A former female inmate forced to live with a man in prison commended the Trump administration this week for pulling funding from the Maine Department of Corrections for allowing a man convicted of killing his parents and the family dog to be housed in a women’s facility.
During a Fox & Friends interview this week, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the administration’s decision to pull what she described as “non-essential” funding from Maine’s Department of Corrections. While she didn’t provide an exact amount, the outlet reported that it could be over $1.5 million.
Bondi referred to Andrew Balcer, a man sentenced to 40 years in prison in December 2018 for the double murder of his parents, Alice and Antonio, on Oct. 31, 2016. He also stabbed the family dog to keep it from barking during the murder.
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Balcer, who also goes by the alias Andrea, identifies as female and is currently housed at the Maine Correction Center’s Women’s Center, according to the Maine DOC online inmate database.
“We will pull your funding, we will protect women in prison, we will protect women in sports, we will protect women throughout this country,” Bondi said.
Amie Ichikawa, a former Central California Women’s Facility inmate, praised the U.S. attorney general in a Tuesday statement from the Independent Women’s Forum. Ichikawa serves as an ambassador for the grassroots advocacy group, and the organization has highlighted multiple stories like hers through its docu-series, “Cruel & Unusual Punishment: The Male Takeover of Female Prisons.”
The IWF ambassador has repeatedly shared her story of how she was locked up with men after California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 132 in 2020, which permitted inmates who identify as the opposite sex to transfer to a prison aligned with their “gender identity.”
While Ichikawa applauded Bondi’s “fiery statement” regarding the safety of incarcerated women, the advocate warned that the issue of men in women’s prisons is “a nationwide female human rights crisis.”
“We can’t stop at Maine. This is happening coast to coast. Anywhere a woman is in a cage, I can guarantee this is happening on both state and federal levels,” Ichikawa stated. “This is a great start. Let’s keep going. Incarcerated women cannot continue to be fodder in the gender war.”
The Maine Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to The Christian Post’s request for comment.
The Maine DOC said in a Tuesday statement that it is “evaluating the impacts to services from these funding terminations.”
“While the Department is aware of related public statements by the United States Attorney General, the notice is the only communication that has been received by the department,” the Maine DOC said statement, according to NBC 10 Boston.
Jan Collins, assistant director of Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition, disapproved of the Trump administration’s decision. The MPAC is a statewide group that works to improve conditions in Maine’s prison systems on behalf of inmates and their families.
“If the federal government truly cares about women, all women, they would not withdraw funding for essential programs that lead to public safety in our communities,” Collins said in a Tuesday statement, reports NBC 10.
Beth Parlato, senior legal advisor at IWF, highlighted the safety concerns associated with allowing men like Balcer into women’s prisons. The advocate credited the Trump administration with “protecting the vulnerable, upholding the rule of law, and ensuring our prisons serve justice, not ideology.”
“Housing a male murderer in a female prison is not just a failure of common sense, but a direct violation for the safety of women,” Parlato said in a statement. “The Trump administration was right to pull non-essential funding, sending a clear message that we will not tolerate policies that put women at risk for the sake of politics.”
Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: samantha.kamman@christianpost.com. Follow her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman
