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ICE is sexually abusing detainees and getting away with it

ANALYSIS | Of over 1,200 accusations, only a handful were investigated

Analysis by
April 12, 2018 at 5:29 p.m. EDT

The agents in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division, commonly known as ICE, have been in the news a lot lately.

None of it is good.

From Pennsylvania, where police officers are turning traffic stops into ICE raids, to California, where a married couple died trying to escape ICE agents, it’s one headline after another.

Now, a new report unveils the staggering number of cases of sexual abuse under the agency’s jurisdiction, the majority of which have gone uninvestigated.

Undocumented mothers are increasingly being arrested. These women are fighting back.

The Intercept reported this week there were 1,224 incidents of sexual abuse against detainees in ICE custody from 2010 to Sept. 2017. Only a paltry 43 cases were ever investigated. The report suggests the number of complaints have been vastly underreported from the population of 40,000 detainees – including children.

One man said an ICE agent forced him to perform oral sex and threatened to deport him to a country different than the one he left.

One woman said she claimed about a guard who threatened to rape her, but nothing happened and he remained in his position.

The formal complaints varied from sexual harassment to brutal gang rape. The risk for retribution is astronomical, as detainees must often report the incident to the friends and co-workers of the accused ICE agent. The assaults happened in several states across the country, pointing to a larger-scale systemic abuse of power.

These stories and statistics are supposed to be public knowledge, but ICE has never formally published its findings, instead filing a request to purge certain detention records, like those relating to sexual assault.

“Sexual abuse in immigration detention is a crisis, but it’s a completely preventable one,” said Jesse Lerner-Kinglake from Just Detention International, an advocacy group looking to end sexual violence against detainees. “Any sexual assault in confinement represents a failure on the part of officials running the facility.”

In response to The Intercept’s reporting, ICE says that the agency “works extensively to ensure that all detainees are aware of how to make an allegation of sexual abuse or assault, that allegations are treated seriously, that detainees are protected and provided all required services, and that thorough investigations are completed.”