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L.A. Times: Just Three of 265 Reported Crimes at California ICE Jails Led to Prosecutions

HeadlineOct 21, 2020

An investigation by the Los Angeles Times has uncovered 265 calls to police reporting physical and sexual violence against asylum seekers inside California’s four privately run immigration prisons — nearly all of which went unprosecuted. Half of those reports were cases of rape and sexual assault, and the rest were reports of assault and battery. One case involves an asylum seeker from El Salvador who was beaten by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation officer in 2018 after the agent threatened to “F— him up” if the asylum seeker refused to sign paperwork. The asylum seeker says the agent then slammed him into a concrete wall. Altogether only three cases of prisoner abuse were prosecuted. 

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