Georgia’s Democratic U.S. senators are asking immigration authorities to “immediately investigate” allegations of sexual abuse in the state’s largest migrant detention center.
Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff’s demand follows a civil rights complaint made public last week by four asylum-seekers and former detainees at South Georgia’s Stewart Detention Center, who claim they were sexually assaulted by a prison nurse while in custody.
Subsequent reporting by The Intercept revealed a fifth woman also came forward with sexual assault allegations against the same medical staffer.
In a letter addressed to Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Georgia lawmakers noted that immigrant detention facilities in the state “have already faced deeply concerning allegations of human rights violations, specifically the abuse of women at the now-closed Irwin County Detention Center.”
The Irwin County migrant prison shuttered last fall, following much-publicized reports of nonconsensual gynecological procedures. In the wake of those reports, immigration authorities began transferring detainees to Stewart, which had been a male-only facility.
The Department of Homeland Security has not responded to an AJC request for comment.
In their letter, Sens. Warnock and Ossoff called for answers to six questions about last week’s complaint, including a request that DHS explain what steps it is taking to determine whether there are “any other victims.” They asked for the findings of immigration authorities’ investigation into the accusations to be shared with them by August 19.
Last week, a spokesperson with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of DHS, confirmed that two of the migrant women’s allegations are currently under investigation. It is unclear what stage that investigation is in, or whether ICE and DHS are cooperating with other federal, state, or local law enforcement agencies.
Immigrant rights groups also demanded “justice and an investigation” at a rally held last week in front of ICE’s field office in downtown Atlanta.
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