Two illustrative cases show how sexual violence in ICE custody emerges from structural vulnerabilities: a pattern of assaults at the T. Don Hutto facility in Texas, and the assault and retaliation against detainee Rosanna Santos at York County Jail in Pennsylvania.[1][2][3][4]

Case 1: T. Don Hutto facility assaults (Texas)

At the T. Don Hutto immigration detention facility in Taylor, Texas, a Corrections Corporation of America (CCA, now CoreCivic) employee, Donald Charles Dunn, was charged in 2010 with sexually abusing multiple female immigration detainees during transport—groping their breasts and genitals under the guise of “frisks” after they had been released on bond and while they were in his custody en route to the airport. ACLU’s FOIA work and litigation showed that ICE’s intergovernmental services agreement and internal transport policy required that female detainees not be isolated with male staff, yet Dunn was able to repeatedly isolate women, suggesting both contractor negligence and ICE’s failure to enforce contractual safeguards.[2]

The ACLU later obtained government documents revealing nearly 200 allegations of sexual abuse of immigration detainees nationwide since 2007, using the Hutto assaults to argue that abuse was “widespread” rather than an aberration. Qualitatively, this case highlights how:[3]

• The transfer/transport context—detainees in vehicles, away from cameras and witnesses—creates predictable opportunities for abuse when staffing and escort rules are ignored.
• Contracting out detention allows ICE to distance itself from day‑to‑day operations, even though ICE’s own agreements and policies set conditions that, if enforced, would limit abuse.[2][3]
• Survivors were asylum seekers fleeing prior sexual violence, which deepened the harm and underscored the contradiction between U.S. protection narratives and carceral practice.[3]

This predates DHS’s 2014 PREA regulations and ICE’s later PREA policies, but the dynamics it exposes—blind‑spots in private facilities, weak enforcement of ICE standards, vulnerable women in custodial transport—are precisely the risks the later regulatory framework claims to address.[5][6][7]

Case 2: Rosanna Santos at York County Jail (Pennsylvania)

Freedom for Immigrants documented the case of Rosanna Santos, held in immigration detention at York County Jail in Pennsylvania under contract with ICE. A corrections officer sexually harassed her, telling her that if she did not do whatever he ordered, he would sodomize her—an explicit threat of rape deployed to coerce compliance. After she filed a complaint, she was placed in solitary confinement for 11 days without clear explanation, which advocates interpreted as punitive retaliation rather than protection.[4]

This case arises in the post‑PREA era: DHS’s PREA standards were effective in 2014 and apply in principle to facilities like York under contract with ICE. Those standards require multiple confidential reporting avenues, prohibit staff from retaliating against reporters, and mandate that facilities protect—rather than punish—people who allege sexual abuse. Qualitatively, the Santos case shows:[6][7][8]

• The power asymmetry in civil detention, where an officer can weaponize the threat of sexual violence to control detainees who fear deportation, loss of asylum claims, or retaliation.
• How retaliatory solitary confinement undercuts PREA’s promise: even when formal reporting channels exist, the lived experience is that speaking up can lead to isolation and psychological harm, chilling future reports.[4]
• The structural gap between DHS/ICE regulations on paper and enforcement in contract jails, where local correctional culture and limited federal oversight shape actual practice.

Legal and policy context

By the time of Santos’s case, DHS had PREA‑based regulations at 6 CFR part 115, and ICE had integrated PREA concepts into its Performance‑Based National Detention Standards, including zero‑tolerance language, screening, staff training, and required PREA coordinators. Yet both the Hutto and York cases align with broader findings from Human Rights Watch and the ACLU that systemic failures—poor supervision, lack of independent oversight, contractor impunity, and retaliation—allow sexual violence to persist even as formal policies proliferate.[7][8][1][5][6][3]

Across these cases, a qualitative pattern emerges: sexual assault in ICE custody is not just the product of “bad apples,” but of a carceral design that concentrates power in poorly monitored spaces, relies heavily on private and local actors, and offers detainees little credible protection or recourse despite PREA‑inspired rules.[1][2][4]

Sources [1] Detained and at Risk: Sexual Abuse and Harassment in United ... https://www.hrw.org/report/2010/08/25/detained-and-risk/sexual-abuse-and-harassment-united-states-immigration-detention [2] Sexual Abuse Of Female Detainees At Hutto Highlights Ongoing ... https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/sexual-abuse-female-detainees-hutto-highlights-ongoing-failure-immigration-detention [3] Documents Obtained by ACLU Show Sexual Abuse of Immigration ... https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/documents-obtained-aclu-show-sexual-abuse-immigration-detainees-widespread-national [4] Sexual Assault — Freedom for Immigrants https://www.freedomforimmigrants.org/sexual-assault [5] Sexual Abuse in Immigration Detention | American Civil Liberties ... https://www.aclu.org/sexual-abuse-in-immigration-detention [6] [PDF] Federal Register - National PREA Resource Center https://www.prearesourcecenter.org/sites/default/files/content/2014-04675.pdf [7] 6 CFR Part 115 -- Sexual Abuse and Assault Prevention Standards https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-6/chapter-I/part-115 [8] [PDF] DHS PREA Standards - The GEO Group https://www.geogroup.com/media/t55dip4y/dhs-prea-standards.pdf [9] [PDF] Detained and at Risk - Human Rights Watch https://www.prearesourcecenter.org/sites/default/files/library/Detained_and_at_Risk_HRW.pdf [10] Trends in Sexual Assault Against Detainees in US Immigration ... - NIH https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10408271/ [11] [PDF] Case: 13-56706 09/29/2014 ID: 9256912 DktEntry - ACLU https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/rodriguez_social_science_amicus_filed.pdf [12] [PDF] Immigration - Georgetown Law https://www.law.georgetown.edu/immigration-law-journal/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2022/01/GT-GILJ210001.pdf [13] ICE Guards “Systematically” Sexually Assault Detainees in an El ... https://www.propublica.org/article/ice-guards-systematically-sexually-assault-detainees-in-an-el-paso-detention-center-lawyers-say [14] [PDF] Case: 19-1787 Document: 00117553344 Page: 1 Date Filed: 02/19 ... https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/area/clinic/00117553344_amicus_brief_social_science.pdf [15] Detained, then Violated - Just Detention International https://justdetention.org/detained-then-violated/ [16] [PDF] April 13, 2011 Officer Margo Schlanger Department of Homeland ... https://immigrantjustice.org/sites/default/files/OCRCL Global Complaint Letter April 2011 FINAL REDACTED_0.pdf [17] [PDF] USCCR written testimony.docx https://www.usccr.gov/files/pubs/OIG/Bob_Libal_Grassroots_Leadership_USCCR_writtentestimonyfinal.pdf [18] 'Immensely Invisible:' Women Fighting ICE's Inaction on Sexual ... https://futuroinvestigates.org/investigative-stories/immensely-invisible/immensely-invisible-women-fighting-ices-inaction-on-sexual-abuses/