Immensely Invisible - Latino USA

Over the past two years, Futuro Investigates interviewed at least a dozen immigrants complaining about their time in detention. The patterns of abuse reflected in the data also emerged in several of their allegations, illustrating how this is a systemic issue.

One of the women we spoke to is named Viviana. Viviana is not her real name, but we are using it to protect her identity.

Viviana is from Venezuela and left her home country in 2014. She was 21 years old at the time and was studying law. Her family was part of a political party opposing the government. She told us that they began to receive death threats.

Her family moved to Panama. But she says they were victims of xenophobia. After seven years in the country, Viviana and her mother decided to leave. They made the arduous journey across the U.S.-Mexico border in September 2021. They were detained in Texas and the U.S. Border Patrol handed them over to an ICE processing center in Houston.

Viviana was eventually transferred hundreds of miles away to the Stewart Detention Center, an ICE facility in Georgia.

During her first weeks detained at Stewart, Viviana was prescribed medication that gave her a severe allergic reaction.

“This is when I met this male nurse,” Viviana said. The nurse was a short, white man with a beard.

Viviana says that while she was at her most vulnerable, that male nurse sexually abused her. And she’s not the only one — at least five women came forward and complained against the male nurse. In addition, between 2021 and 2022 there were at least five other allegations of sexual abuse at Stewart, according to ICE’s own reports and public records.