In a Twitter thread announcing his death, RAICES says that some 700 people are currently detained at the centre, all of them facing serious mental and physical health risks – not least the advancing coronavirus epidemic.

“The mental healthProgressive transgender politicians are seeking office all over the nation, from New York to Virginia to Minnesota to California.

If 2014 was, at least according to Time magazine, the year of the transgender tipping point, perhaps 2017 is the year of the transgender political candidate. While trans Americans still face barriers to equality — from the Trump administration and elsewhere — and a horrendous level of violence, many are taking up the fight for progress in the political arena.

“Victory Fund is working to make 2017 the year of the trans candidate — and we have already endorsed more trans candidates this year than ever before,” says Aisha C. Moodie-Mills, president and CEO of the political group, which works to elect out LGBT people to office. “While trans equality is