Sexual Assault Inside ICE Detention: 2 Survivors Tell Their Stories (Suzan Kern interviewed)

The New York Times features Suzan Kern in an interview with María, a woman who was sexually assaulted while under the custody of ICE, following her release from the T. Don Hutto Residential Detention Center in Texas.  During María’s transfer, Hutto violated ICE policy, which mandates that detainees must be transferred with at least one guard of the same sex.  Instead, Hutto allowed male guards, including Donald Dunn, who assaulted María, to transport women alone 77 times in less than a year. “When he let her out of the van at the Austin airport, she ran,” Suzan, María’s pro bono immigration attorney, says in the video. “The guard there at the airport asked her what was wrong and she immediately told him what had happened.” María courageously explains, “I think this happened not only to me but to several people.” Eight women came forward to testify against Dunn.  Suzan believes there were more, “because these were the women who could be tracked down and who were willing to speak.”

Read Sexual Assault Inside ICE Detention: 2 Survivors Tell Their Stories, The New York Times, July 17, 2018.