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Four detainees, including three transgender individuals, have accused a former assistant warden at the South Louisiana Detention Center of orchestrating a campaign of physical and emotional abuse, according to complaints filed by Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the ACLU, and the National Immigration Project.
The allegations, spanning 2023 to 2025, detail sexual assault, groping, forced labor, and denial of medical care under both the Biden and Trump administrations.
"It got to the point where he would harass me everywhere that I went," transgender Mexican national Monica Renteria-Gonzalez, a biological female, told Newsweek. "If I was in the recreation yard, he would come and follow me. If I was eating at the dining hall, he would come and just sit there next to me, making me feel uncomfortable. He would follow me into the dorm.”
Renteria-Gonzalez, alongside transgender detainees Kenia Campos-Flores and Mario Garcia-Valenzuela, claims they were targeted by former assistant warden Manuel Reyes through a coercive work program.
The program allegedly forced detainees to perform grueling tasks, like pushing heavy cinder blocks or metal cabinets across a dorm for 30 minutes, only to move them back, often without proper protective equipment.
"We never had the proper PPE and stuff like that. We never got paid. If we did, it would be like a dollar, no more than five at a time. Or we would work for like a bag of chips or a snack bag from the kitchen, or a soda, just small things like that," Renteria-Gonzalez said.
Sarah Decker, a staff attorney at RFK Human Rights, warns, "The program had actually a much more sinister purpose."
"From my perspective, [it] was designed to punish and physically torture people who identify as LGBTQ or transgender," Decker said. "If this person complained about the abusive conditions or even when people asked for personal protective gear or equipment when working with dangerous chemicals, the response was always, ‘If you wanna be a man, I’ll treat you like a man,’ or ‘aren’t you strong enough? Aren’t you a man?'"
The complaints, filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act, allege ICE was aware of the abuse but failed to act.
"It was hard, it made me feel scared, it made me feel frustrated, it made me feel angry, because we don’t have a voice in here,"Renteria-Gonzalez continued. "When I did speak up about it, when I finally did record it, they only do the ‘protocol’, just to make it seem like they’re doing something."
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin dismissed the allegations as "another hoax about ICE facilities," contending, "Nobody was forced into coerced labor. The Assistant Warden did not perpetrate or enable any sexual harassment or assault. Nobody was physically abused. And nobody was denied proper medical care."
GEO Group, the facility’s contractor, called the claims "baseless" and part of a "politically motivated" campaign to abolish ICE.
Detainees who complained faced retaliation, including solitary confinement, with one, Mario Garcia-Valenzuela, allegedly beaten and handcuffed.
"There’s a really intense and disturbing paper trail of ICE’s knowledge of what was happening in this facility. This is part of a system of neglect and abuse," Decker emphasized.
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