Ana Doe (a pseudonym) is a 33-year-old woman who survived human trafficking only to be sexually abused by guards at Florida’s Baker County Detention Facility. While detained at Baker, officials placed Ana in a claustrophobic solitary confinement cell. When her mental health deteriorated to the point where she began to harm herself, officers stripped her naked and forced her into a tattered smock that left her breasts exposed. They then strapped her into a restraint chair and laughed at her with her breast fully visible. Officers continued to walk by and ogle her through the window of her cell for hours.

Unlike most immigration detention facilities, the Baker County Detention Facility is run directly by a local government: Florida’s Baker county. The facility has a long and well-documented history of sexual harassment and abuse of detained people. In 2024 the Department of Homeland Security confirmed consistent patterns of abuse by facility staff, including racial discrimination, retaliation, and harassment. In 2022, a complaint against Baker under the Prison Rape Elimination Act outlined a pattern of sexual abuse and voyeurism at the facility, documenting multiple cases of officers photographing women in their underwear and watching them shower and put on and remove their clothes. Medical neglect at Baker is also been documented in a national report investigating the preventable deaths of people in immigration detention.

Ana’s lawsuit follows a November 2024 whistleblower disclosure by a former medical practitioner at Baker, who corroborated systemic abuses at the facility, including denial of basic medical care, falsification of medical records, and racial and sexual harassment.

What is the legal argument in this case?

The cruel and degrading treatment that Baker County officials inflicted on Ana violated her human rights. Among those include her rights under the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments to bodily privacy, due process, and freedom from excessive force and deliberate indifference to her medical needs.

Ana is suing under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a federal law that provides a cause of action against state and local officials who violate federal constitutional rights.

What is the status of this case?

Currently pending in the district court of the Middle District of Florida.

August 7, 2025

July 16, 2025

November 14, 2024

November 14, 2024