Illegals Are Abused after Arrest in the U.S.

Illegals Are Abused After Arrest in the U.S.: Fifteen documented cases of sexual abuse against migrant women

Washington — In October, when the U.S. Secretary of National Security, Janet Napolitano, announced a radical change in the detention laws that would put a stop to the inhumane treatment undocumented immigrants suffer in the process of deportation, her office promised the start of a new era with better safety and accountability.

Almost a year later, the organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) announced it has recorded 50 cases of harassment or sexual abuse against female immigrants while they were being detained or about to be deported.

“This situation is of the utmost gravity, because the majority of the time the type of abuses that those agents commit happen when women are about to be deported from the country and don’t have the opportunity to make accusations,”* said José Miguel Vivanco, HRW director for the Americas.

“What’s sad in this case is that, many times, these women don’t know that they have rights and that those rights include the possibility of accusing those that have sexually abused them,”* Vivanco added. He lamented how difficult it is to follow up on these accusations, considering that the victims have been expelled from the country. “Out of a total of 50 cases that we have recorded in approximately the last year and a half, we have documented fifteen cases of abuse and harassment,”* said Vivanco. He regretted that these practices continue despite the promises from Barack Obama’s administration.

According to the report “Detained and at Risk: Sexual Abuse and Harassment in United States Immigrant Detention,” the incidents date back to the existence of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and have continued with the Office of Immigration and Customs Services (ICE).

As an example, consider the case in 2008 of five women detained in the processing center in Puerto Isabel, Texas. They were sexually harassed by the guard, Luis Loyo, who entered their cells and touched their private parts, arguing that these were medical orders. Loyo, an employee of a private contractor, was sentenced to three years in prison.

Just this past May, a new episode of sexual abuse was recorded when a guard at the T. Don Hutton Detention Center abused several women while they were being detained or while they were being transported to the airport to be deported.

HRW warns that these are not just isolated incidents, but that they have “emerged as a pattern across the rapidly expanding national immigration detention system.” (SEE HERE)

The organization demanded that the ICE applies the laws, the government creates new ones to avoid repetition of these types of cases and that those responsible pay for their crimes.

The illegal immigrant detention system has been recording record occupancy rates (an average of 31,000 people per day) since the start of a campaign of arrests and deportations ordered by the Obama administration, which has exceeded all his predecessors’ statistics. According to the report, in fiscal year 2009 alone, 382,000 people were arrested, a 64 percent increase from 2005. Of this total, 9 percent are women.

“We call on governments like that of Mexico to pay attention to these types of victims so that, once the victims are deported, their cases and their complaints will not go unpunished,”* Vivanco said. He emphasized that one of the largest problems in these types of cases is the lack of control, monitoring and scrutiny the government maintains on the contractors responsible for managing these detention centers and the transfers of women to ports of exit or airports upon deportation.

*Editor’s note: The above quotations, accurately translated, could not be verified.