By The Trans United Front
Ashley Karma Horan’s 39th birthday was her first birthday as a free adult woman. She has been in prison for 21 years. She celebrated it by volunteering, cooking a cake with her momma, and fetching medication for her sick dad.
Two weeks later, on September 24th, she was locked back up. Someone in Upper Darby had robbed an ATM and so the police rounded up a whole cast of lookalikes, including Ash. Because Ash has a criminal record, she was the one who got booked.
The Trans United Front, the trans organizing wing of Philly Socialists, is fighting and demanding to see Ash released. With our help she was already able to secure a cell to herself after a month of being housed with a male cellmate. But we have far more to do.
What They Call Justice
Almost everything about Ash’s booking was irregular. The detectives ignored her alibi, and switched stories between the affadavit and their testimony on the stand. When she finally got the opportunity to speak with her public defender, the constables kept the door open so the prosecution could hear everything that they discussed – a clear violation of her right to attorney-client privilege.
Ash is still being held in Delaware County George W. Hill Jail on a “parole detainer.” This is a hold on a parolee that can keep them locked up indefinitely, regardless of bail postings or trial results, until the detainer is lifted by a judge. Bail itself is set at $200,000, 10% up front; even just the $20,000 down payment is more money than Ash and her family are likely to see in a year, another example of the system punishing the poor.
For the first seven days in jail, she was held in a 4-foot-square cubicle with a locked door of the kind usually used for counselor interviews. She had to beg the guards to let her go to the bathroom or to get water, which was brought in a tiny cup usually used for medication. She was treated with the rote, demonic cruelty of people who believe they have nothing to fear because their victim is a nobody and anything is okay to do to her.
Life On The Inside
After the jail let her out of the cubicle, they housed her with a male cellmate, an abuse many trans women inmates are subjected to, and one that Ash had last endured ten years ago, during her prison sentence. For weeks, the jail told Ash they had no other space for her, and that they’d get her a single “as soon as there’s room.”
The Trans United Front became aware of Ashley’s situation on October 25th, after weeks of fruitless attempts to get in touch; she’d had no chance to alert us before her arrest. On October 26th, we began a phone zap campaign to demand the jail grant her a cell to herself. On the 27th, we won this demand.
This victory heartens us. A cell to her own means Ash can change and go to the bathroom in peace, and doesn’t have to worry about some predatory man moving in with her next week.
However, we have no reason to believe Ash will be treated humanely. We have no guarantee that the guards will end the bizarre torture ritual that they’ve made of her medication schedule—waking her up at 1 in the morning either to bring her pain pills, or to announce at the same hour that they forgot.
We have no reason to believe anything will be done about Sergeant Verlia May-Russell’s arbitrary rules that restrict the clothes inmates can wear, even in their own cells.
We have no faith that Ash’s guards will remember to unlock cell doors. They frequently forget, leaving inmates trapped in their cells, or else stranded outside, forced to use the showers as latrines.
Therefore, we will not be slowing down. Our campaign will live or die on the unity of trans people and our movements outside jails and prisons with our trans comrades and their movements in the belly of the beast; we ask you to join us, to keep Ash from disappearing into the “justice” system like so many before her. As Ash once told me, “an injustice is still unjust even when its done in the dark or behind prison walls.
Ash’s next court date is November 18th in Upper Darby. It is a formal arraignment, where she will simply be read the charges over Zoom. We ask you to stand by as we develop a plan to show up in solidarity.
Who Is Ashley Karma Horan?
For the short time that we’ve known Ash, we’ve known her to be a sweet, self-effacing, perceptive and funny woman. She spent her birthday transcribing letters from still-incarcerated trans prisoners with Hearts on a Wire despite never being taught how to type. Her whole life is oriented around running errands for her ailing parents, though Ash’s own fibromyalgia, degenerative disks, and a bad back from an injury in her 20’s, make any kind of travel an immense pain.
Ash is a gifted tattoo artist and fond of Dungeons & Dragons. When we talked politics, she became voracious. She has that energy, contempt for the enemy and attention to strategy that only comes with decades of vicious class struggle.
In prison, it took her five years of impounding the wardens to get an electric razor.
She still has that razor at home.
“I’ll keep it forever,” she said to us.
Now Ash has been dragged back to jail on bogus charges, and the jail has yet to provide her with an electric razor for her current stay. The money Ash gets from the jail commissary doesn’t buy nearly enough disposables for a daily close shave.
Yet again, Ash will have to fight tenaciously to win this basic demand. This time, Ash’s comrades on the outside will be joining her in that fight, and will stay by her side until she is free.
The System Is Working Exactly As Designed
Every trans woman has nightmares about going to prison. According to court documents released by the Bureau of Prisons in 2025, 99% of trans women in Pennsylvania are housed in men’s prisons, and the remaining 1% has also largely been shunted over after Trump’s executive order in 2025. These women have a high risk of facing sexual, emotional, and physical abuse from guards and other inmates.
The newsletter Hearts on a Wire, which Ash read and contributed to when she was in prison, and united with on the outside, has been collecting and circulating writing and art from trans prisoners in Pennsylvania since 2007. Way back in 2009, Hearts on a Wire released a survey—the first of its kind—of 59 trans Pennsylvanian prisoners, asking about their lives and conditions. Their survey found, among other things, that the average age at which a trans prisoner first makes contact with the carceral system is 17.5, and that the 59 prisoners surveyed had been locked up a whopping total of 658 times, or about 11 prison terms per prisoner.
Ash herself has seen two sentences: one at age 18, for nine years, and another, at age 27, that lasted twelve years. Now after scant months, she awaits trial and sentencing yet again.
The cruelty of the carceral “justice” system cannot be reformed. The point of the prison is never to bring justice or reform criminals. Ash’s case illustrates this perfectly: yet again, the “justice” system did nothing to prevent a crime from occurring, and then locked up our comrade who had nothing to do with it. In doing this, the “justice” system bulldozes the demands of the victims and communities it is purports to serve.
To the ruling class, the very cruelty and chicanery of the prison is its use case. Prisons and jails are a threat looming over the heads of workers, designed to torture anyone who steps out of line so the rest of us are too terrified to change anything. We need to organize ourselves to fight (not beg!) for the freedom of comrades like Ash, to free all prisoners, and ultimately to overthrow the capitalist system that cannot function without these prisons in the first place, to permanently rid ourselves of their threat.
Demands, Plans, And What You Can Do
We will be out in force at every court date. We are asking everybody to stay tuned, to join us on those dates if need be, and to tell the people everywhere about Ash and stoke the human outrage her case properly deserves. We demand that the prosecutor, Chris Downey, drop this bogus case; and we demand that the judge lift the parole detainer which could keep her incarcerated whether the criminal charges stick or not.
If you have legal resources or tips for us, you can get in touch with us at transunitedfront@proton.me.
If you have a mind to call the jail yourself, the phone number is 610-361-3200.
If you want to reach out to Ash, she says she would adore further communication with the outside. Her mailing address is Ms. Cornelius Horan #26004096, PO Box 247, Phoenix, MD 21131.
