When the System Investigates Itself: Sexual Assault and the Accountability Crisis in ICE Detention

Sexual assault is a crime.

It does not become less serious because it occurs behind the walls of a detention center. It does not become an internal personnel matter because the alleged perpetrator works for a government contractor. And it should never be left to the institution responsible for confining a survivor to decide whether law enforcement needs to become involved.

Recent reporting concerning the privately operated Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego raises deeply troubling questions about how allegations of rape and sexual abuse are handled within the immigration detention system.

The central issue is not simply whether a facility has a written “zero tolerance” policy. It is whether survivors can report abuse safely, whether evidence is preserved, whether allegations are independently investigated, and whether those responsible for causing or enabling harm are held accountable.

At Otay Mesa, the available records suggest that this system failed at one of its most fundamental responsibilities.

What the Records Show at Otay Mesa

Otay Mesa Detention Center is operated by CoreCivic under a federal contract and houses people in immigration custody as well as individuals held for the U.S. Marshals Service.

According to records obtained by CalMatters, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department received 159 calls for service from the facility in 2025. Twenty-one were classified as relating to the Prison Rape Elimination Act, or PREA. Seven of those calls were identified as allegations of rape.

Yet the sheriff’s department said it did not initiate criminal investigations into any of those seven allegations. No investigative reports were forwarded to the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office for possible charges. A sheriff’s spokesperson explained that CoreCivic had not requested the department’s involvement.

The available dispatch records do not reveal who reported the assaults, whether the reporting parties were detained people or employees, or who was accused. Those details remain unknown. But the lack of publicly available information does not diminish the seriousness of what the records do show: allegations categorized as rape apparently did not result in investigations by local law enforcement.

CoreCivic has stated that staff conduct an administrative investigation of every sexual assault allegation and refer potentially criminal matters to law enforcement. The company has also emphasized that it is not itself a law enforcement agency and does not conduct criminal investigations.

That leaves an unavoidable question: if seven incidents were reported to emergency dispatchers as allegations of rape, how did none result in a criminal investigation by the sheriff’s department?

A Private Company Should Not Control the Path to Criminal Investigation

A 2020 memorandum of understanding between CoreCivic and the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department places significant responsibility in the hands of the facility’s warden. According to the sheriff’s department, the agreement makes the warden responsible for investigating allegations of sexual assault or abuse and leaves CoreCivic to request outside law enforcement involvement when it believes that involvement is necessary.

This arrangement creates an inherent conflict.

A private prison company has contractual, financial, reputational, and legal interests in how allegations arising inside its facility are documented and characterized. It may face potential exposure for inadequate staffing, negligent supervision, failure to protect, retaliation, improper hiring, or misconduct by its employees or contractors.

That does not mean every internal investigator will act improperly. It means the system should never require survivors to trust that an institution with an interest in the outcome will be the sole gatekeeper determining whether their report receives independent criminal scrutiny.

An internal administrative investigation and a criminal investigation serve different purposes.

An administrative review may determine whether a company policy was violated or whether an employee should be disciplined. A criminal investigation examines whether a law was broken, preserves evidence for possible prosecution, interviews witnesses under appropriate legal procedures, and permits independent prosecutors to evaluate the findings.

One cannot substitute for the other.

The Existing Rules Already Require Outside Referral

Federal regulations governing immigration detention require facilities to report sexual abuse allegations promptly. Unless an allegation does not involve potentially criminal conduct, it must be referred to a law enforcement agency with authority to conduct a criminal investigation. A facility may conduct its own investigation, but that review is supposed to be separate from and additional to the outside referral, not a replacement for it.

CoreCivic’s own Otay Mesa policy similarly states that allegations involving potentially criminal behavior should be reported to local law enforcement and specifically identifies the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department. The policy further provides that an internal administrative investigation into potentially criminal conduct should generally wait until law enforcement declines the case or authorizes the facility to proceed.

On paper, these requirements appear clear.

Potential crimes should be sent to law enforcement. Internal investigators should not decide criminal responsibility. Administrative investigations should not interfere with criminal cases.

But policies have little meaning when the process for implementing them allows responsibility to move in circles: the sheriff waits for the private company to request an investigation, while the private company decides whether the allegation requires law enforcement intervention.

When every institution can point to another institution, accountability disappears.

Detention Intensifies the Barriers Survivors Already Face

Reporting sexual assault is difficult under any circumstances. Within detention, the barriers can become overwhelming.

A detained survivor may depend on facility personnel for food, medication, transportation, communication with family, access to legal counsel, and basic physical safety. The person accused may be another detainee, a guard, a medical provider, a contractor, or someone with authority over the survivor’s daily life.

Survivors may fear retaliation, isolation, transfer, deportation, loss of privileges, disbelief, exposure of their immigration status, or separation from the few people they trust. Language barriers and limited access to confidential communications can make disclosure even more difficult.

Some survivors may not know how to report outside the facility. Others may reasonably believe that reporting will accomplish nothing, or make their circumstances worse.

These conditions make independence especially important. A person who is confined by an institution should not have to report abuse solely through the institution controlling every aspect of that confinement.

A survivor-centered system must provide confidential reporting channels, access to independent advocates, timely medical and forensic care, protection against retaliation, competent interpretation services, and an investigation conducted by people who do not answer to the company operating the facility.

This Is Not an Isolated Concern

The allegations at Otay Mesa must also be viewed within the wider record of sexual abuse reports across immigration detention facilities.

A study published in JAMA examined incident reports from 129 ICE facilities between September 2018 and April 2022. Researchers identified 922 sexual assault allegations reported to facility administrators. Nearly 30 percent involved alleged misconduct by facility staff, and only 12.8 percent of all allegations were classified as substantiated.

The researchers cautioned that the data may underestimate the true prevalence of abuse because sexual assault is frequently underreported, particularly when survivors fear retaliation or do not understand the reporting system. They also noted limited transparency concerning how ICE determines whether an allegation is substantiated.

A low substantiation rate should never automatically be interpreted to mean that reports were false. It may reflect unavailable evidence, delayed reporting, inadequate evidence preservation, frightened witnesses, transfers or deportations before an investigation is completed, or failures within the investigative process itself.

When the institution receiving the allegation also controls access to witnesses, records, surveillance footage, medical care, and the survivor, the integrity of the investigation depends on meaningful outside oversight.

Compliance on Paper Is Not the Same as Safety

A 2022 outside audit found that Otay Mesa met federal standards relating to sexual assault prevention. Yet the subsequent dispatch records raise questions about how those standards operated in practice.

This is one of the most important lessons from institutional abuse cases.

A facility can have policies, training programs, reporting hotlines, compliance officers, databases, audits, and posters declaring “zero tolerance.” None of those measures proves that survivors are safe or that reports are handled properly.

Audits often examine whether procedures exist and whether records have been completed. They may not reveal whether a survivor felt safe enough to speak candidly, whether an allegation was prematurely categorized as noncriminal, whether evidence was lost, or whether the institution’s financial interests influenced its response.

Real accountability must look beyond whether a box was checked. It must examine what happened after the report was made.

• Was the survivor protected?
• Was medical care provided promptly?
• Was evidence preserved?
• Was an independent law enforcement agency notified?
• Was the survivor connected with an advocate and an attorney?
• Was retaliation prevented?
• Was the investigation completed before the survivor was transferred or removed from the country?
• Were the findings reviewed by an independent prosecutor?

Those are the questions that determine whether a system protects survivors, or merely protects itself.

Immigration Status Does Not Reduce a Person’s Right to Safety

People in immigration detention retain their human dignity and their right to be free from sexual violence.

Their immigration status does not make them less credible. It does not lessen the harm of an assault. It does not permit institutions to treat a reported crime as a contractual or administrative inconvenience.

Many people held in immigration detention are awaiting hearings and have not been convicted of any crime. But even a criminal conviction would never justify sexual abuse, deliberate indifference, or the denial of an independent investigation.

No person should be placed beyond the protection of the law simply because the government has placed them behind a locked door.

Accountability Must Be Independent

Every allegation of potentially criminal sexual abuse in immigration detention should be promptly referred to an independent law enforcement agency. The facility operator should be required to preserve evidence, provide immediate medical and psychological support, protect the survivor and witnesses from retaliation, and cooperate fully with outside investigators.

The private contractor should not decide whether an allegation against its own personnel, or arising from conditions under its control, is serious enough to warrant criminal investigation.

Independent oversight is not hostility toward detention staff or law enforcement. It is a basic safeguard whenever an institution possesses extraordinary power over vulnerable people.

Survivors should not have to rely on the discretion of the institution that confined them. They should not have to wonder whether their report was downgraded, buried, or treated as a threat to a government contract.

And they should never be forced to choose between remaining silent and placing themselves at greater risk.

We Must Refuse to Look Away

The allegations connected to Otay Mesa demand transparency, independent review, and an honest examination of how sexual abuse reports are handled across privately operated immigration detention facilities.

The question is larger than one company, one sheriff’s department, or one detention center. It is whether our legal system will protect people whose confinement makes them uniquely vulnerable, or allow institutional arrangements to place them outside meaningful protection.

At Liberty Law, we believe survivor justice must be trauma-informed, independent, and grounded in accountability. Every survivor deserves to be heard. Every potentially criminal allegation deserves a genuine investigation. And every institution entrusted with human lives must be answerable when it fails to protect them.

A locked facility cannot be permitted to become a place where accountability ends.

In solidarity,

Micha Star Liberty

Attorney | Survivor Advocate

If you experienced sexual abuse, assault, retaliation, or institutional misconduct in an immigration detention facility, you may contact Liberty Law for a free and confidential consultation at (510) 645-1000 or team@libertylaw.com.