Sexual assault and Trump’s war on immigrants

Rape is a tool of war. This includes Donald Trump’s war on Black and brown immigrants.

A few weeks ago I wrote a piece about the misogyny baked into the killing of Renee Good and JD Vance’s vociferous defense of her murderer. Now to focus on another aspect of the deep role violence against women plays in the entirety of Trump’s war on immigrants and the people who support them: sexual assault in the context of ICE attacks and their detainment of immigrants.

If it is hard for you to read about sexual assault, this piece may not be for you. But if you can join me on this journey, I hope you will. I fear this issue has not gotten nearly enough attention. My constant refrain is that violence thrives in silence, and ICE sure wants to maintain silence about its serial abuse of the women they are hunting and kidnapping. I have no intention of staying silent.

First, some context. In my years as a rape crisis counselor, I worked with multiple women — and at least one man — who had been sexually assaulted while incarcerated. If you are not familiar with this dynamic, rape is painfully common in carceral settings. According to a recent Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) report, in 2020 U.S. correctional institutions reported 36,264 allegations of sexual victimization. Of the substantiated cases, 73% were perpetrated by other incarcerated people and 27% were perpetrated by staff members. Prison rape is so common that in 2003, the U.S. government passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) in an effort to prevent and respond to sexual assault in all U.S. detention facilities. A law that the Trump administration — not surprisingly — is trying to weaken, particularly as it pertains to trans and intersex people. That is an act of violence unto itself, and yet another example of how this administration goes out of its way to cause harm. But the fact that we need PREA at all speaks to how rampant sexual violence is for incarcerated and detained people. And it serves as a backdrop for a necessary conversation about the additional levels of violence that are an inevitable part of Trump’s systemized terrorizing of brown and Black immigrants.

Again, rape is a tool of war, and we are certainly seeing it in all aspects of Trump’s war against immigrant communities.

Right from the beginning of Trump’s ongoing war against immigrants of color, reports of men impersonating federal agents and assaulting women came in from communities around the country. These incidences became frequent enough that last August, the Democratic Women’s Caucus (DWC) sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to sound the alarm. In a piece published in Teen Vogue on the prevalence of men leveraging the chaotic violence of ICE to sexually abuse women, Kylie Cheung importantly noted: “…we can’t bury the deeper, driving forces behind why this is happening. This phenomenon is only possible because of the outsized power that state agents — ICE, police officers, prison staff — have always had to abuse and control women and victims' bodies.”

The Trump administration has given the state agents of ICE not just outsized power, but completely unchecked ability to abuse with abandon and completely without consequence. The FBI’s announcement that they will not even bother to go through the motions of investigating the murder of Renee Good sends a message as chilling as a Minneapolis winter: they do not care to prevent violence, trauma, or death at the hands of federal agents. (As a side note, Radley Balko wrote an excellent piece about the implications of ICE being given full license to harm first and ask questions later.) As a trained rape counselor, I shudder to think of what this unchecked power means for the women (and people of all gender identities) who are being kidnapped and held hostage by an federal agency that is built on a foundation of vicious violence.

Sadly, I don’t have to think very hard.

Multiple reports detail prolonged and systemic sexual abuse in ICE detention facilities. A few months ago, current and former detainees filed multiple complaints of sexual and physical abuse at a facility in Louisiana. Sarah Decker, a staff attorney with RFK Human Rights, noted: “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.”

Another report from a California detention center outlines multiple allegations of sexual abuse against the same staff member: “The complaints also allege other facility staff knew about and facilitated abuse, perpetuating a culture of impunity”. Report after report note a complete lack of meaningful investigation of such allegations. In fact, the Trump administration is taking steps that will likely make the problem even worse. A federal women’s prison that was shut down in 2024 due to rampant sexual abuse may now be reopening as an immigration detention facility. So many women were assaulted at California’s FCI Dublin the facility was dubbed “the rape club”. Hundreds of women reported sexual violence and ten prison staff, including the warden and the chaplain, were subsequently charged with assault. Immigration status and risk of violence were very closely associated. From an article about FCI Dublin: “Guards allegedly looked at women’s files to find out if they were undocumented, promised to help with citizenship if they did sexual favors, or threatened to alert U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement if they reported the abuse”. To make matters even worse, several of the women who disclosed sexual abuse and then worked with federal investigators to build cases against their abusers were deported as soon as they got out of prison.

Just three months after the facility was shut down, ICE officials were right back at FCI Dublin touring the property. If this facility were to reopen specifically as an ICE detainment center, it would be an affront to those survivors. Without systemic and widespread change — changes that are impossible to imagine with this administration — FCI Dublin is quite likely to become yet again a breeding ground for more sexual violence. It’s horrifying to consider it. Recent news of DHS’ plans to purchase and operate huge warehouses as detention centers only adds to the horror. Besides the inherent violence of literally warehousing human beings, such conditions are breeding grounds for more abuse and violence. There is no way this can be done with any safety — or any humanity.

It is also important to note that sexual abuse in the context of mass detention and deportation is not limited to the United States. The Venezuelans abducted and brought to the notorious CECOT mega prison in El Salvador recount horrific violence, including sexual assault. According to a report from Human Rights Watch: “Three people held in CECOT told Human Rights Watch and Cristosal that they were subjected to sexual violence… People held in CECOT said sexual abuse affected more people, but victims were unlikely to speak about what they had suffered due to stigma.”

Victims were unlikely to speak. Yes, that is absolutely true. Rape is one of the most underreported crimes, with an estimated 80% of sexual assaults never being reported at all. And that doesn’t take into account that people kidnapped by ICE likely have even less of an opportunity to report because ICE is a federal agency with absolutely no accountability whatsoever. None. Given the Trump administration’s overall hostility towards survivors, defunding of sexual assault programs, and penchant for filling their ranks (from the Oval Office down) with perpetrators, I cannot even begin to imagine them putting mechanisms in place for detained immigrants to report the crimes committed against them.

After all, this is an administration that refused to even investigate the federal agent who shot a woman in the face. That continues to retraumatize the victims of Jeffrey Epstein by blocking accountability for the perpetrators and exposing sensitive information about the survivors. That is led by someone held liable for sexual assault and whose name appears by the thousands in the Epstein files. Safety and justice for victims of sexual assault? I so desperately want that and so despair of it ever happening.

Rape is a tool of war, and it is also a mechanism for establishing power and control — one that thrives in power imbalances. I will never forget a woman I worked with whose rapist was her landlord. As we processed what happened to her she shared that the sexual assaults started after her refrigerator broke, leaving her without a safe way to store food for herself and her young daughter. Her landlord forced her to have sex in return for getting her refrigerator fixed. I’ve thought about this ever since: a woman with few financial resources; a child to feed; and no other options for housing. Made vulnerable to a man with outsized power over her and no regard for her safety. Now think about the women subject to the whims of federal agents with outsized power, no concern for the humanity of those they have abducted, and absolutely no accountability.

On January 20th of this year, former ICE employee David Courvelle pled guilty to sexually abusing a detained Nicaraguan woman on multiple occasions over the span of a number of months. He gave the woman food and pictures of her daughter in “exchange” for sex. One article I read about this case described what happened as a sexual relationship. It wasn’t a relationship, it was abuse. Sexual assault enabled by a completely lopsided power dynamic. It is heartbreaking to hear of this story, and also heartbreaking to think of how many other stories we will never get to hear. Because again — what power do these women have to report the crimes against them?

We are processing so much news about ICE: the abductions; the shootings; the scenes of war playing out in the streets of Minneapolis and other cities. We should be equally full throated in our condemnation of the sexual assault that is also woven into the systemic violence of this administration. An administration that hollers about the tragic rape and murder of Laken Riley (a young white woman) while enabling its agents to rape and murder others. A president that calls Mexicans rapists while creating systems that facilitate widespread sexual assault of Mexicans and other immigrants.

There are a whole host of reasons why we should be calling for ICE to be shut down. Ended. Done. One of those reasons? Shutting down ICE is sexual assault prevention.