Federal immigration officers raped women in hotel rooms and in a detention centre closet, shot two unarmed women in their cars and shackled pregnant women to hospital beds as they miscarried between 2022 and 2026, according to court records, federal prosecutors and congressional investigators. The Department of Homeland Security charged a woman and two men who had been shot with assaulting the agents who shot them, called a dead mother of three a domestic terrorist and called detainees' complaints of sexual abuse a hoax. It cut the office that investigates detainee complaints from 147 staff to fewer than 40, and that office investigated 183 of about 6,000 complaints in 2025. ICE hired about 12,000 officers in under a year, some before their background checks were complete.

Luis Uribe, a CBP officer assigned to O'Hare International Airport, went to hotel rooms in Schaumburg and Naperville, Illinois, on at least six occasions between February and October 2022, showed his badge and his service weapon to Chinese women inside and robbed them, according to federal prosecutors. The indictment charges that he forced two of the women into oral and vaginal sex, tried to rape two others and took money from all four. It charges that he brandished a firearm in the rape of one woman on 2 October 2022 and used or threatened a dangerous weapon against two others. "The defendant had a responsibility to serve and protect. Instead, he robbed and he raped," Assistant US Attorney Jonathan Shih told the jury in his opening statement on 10 September 2026.

A 67-year-old woman from New York said in court that she heard a knock at her door at a Schaumburg Days Inn in October 2022, opened it to what she thought was hotel staff and a man rushed in. "Immediately he closed the door and he showed a badge," she said. He demanded the US$3,000 she had, then forced her into sex acts. "I was terrified. He had a gun," she said. She tried to tell the front desk but did not speak enough English, and she told another Chinese guest at the hotel instead. All four women gave evidence through Chinese interpreters. Prosecutors and the defence described them as sex workers.

Women who worked in the same hotels had tried to stop Uribe themselves by March 2022. A woman who had previously been paid by him for sex met him at a seafood buffet in Hoffman Estates, photographed him and passed the picture to other women as a warning. She said in court that her boss in China had sent her to the lunch to tell him "not to harm our girls" and to offer him free sex once a week. Prosecutors said he went on attacking women after the lunch. The defence said the women had offered him US$7,000 and sex to help bring their boss and other women from China into the United States.

Michael Clancy, Uribe's lawyer, told the jury: "They are hustlers. They are prostitutes. They are liars." He said Uribe had been set up by a prostitution ring run from China and was "not a good person" but no rapist. Uribe said in court that every encounter was consensual and that he was never armed when he met the women. "I never hit any women in my life," he said. He said some of the meetings took place while he was on paid leave. Uribe had described one of the encounters at the Days Inn as "a good workout". "You're describing the rape as a good workout?" Shih said. "You were hiding your true self from your family just like you're hiding yourself from this jury," Shih said later. A prosecutor told the jury: "He wasn't a cop, he was a rapist with a gun. He was a rapist in a police uniform."

One woman reported a rape to Schaumburg police in October 2022, and police circulated Uribe's photograph during the investigation. CBP took his weapon and moved him to desk duty soon after that report, prosecutors said at trial. DNA collected after the 2022 attack was a "strong match" to Uribe, prosecutors told a detention hearing in December 2025, and FBI tollway records placed him near the Schaumburg hotel on the night of the last attack. A federal grand jury indicted him on 4 December 2025, more than three years after the police report, and agents arrested him at his CBP desk on 9 December. Investigators told the court the time taken reflected standard investigative procedure. Magistrate Judge Keri Holleb Hotaling ordered him held without bail as a danger to the community.

The jury convicted Uribe, 45, of Pingree Grove, on 17 September 2026 of 10 counts of deprivation of rights under colour of law and one count of brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence. The FBI and the DHS Office of Inspector General ran the investigation. Judge Jorge Alonso set sentencing for 21 January 2027; the firearm count carries a mandatory minimum of seven years and the civil rights counts a maximum of life. CBP said its employees "must be held to the highest standards of integrity, professionalism, and personal conduct."

Shootings in Minneapolis and Chicago

Renee Nicole Macklin Good, 37, a US citizen and mother of three, dropped her six-year-old at school in Minneapolis on the morning of 7 January 2026 and was driving with her wife, Becca Good, and their dog when they came on federal agents making an immigration arrest in their neighbourhood. They stopped to watch, the family's lawyers said. Good stopped her SUV in the street. Becca Good got out shortly before the shooting. "I'm not mad at you. Show your face," Renee Good told ICE officer Jonathan Ross, according to video of the scene. Officers ordered her out of the car. She reversed, turned the wheel away from the officers and said "I'm pulling out". Ross fired as the car moved forward.

Ross shot Good three times, in the left forearm, the right breast and the left side of the head, with a fourth bullet grazing her, according to an autopsy commissioned by the family's lawyers, Romanucci & Blandin. Video shows Ross walking with his phone in his hand against DHS policy and firing at least two shots from the side of the vehicle. Good waited nearly 10 minutes for CPR. Agents left her unattended for about three minutes and turned away a doctor who tried to help. Ross, an Iraq war veteran, had worked for Border Patrol and ICE for almost two decades and as a deportation officer since 2015. A driver dragged him with a car in Bloomington, Minnesota, in June 2025 during an arrest, leaving a gash in his forearm that needed 20 stitches.

Kristi Noem, then the homeland security secretary, called the shooting an "act of domestic terrorism" and said Good had tried to run officers over. DHS said she "weaponized her vehicle" and that the officer "fired defensive shots". Jacob Frey, the mayor of Minneapolis, said Ross "was not ran over". The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension withdrew from the investigation after federal authorities refused it access, its superintendent, Drew Evans, said. Noem said the state had no jurisdiction. Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, said there was "no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation". "We don't just go out and investigate every time an officer is forced to defend himself," he said.

Joe Thompson, the acting US attorney in Minnesota, and five other federal prosecutors, including Melinda Williams, Harry Jacobs and Thomas Calhoun-Lopez, resigned on 13 January 2026 after Justice Department officials pressed them to investigate Becca Good. "These prosecutors are heroes, and the people pushing to prosecute Renee's widow are monsters," Frey said. The Justice Department opened investigations into Governor Tim Walz and Frey over claims that they had encouraged interference with ICE; both said the investigations were political. A federal judge ordered evidence in the Good case disclosed in April 2026, and it was shared in July.

Becca Good filed two lawsuits in federal court on 1 October 2026. The first names the United States, acting through DHS, ICE and CBP. The second names Ross, Noem, Stephen Miller, Corey Lewandowski, Tom Homan, Todd Lyons, Gregory Bovino and unnamed agents, and says Operation Metro Surge was a conspiracy to target Somali and Hispanic residents. Both say Ross broke DHS rules against shooting at moving vehicles and stepping into a vehicle's path. "What happened to us should never happen to any family. No child should grow up without a parent," Becca Good said. "Every morning [Renee] is my first thought. I think about how the kids are growing up without their mama."

Marimar Martinez, 30, a Montessori teacher and US citizen, was delivering donated clothes to a church in Brighton Park, Chicago, on 4 October 2025 during Operation Midway Blitz. She followed Border Patrol vehicles, honking and shouting "la migra" to warn neighbours. Body camera footage from another agent recorded the words "It's time to get aggressive" before agent Charles Exum turned his vehicle sharply left into her car. Exum then shot her five times. His own body camera was switched off. She drove to a car repair shop, where paramedics found her with gunshot wounds to her right arm and both legs. DHS said she had tried to ram agents and called her a domestic terrorist.

Federal prosecutors charged Martinez on 5 October 2025 with assaulting federal officers, saying she had "forcibly assaulted, resisted, opposed, impeded, intimidated, and interfered with" an officer. Exum drove his vehicle about 1,100 miles to his base in Maine before the defence could inspect it, and a mechanic there buffed the scuff marks off it with a rag. The judge ordered the vehicle returned. Prosecutors moved to drop the case on 20 November 2025, and the judge dismissed it with prejudice. Martinez said in court that she felt "bullets pierce my body" as "a burning sensation".

Exum sent colleagues a news link about the shooting with the message: "I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys." He wrote that he was "up for another round of fuck around and find out" and named support from Michael Banks, the Border Patrol chief, and Noem. Bovino, the Border Patrol commander who led the Chicago operation, emailed him hours after the shooting: "I'd like to extend an offer for you to extend your retirement beyond age 57." Government lawyers fought to keep the texts and body camera footage sealed, writing that the texts "will serve only to further sully Agent Exum, his family and co-workers". A federal judge ordered the evidence released in February 2026, saying it would "counter the government's public narrative". DHS placed Exum on administrative leave on 12 February 2026.

The Illinois Accountability Commission found in 2026 that Exum had no justification for the shooting. Martinez filed a police report in August 2026, and a Chicago police detective was assigned to the case. She sued the United States on 5 October 2026 for negligence, battery, assault, false arrest, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution and infliction of emotional distress. "I want to spread awareness because what's happening is not normal," she said. "In what world could you justify that?" her lawyer, Chris Parente, said.

Christian Castro, 52, an ICE officer, fired through the closed door of a Minneapolis home on 14 January 2026 and shot Julio Sosa-Celis, a Venezuelan immigrant, in the leg after a car chase involving his roommate, Alfredo Aljorna. The encounter lasted about 12 seconds on video. Federal agents said the two men had attacked them with a shovel and a broom, and federal prosecutors charged both with assaulting a federal officer on 16 January. Prosecutors dropped the charges in February after surveillance video contradicted Castro's account. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty charged Castro on 18 May 2026 with four counts of second-degree assault and one of falsely reporting a crime. "His federal badge does not make him immune from state charges for his criminal conduct in Minnesota," she said. ICE called the prosecution "unlawful and nothing more than a political stunt".

Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, refused to sign an extradition warrant after Castro was arrested there, a federal judge declined to order it, and Castro left a Texas jail on 27 August. Federal prosecutors in Minneapolis declined to bring civil rights charges. "Mr. Sosa-Celis put his trust in federal prosecutors who promised him that they would finally pursue justice by indicting Mr. Castro," his lawyer, Robin Wolpert, said. A federal grand jury indicted Castro on 4 September for six false statements to an FBI agent. State agents arrested him in downtown Minneapolis at about 2.15 pm on 16 September, and a judge set bail at US$200,000 two days later and barred him from contacting other ICE agents. "When you are a fugitive from justice, who has continually refused to come up here to Minnesota, you do not get to dictate how you are taken into custody," Moriarty said.

ICE agents chased a woman down a Minneapolis street on 15 December 2025, forced her face down and dragged her along the pavement. "They chased her down and then they threw her down at the end of the block," a witness said. Bystanders said she was pregnant. DHS said the crowd "later claimed" she was pregnant and that she had rushed an ICE vehicle and tried to vandalise it.

Sexual assault and rape in detention

David Courvelle, 56, a GEO Group detention officer at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, a jail that holds almost only women, had sexual contact with a detained Nicaraguan woman between May and July 2025, including in a janitorial closet, according to federal prosecutors. He gave her food, jewellery, letters and family photographs, including photographs of her daughter, and had other detainees keep watch. Staff saw the two leave the closet on 16 July 2025 and moved him to another unit. He denied the relationship to DHS inspector general agents in September before admitting it. The woman told investigators she felt pressured into sex acts. He pleaded guilty on 29 December 2025 to sexual abuse of a ward, and a federal judge sentenced him on 26 June 2026 to three years in prison. "Those entrusted with authority over detained persons must be held to the highest standards," Zachary Keller, the US attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, said.

Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the ACLU of Louisiana and the National Immigration Project filed complaints on 16 September 2025 accusing Manuel Reyes, a former assistant warden at Basile, of sexually harassing and abusing detainees and accusing GEO of punishing complainants with solitary confinement. Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokeswoman, called the allegations a "hoax". "All of these allegations are investigated by (the) ICE Office of Professional Responsibility, and none were found to be true," she said. Staff at the same jail had caught Courvelle leaving a janitorial closet with a detained woman two months earlier.

Five women held at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, which CoreCivic runs for ICE, accused a male nurse of sexually assaulting them during medical visits between December 2021 and January 2022. "He pressed my hand against his penis," one woman said. "He would make lewd faces while doing that. I froze and stared into the void," another said. Four of them filed a complaint with DHS in July 2022. One woman, called Laura in the complaint, said staff told her she could face seven years in prison if she was lying. The nurse, who had worked at Stewart since at least 2018, kept access to women detainees until at least mid-July 2022, according to medical records reviewed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and was put on administrative leave in August 2022. ICE and CoreCivic found two complaints "unsubstantiated" and one "unfounded". The Georgia Bureau of Investigation sent its file to the district attorney in 2023. "All CoreCivic has done is hide and lie," a woman called Mari said. "I felt so immensely invisible."

ICE detainees filed 308 sexual abuse complaints between 2015 and 2021, more than half of them against staff, and about 40 per cent led to any recorded action, according to ICE records released under the Freedom of Information Act. DHS recorded at least 33,000 complaints of physical and sexual abuse, mostly at ICE and CBP facilities, between 2010 and 2016, and fewer than 1 per cent were investigated, according to federal data released to Freedom for Immigrants in 2018.

Nearly 40 women at Delaney Hall, a GEO Group jail in Newark, New Jersey, joined a hunger and labour strike on 11 June 2026 that more than 300 detainees had begun on 22 May. They demanded the release of women under 21, mothers and the sick, clean drinking water, qualified medical staff and the removal of a female guard they said had sexually assaulted about 10 women and who remained at work after 10 complaints. "We are mothers, daughters, sisters. We are women that are being unjustly imprisoned. We are here to demand justice," the women said in a video. More than 50 women signed a letter on 22 May describing conditions. ICE moved between 200 and 400 detainees out of Delaney Hall at night between late May and early June, and about 150 women were sent to Colorado, advocates said. GEO runs the jail under a contract worth about US$1 billion. New Jersey sued GEO on 2 June 2026 for turning away state health inspectors.

Andrew Golobic, an ICE deportation officer in Blue Ash, Ohio, from 2006 to 2020, used his power over women in the Alternatives to Detention programme, which monitors asylum seekers and other low-risk immigrants, to "solicit and coerce sex from vulnerable women under his supervision", the Justice Department said. He controlled their monitoring and reporting requirements. He deleted evidence from his phones and tampered with witnesses. A jury convicted him in January 2024 of obstructing a sex trafficking investigation, deprivation of rights under colour of law, witness tampering and destruction of records, and a federal judge sentenced him to 12 years on 10 March 2025.

Dr Mahendra Amin, a gynaecologist who treated women held at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, performed 93 per cent of the Depo-Provera contraceptive injections, 92 per cent of the limited pelvic examinations and 82 per cent of the dilation and curettage procedures given to all ICE detainees between 2017 and 2020, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found in November 2022 after interviewing more than 70 witnesses and reviewing more than 541,000 pages of records. It called the procedures "excessive, invasive, and often unnecessary". "We weren't aware of these complaints," Stewart D. Smith, an assistant director of the ICE Health Service Corps, told the subcommittee. ICE stopped sending detainees to Irwin in May 2021, after a nurse's whistleblower complaint in 2020.

Pregnant women in custody

A woman held by ICE in 2025 "bled for days before facility staff would take her to a hospital. Once she was there, she was reportedly left in a room, alone, to miscarry without water or medical assistance, for over 24 hours", Senator Jon Ossoff's office wrote in August 2025. Its report counted 510 credible accounts of abuse in immigration detention between 20 January and 30 July 2025, including 41 of physical and sexual abuse and 14 of mistreatment of pregnant women, who slept on the floors of overcrowded intake cells and were told to "just drink water". DHS said "every single allegation is false." Ossoff's January 2026 report counted 1,037 credible accounts for the first year, 26 of them involving pregnant women.

A woman the ACLU and RFK Human Rights call Lucia was about two months pregnant at Stewart when she began bleeding heavily at night, according to the groups' complaint of 22 October 2025. Staff left her alone in a small room for hours without food, water or pain medication, then shackled her wrists and ankles for the drive to hospital, where she miscarried in the emergency room and needed a blood transfusion. A woman called Alicia, detained at an ICE check-in in April 2025 and held at Basile, began bleeding in May; hospital staff performed an invasive uterine procedure without her consent, injected her with a drug she could not identify and told her she had miscarried. ICE held her two more months without answering her sick-call requests and deported her in July 2025, and she was treated abroad for a severe infection. A nurse at Basile told a woman called Marie, held for more than 20 weeks of her pregnancy, of her prenatal vitamins: "You won't die if you don't take them." She developed eclampsia after her release.

Iris Dayana Monterroso-Lemus, 38, from Guatemala, delivered a stillborn baby at about 23 weeks at a hospital in Shreveport, Louisiana, on 29 April 2025 while held at the Richwood Correctional Center, run by LaSalle Corrections. Her hospital records describe the pregnancy as "complicated by lack of PNC", or prenatal care. ICE cancelled her postpartum appointment and deported her to Guatemala in shackles on 9 May. "This reporting is absolutely FALSE. Iris Dayana Monterroso-Lemus had FULL medical, prenatal care," McLaughlin said in June 2025.

ICE recorded 18 miscarriages among women in its custody between January and 3 October 2025, according to agency records released under a Freedom of Information lawsuit, Guardian US v. ICE. The records have no miscarriage entries after 3 October 2025, when a Department of Veterans Affairs contract that processed bills for detainees' outside medical care ended. DHS confirmed it held no miscarriage data from October 2025 to June 2026. ICE held 87 pregnant women in October 2025 and 101 in November. Between January 2025 and 16 February 2026, 498 pregnant, postpartum or nursing women left ICE custody and 363 of them were deported, DHS told Senator Patty Murray. DHS said in September 2026: "This is FALSE. ICE tracks miscarriage data and reports the information on a monthly basis." ICE Directive 11032.4, signed in 2021, bars the detention of pregnant, postpartum and nursing women except where the law requires it or in exceptional circumstances; the Justice Department told a court in August 2025 that it had been revoked and told another court in February 2026 that it was in force.

Beatriz Pastrana Candela, 38, from Mexico, was about three months pregnant when ICE arrested her at a hotel in Tempe, Arizona, in November 2025 and shackled her at the hands, waist and feet for about five hours. A female agent told her "a lot of people say that so they won't arrest them". Staff at the Eloy Detention Center, run by CoreCivic, told her she was not pregnant. She miscarried days after arriving. ICE said claims that she was denied care were "categorically false". A woman called Anabell, 35, from Nicaragua, arrested at an ICE check-in on 25 February 2026 and held at the Campbell County Detention Center in Kentucky, began bleeding about a month later and was taken to hospital only after other women in her unit pressed guards. She was shackled to the hospital bed with three ICE officers in the room when doctors told her she had miscarried. "I told them I need to see a doctor," she said.

Lesli Vaca Díaz, 29, from Colombia, was seven months pregnant when Border Patrol agents caught her near Douglas, Arizona, on 2 July 2026. She said an agent struck her "in the back, near her kidneys and spine". She was flown by helicopter to Banner University Medical Center in Tucson, where an agent stood guard in her room for much of three days and she could not call her family or a lawyer until a hospital worker let her phone one on 4 July. CBP said she "was transported to a hospital for pregnancy-related care and evaluation" and that its Office of Professional Responsibility was investigating. She was then held at Eloy.

Oversight offices cut

DHS put more than 100 staff of its Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties on leave on 21 March 2025 and shut the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman and the CIS Ombudsman. A DHS spokeswoman said the aim was to "streamline oversight to remove roadblocks to enforcement". The civil rights office fell from 147 employees in January 2025 to fewer than 40, of whom 25 to 30 were contractors, and the detention ombudsman's office from 118 to five, according to filings in Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights v. DHS. New staff started in August 2025. The civil rights office received about 6,000 complaints between March and December 2025 and investigated 183, or three per cent, against about 20 per cent under the previous administration. It reviewed about 10 of the 32 deaths in ICE custody in 2025 and investigated one. Detainees can now complain only through an online portal and only in English; the office took complaints in 10 languages before. DHS closed the detention ombudsman's office on 4 May 2026, citing a lack of funding.

Hiring

ICE hired about 12,000 officers in under a year with money from a US$75 billion congressional appropriation and paid signing bonuses of up to US$50,000. A unit chief in ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility, a 17-year employee, wrote in a whistleblower complaint in August 2025 that human resources was making final job offers before fingerprinting, identity checks and credit checks were finished. "This unprecedented lowering of standards sacrifices proper risk mitigation for expediency, placing DHS at risk of infiltration and insider compromise," the complaint said. Ryan Schwank, a former ICE lawyer, said the agency had cut training on the use of force, firearms safety and the rights of protesters. ICE said the unit chief no longer worked there and that it "diligently applies proper personnel vetting regulations".

David Brouillette, 37, told his first wife, Ashley Brouillette, that ICE hired him in November 2025. A Maine District Court judge, Amy Dieterich, had found on 17 November 2025 that his sworn evidence in a child support case was not credible and ruled him "voluntarily underemployed"; he had said his driving licence was revoked for unpaid child support, and the state motor vehicles bureau has no record of such a revocation. Ashley Brouillette said he became violent during their marriage from 2007 to 2009, pointed a gun at her and threw boiling water at her while she held their child. His second wife, Lucinda Brouillette, said in a 2021 court filing that he had become aggressive towards their 13-year-old daughter, including dragging her out of bed, and a court temporarily took away his firearms. Ashley Brouillette said police and child protection workers were called to his home in 2022 after he threw his daughter through a glass coffee table. In a voicemail in November 2025, after Ashley obtained a restraining order, he said the women in her family should have their throats cut.

ICE officers in Biddeford, Maine, watching an address linked to a man with a removal order, tried to stop the car of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, 25, a Colombian asylum seeker with a work permit and no removal order, on 13 July 2026. An officer shot him dead four times. Ashley Brouillette said her former husband called her days later, said the shooting was justified and asked her to vouch for his character. "I told him I would not lie for him," she said. Lucinda Brouillette asked a court on 17 July for sole custody and a protective order for their 11-year-old daughter; a judge refused the emergency order. ICE said the officer had "nearly a decade of federal law enforcement experience with required training including use of force training" and refused to confirm his name. "Publicizing their identities puts their lives and the lives of their families at serious risk," DHS said. John Roth, the DHS inspector general from 2014 to 2017, said a judicial finding that Brouillette had made false statements was "a big deal".

The Ohio Immigrant Alliance listed 59 current and former ICE and CBP agents charged with or accused of sexual and violent crimes between 2007 and 2026 on 22 July 2026; 50 of the cases involved sex crimes and 25 occurred in 2025 and 2026. Its report of 18 August, "The Worst of the Worst", named 152 agents and found that 86 per cent of the cases involved sex offences, 85 per cent crimes against children and 60 cases conduct tied directly to the agents' jobs, including assaults on detainees and exploitation of migrants. "It's deliberate indifference and a culture of misogyny and violence that the Trump administration and our broader society tolerate, normalize and even praise," Lynn Tramonte, the group's executive director, said. "2025 was the peak year until 2026. And we're not even done with 2026," she said.

Zabdiel Echie, 24, a CBP employee from Sahuarita, Arizona, was charged in September 2026 with sexual assault and kidnapping. He and Joaquin Borboa, 21, a University of Arizona student, picked up an intoxicated woman in Tucson on 19 June 2026, and Echie gave her alcohol and a white powder on the drive to Sahuarita, according to an interim complaint. The woman said she woke naked in Echie's bed while he had sex with her and Borboa held her down. Police found a 26-second video of the assault on Echie's phone. Echie was released on a US$150,000 bond. CBP said it "stresses honor and integrity in every aspect of our mission" and that its Office of Professional Responsibility was investigating.

Earlier cases

Juan David Ortiz, a Border Patrol intelligence supervisor and Navy veteran, killed four sex workers in and around Laredo, Texas, in September 2018: Melissa Ramirez, 29; Claudine Anne Luera, 42; Guiselda Alicia Cantu, 35; and Janelle Ortiz, 28. Their bodies were left by roadsides outside the city. Erika Pena escaped from his truck at a petrol station on 14 September 2018 and alerted a state trooper. In recorded confessions, Ortiz said he wanted to "clean up the streets" and that "the monster would come out" when he drove past the places the women worked. Ballistics tied all four killings to a gun found in his pickup. A jury in San Antonio convicted him of capital murder in December 2022, and he was sentenced to life without parole.

James Tomsheck, head of CBP internal affairs from 2006 to 2014, said in 2019 that within a month of taking the job he received an investigation file on the alleged sexual assault of a female Border Patrol trainee at a graduation party near Charleston, South Carolina, in the early 2000s. Men at a table exposed themselves in a game they called the "Game of Smiles", and the trainee was assaulted again while unconscious from alcohol, according to the report he described. Tomsheck said no one was disciplined. The case closed when the woman stopped co-operating, and by 2015 CBP leaders said the event "simply had not occurred".

Where the cases stand

Uribe is in federal custody awaiting sentence on 21 January 2027. Courvelle was sentenced to three years in federal prison. Castro faces four state assault charges in Hennepin County and a federal indictment for lying to the FBI. Exum is on administrative leave, and a Chicago police detective is reviewing Martinez's report. Becca Good's two lawsuits and Martinez's lawsuit against the United States are before federal courts in Minnesota and Illinois. CBP recorded 32 allegations of sexual abuse in its holding facilities in fiscal year 2022 and substantiated seven, all of them abuse of one detainee by another, according to its annual report to Congress. DHS closed its detention ombudsman's office on 4 May 2026, and its civil rights office accepts complaints only in English.

How to report abuse by ICE and CBP officers

  • Emergencies: call 911. Rape, assault and shootings by federal officers are also state crimes; Hennepin County prosecutors charged Castro under state law, and Martinez filed her complaint with the Chicago Police Department.
  • Medical care after a sexual assault: a hospital emergency department can provide treatment and a forensic examination, which preserves evidence. The National Sexual Assault Hotline, run by RAINN, answers at 1-800-656-4673 and online at online.rainn.org, in English and Spanish.
  • DHS Office of Inspector General, which investigated Uribe with the FBI: 1-800-323-8603, TTY 1-844-889-4357, online at hotline.oig.dhs.gov, or by post to DHS OIG, Mail Stop 0305, 245 Murray Lane SW, Washington, DC 20528-0305. Reports can be anonymous.
  • ICE Office of Professional Responsibility: 1-833-4ICE-OPR (1-833-442-3677) or ICEOPRIntake@ice.dhs.gov.
  • ICE Detention Reporting and Information Line: 1-888-351-4024. Detainees can report sexual abuse to any staff member, verbally or in writing, and family members, lawyers and strangers can report on a detainee's behalf, according to ICE's sexual abuse policy.
  • CBP Joint Intake Center, for abuse by CBP officers or Border Patrol agents and abuse in CBP holding cells: 1-877-2INTAKE (1-877-246-8253) or JointIntake@cbp.dhs.gov.
  • DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties: an online portal at dhs.gov/file-a-civil-rights-complaint or CRCLCompliance@hq.dhs.gov. The office investigated three per cent of complaints in 2025.
  • FBI and the Justice Department: officers who use their authority to commit sexual assault or excessive force can be charged with deprivation of rights under colour of law, the charge on which Uribe and Golobic were convicted. Reports go to tips.fbi.gov, 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324), or the Civil Rights Division at civilrights.justice.gov.
  • Immigration protection for victims: a non-citizen who is the victim of rape, sexual assault, abusive sexual contact or sexual exploitation in the United States and helps investigators or prosecutors may apply for a U visa. The application needs a certification on Form I-918 Supplement B signed by the head of a police or prosecuting agency, a designated supervisor or a judge, according to DHS. An immigration lawyer or legal aid group should advise before an application is filed.
  • Witnesses: federal appeals courts covering most of the country have recognised a right to film police in public. Record the time, place, vehicle plates and any names or badge numbers, keep the original video files and send copies to a lawyer or to the bodies above.
  • Legal and survivor support: the National Immigrant Justice Center, the ACLU, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights and the National Immigration Project represented women named in this article, and Just Detention International supports survivors of sexual abuse in detention.