Sexual Harassment and Abuse in Immigrant Detention Centers

In a country that chooses to see the question of illegal immigration as a criminal problem — one solved by building fences, posting armed guards, and arresting and jailing hundreds of thousands of people — the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency is the fastest-growing incarceration system. Its agents detained 383, 524 people in 2009, and on any given day its facilities hold 31,000 people in detention. These people are held not only in ICE processing facilities, but also at contract detention centers run by private companies, state and county jails, and facilities managed by the federal Bureau of Prisons. Nine percent of the detainees are women.

A recent incident of sexual assault, in which a guard at the T.Don Hutto Residential Center in Texas has been accused of sexually assaulting women while transporting them to an airport and bus station for their release, has briefly illuminated the serious issue of sexual assault and harassment in these detainment centers. Human Rights Watch laments the way in which the Hutto case is being treated as an isolated incident, showing through an extensive report that sexual abuse and harassment are much more systemic problems than the media depicts.

The Human Rights Watch report, published on August 25th of this year, details dozens of incidents in facilities around the country: women raped by guards, women raped and/or harassed by other prisoners after being moved to different facilities and placed in the same cells as criminal inmates, women subjected to humiliating treatment and searches (several women in different facilities were told to bend over and cough while guards inspected their anus and vagina — a procedure many found traumatic to discuss weeks later), and women sexually harassed and assaulted by guards who asked them to strip naked and give oral sex, and who performed vaginal exams on them, took pictures of them naked, or groped them in their cells or when transporting them elsewhere.

These are not isolated, random, exceptional incidents. They are commonplace when ICE lacks the ability and the will to enforce its new standards on sexual assault and abuse prevention. Sure, the standards sound great on paper, promising to investigate and report all cases of assault and harassment, to do background checks for assault on employees, to provide medical and forensic treatment to victims of abuse, and to inform victims of their rights and the visas and options available to them, since many (rightly) fear deportation and reprisals if they report abuse.

But many incidents of abuse occur in the facilities not directly controlled by the ICE, where rates of sexual violence are four to five times higher than in ICE detention centers. Immigrant detainees are often placed side-by-side with criminal inmates in these facilities. Detainees can be moved from facility to facility, increasing the potential for abuse and decreasing the possibility of it being reported or investigated. There is little to no oversight on the part of the ICE to ensure these facilities comply with its standards, and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the ICE, is not required by law to publish any data about sexual harassment, violence or assault.

No matter what your feeling on illegal immigration, the rape, harassment and abuse of detained immigrants is a hideous violation not only of their rights, but also of the values that we're supposedly "protecting" or "defending" in this country. There is no honor or freedom or justice in flagrantly humiliating and assaulting immigrant women, and the ICE needs to be doing all it can to ensure its standards are enforced and these incidents of abuse are prevented and harshly punished.

Photo credit: Sergeant Killjoy