Karla Pavon

By the end of the year, 2017 had become the deadliest year on record for the transgender community, with at least 29 transgender people known to have died violent deaths. So far in 2018, at least 26 transgender people have been killed, including Dallas resident Karla Pavon, choked to death in her North Dallas apartment on May 9. Jimmy Eugene Johnson was arrested within days of her death and accused of her murder.

Just three days later, the body of 39-year-old trans woman Nicole Hall was found in White Rock Creek, although it took police several days to positively identify her. Her death is suspected to be a suicide. Then in August we learned that an Ellis County grand jury had no-billed Robert Wayne Mosher, who killed his transgender daughter, Gwen River Song, in 2017 in Waxahachie. Mosher claimed he was acting in self defense after River Song attacked him with a knife.

A month later, trans woman Nikki Enriquez was identified as one of three women murdered in Laredo by spree killer Juan David Ortiz, a Texas Border Patrol agent.

Although he did not identify as transgender, murder victim Traylon Brown, found dead in his car in far South Dallas in October, was known to occasionally dress in women’s clothing and from initial reports, may have been dressed that way when he was killed.

Other trans people killed this year are Christa Leigh Steele-Knudslien, Viccky Gutierrez, Celine Walker, Tonya Harvey, Zakaria Fry, Phylicia Mitchell, Amia Tyrae Berryman, Sasha Wall, Nino Fortson, Gigi Pierce, Roxana Hernandez, Antash’a English, Diamond Stephens, Cathalina Christina James, Keisha Wells, Sasha Garden, Vontashia Bell, Dejanay Stanton, Shantee Tucker, Londonn Moore, Ciara Minaj Carter Frazier, Regina Denise Brown, Tydi Dansbury and Keanna Mattel. They ranged in age from 18 to 45.

But the transgender community has been attacked in 2018 in more ways than one. Trans people, in fact, seem to be a favorite target of the Trump administration.

The year started with a bit of good news when Pentagon officials confirmed that the first openly-transgender person to enlist in the U.S. military had signed a contract of service. But the Trump administration — which had tried unsuccessfully in 2017 to rescind President Barack Obama’s orders to allow openly-trans people to enlist — retaliated quickly.

Trump issued new orders in late March that would essentially disqualify transgender people from serving openly. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected this new ban in mid-July, and in mid-August, a federal judge in Maryland ordered the Trump administration to turn over to plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the attempted ban information the administration had based its reasoning for banning trans people from military service.

The Trump administration tried again in late November, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to vacate a national injunction blocking the ban on trans people in the military and to rule immediately on all the cases challenging the ban, even though none of the cases have actually made it through the trial and appeals process yet.

As the year comes to a close, the Supreme Court has not responded to the administration’s request to fast-track the cases, but it seems unlikely that the administration is going to drop its efforts now to keep transgender people out of the military.

— Tammye Nash