Current and former detainees at a Louisiana ICE detention center have filed civil rights complaints through Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights and its partners, accusing prison officers and ICE employees of repeated sexual harassment, abuse, forced labor, and neglect of urgent medical care.

Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights staff attorney, Sarah Decker, said, “What’s particularly jarring about these cases is that these clients screamed for help. They filed grievances. They filed [Prison Rape Elimination Act] complaints. They called the [Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General] hotline. They spoke to ICE officers face-to-face and told them what was happening. So this was an open secret in the facility, and ICE definitely knew about this.” 

“The assertion that people in ICE custody are receiving high quality medical care is simply false, ” Decker added. “What we’ve found is the exact opposite, that the medical care at these facilities is so poor and so abusive that people are dying in government custody and are suffering from life threatening and potentially permanent medical consequences as a result of this mistreatment.”

Decker concluded, “These facilities are incapable of housing people humanely, and there’s no solution outside of shutting down these facilities and ending the use of immigration detention.”

Read more about the complaints here.