This article contains descriptions of sexual assault and domestic violence. The National Sexual Assault Hotline offers 24-hour support and nonjudgmental listening over the phone, text, or online. Those experiencing difficulties can call 1-800-656-4673.

For most of her life, Jennyfer considered Florida her home. She grew up in northern Florida, worked double shifts at a local Mexican restaurant to save for real estate school, and spent Sundays at the beach with her family. 

But one night in July upended everything. After the 22-year-old was sexually assaulted by her manager, she said authorities arrested, detained, and deported her to Nicaragua—the country she had left as a toddler.

“It’s like your whole life is ripped away from you,” Jennyfer, who is using only her first name to protect her privacy, told Prism. 

Jennyfer’s experience underscores what immigrant rights advocates say is a broader and alarming pattern: Survivors of sexual violence who come into contact with the criminal legal system are routinely disbelieved, denied care, and funneled into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention, where they face degrading conditions and almost no chance at due process. Instead of receiving trauma-informed support or investigations into their assaults, many are fast-tracked for deportation—often to countries they barely know and where they lack identity documents, community and familial safety nets, or access to health care, effectively rendering them stateless. The system, advocates say, is built not to protect or rehabilitate, but to disappear vulnerable people.

Immigration courts rarely take the vulnerabilities of survivors into account, said Mich González, movement lawyer and co-founder of Sanctuary of the South, who offered guidance to Jennyfer and her family. 

Jennyfer had received a deportation order when she was a child, which González said meant that judges deciding in 2025 whether to halt her removal would not consider factors such as her deep ties to the U.S., her pending status applications, or the sexual assault she reported. 

“It may sound like it’s exceptional. Sadly, it’s an example of a pattern that I see all the time,” González said. “These so-called justice systems are really just punishment of the poor and vulnerable.”

An ICE spokesperson told Prism in an email, “Allegations that ICE officers dismissed any statements made by a detainee who claims they were the victim of sexual assault before coming into custody are preposterous. To insinuate that ICE officers are not consummate professionals who take every allegation seriously is the type of rhetoric that has led to a more than 1,000% increase in assaults on our officers.” ICE’s claim of a staggering increase in agent assaults is not backed up by available data.

The statement also said that detainees have 24/7 access to communicate with lawyers while in detention. According to the spokesperson, Jennyfer entered the U.S. in 2004 and was ordered removed by an immigration judge on Dec. 16, 2006. The Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed her appeal and affirmed the immigration judge’s decision on June 3, 2008.

A life upended

Jennyfer, who arrived in the U.S. with her parents when she was 2 years old, told Prism that she had spent years trying to secure lawful status in the U.S. As a teenager, she applied for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and submitted her fingerprints. But when President Donald Trump took office in 2017, her application was left indefinitely “pending.” She also had a family petition in process, but it stalled in bureaucratic limbo. Without legal status, she was vulnerable to detention even though she had lived in the U.S. virtually her entire life.

Jennyfer told Prism that she had been subject to the criminal legal system before. A few years ago, she said police arrested her after responding to a domestic violence incident involving her former partner—a man she said choked, bit, kicked, and threw objects at her, and even killed her dog. Bruised and yanked by the collar of her shirt when officers arrived, she said she tried to explain what had happened, but the officers arrested her instead. That time, Jennyfer said, they didn’t prioritize her deportation.

“[She] was already a survivor of horrific domestic violence,” González said. “Then this incident happens.”

He said this was a perfect example of how law enforcement agencies with ever-increasing budgets blame women for their own abuse rather than protect them. 

“Even when they do prosecute the perpetrators, they very rarely do anything to help the sexual assault survivor with anything, with therapy, with recovery,” González said. “They re-traumatize them, in fact, and in [Jennyfer’s] case, they did the worst thing you can do, which is to just not even believe them and to criminalize them.”

On the night that changed her life, Jennyfer said her assistant manager at the restaurant where she had worked for five years invited her over to her home. Up until then Jennyfer had thought they were friends. Jennyfer said that night, her manager spiked her drink. What followed, Jennyfer recounted, was sexual assault. 

The assistant manager repeatedly and forcibly tried to kiss her, ignored her refusals, and eventually pinned her down, touching her without consent. Struggling to breathe under the woman’s weight, Jennyfer felt too weak and disoriented to resist.

“I remember feeling drowsy, scared, and unsure what to do,” she said. “I felt helpless at this point, not able to move away. I had no strength to push her. She had pinned my hands down.”

Jennyfer said she only managed to get away by insisting that the assistant manager needed to leave for work. Disoriented, Jennyfer said she fled for safety in her car. Next, she said she remembers only flashes, then the shock of an impact. 

Local police arrived and told her she rear-ended another vehicle, which then hit a third vehicle. No one was injured, but officers arrested Jennyfer on suspicion of driving under the influence. Jennyfer, who was visibly impaired, said she tearfully told police that she had just been sexually assaulted. 

But the officers appeared dismissive, she said. Instead of receiving medical care or a forensic exam, she was booked into the local jail. Jennyfer said that when she told the arresting officers about the assault, one male officer responded, “That’s why you need to make better decisions.” No one offered her a rape kit or medical care.

“This is the worst day ever,” Jennyfer remembered thinking.

ICE told Prism that the local officers Jennyfer encountered were deputized under the 287(g) program, a controversial ICE partnership that enables local police departments to enforce immigration laws. The spokesperson said Jennyfer was arrested for misdemeanor offenses including driving under the influence of alcohol or chemical substance, operating a motor vehicle without a valid license, and driving under the influence with property damage and personal injury. 

Legal barriers

Jennyfer was first held in a local jail. As part of the standard intake process, she was screened by an on-site ICE officer, who checked her pending immigration records. Because she lacked legal status and had an old arrest on her record, ICE issued what’s known as an “immigration hold,” a detainer request asking the local jail to transfer her to ICE custody. A few days later, instead of being released like most people facing a first-time DUI, she was transported to Baker County Detention Center, a county jail in rural north Florida that contracts with ICE, and officially placed in the federal immigration detention system before she was deported. 

“Many survivors of sexual assault [and] sex trafficking are criminalized under our current criminal punishment system,” González said. “It’s set up that way. And ICE is no different. They didn’t listen to her either.”

He explained that survivors detained or deported after being assaulted face almost insurmountable barriers to seeking care or justice. Medical calls often go unanswered, or medical staff behave dismissively. Police rarely take reports of crime or abuse from people in detention, and internal grievance systems are meaningless, González said. 

He said that ICE, the executive branch of the federal government, and even immigration courts operate with little external oversight. 

“You have an executive that is colluding with private prison companies to make as much profit off of the system as possible, which means cutting costs and expanding contracts,” González said. 

He added that legal avenues for survivors are structurally blocked. For instance, a U visa offers immigration relief for undocumented people who have been victims of certain crimes, including sexual assault, and who are willing to cooperate with law enforcement in the investigation or prosecution. Because Jennyfer reported being sexually assaulted by her supervisor, she could be eligible to apply for a U visa as a pathway to legal status while pursuing justice. 

But the visa requires a certifying law enforcement agency, and police departments often won’t take reports from detention, and 911 can’t intervene “inside.” 

“We have no mechanism whatsoever to actually pursue justice,” González said.

A sister’s advocacy

Jennyfer and her older sister, who asked to be identified as Ame, grew up with a family mantra: ”You only have each other.” Despite becoming distant during their college years, they were working to rebuild their bond. 

After the arrest, Ame couldn’t speak to Jennyfer until she’d been transferred to Baker County. By then, Ame had already learned about the assault from their mother.

“I don’t think, in that moment, I could see the bigger picture of what was about to happen,” Ame told Prism.

Jennyfer’s stepmother posted bond, but Jennyfer was shipped to ICE detention regardless.  

Ame described those weeks as “mentally exhausting and frustrating,” a blur of sleepless nights spent on the phone with lawyers, advocates, and anyone who might be able to help. A longtime organizer who has worked on campaigns against mass incarceration, Ame said nothing prepared her for the bureaucratic stonewalling she encountered.  

“There was something very violent about the bureaucracy of it all. I remember feeling like I was being bounced around,” Ame said. “I’m having to tell my sister’s story, and I’m having to hand over case details that I documented because everybody else failed to even begin to document or hear her story.”

Ame eventually connected with Sanctuary of the South, which referred her to pro bono attorneys. For the first time, Jennyfer spoke to someone who told her simply, I believe you.

Detention centers notorious for human rights violations

Baker County Detention Center has long drawn scrutiny from civil rights groups for alleged abuse, medical neglect, and inhumane conditions. The jail has one of the highest ICE detention center death rates in the country, according to a report from the American Civil Liberties Union. At Baker, Jennyfer said she was strip-searched, given stained and ripped underwear, and asked if she had “ever been sexually assaulted in jail,” but not if she had been assaulted before her arrest. 

It wasn’t until she was transferred to South Louisiana ICE Processing Center that Jennyfer finally got a chance to disclose the assault. Even then, staff told her that they could not help her file a police report because it had happened “outside jail.”

“It’s really cold, they leave the lights on all day and night, they give you food that’s really bad, like not cooked all the way. There’s raw meat,” Jennyfer recalled. “My body was twitching.”

Weeks later, still without a hearing, Jennyfer was shackled, placed on a plane full of other deportees, and dropped in Nicaragua on Aug. 7. DHS agents removed her chains just before landing.

When she stepped off the plane in Managua, she said Nicaraguan officials couldn’t find her in their system. 

“They continued asking questions, and I didn’t pop up, and they didn’t know why,” Jennyfer recalled. “I just remember crying, just feeling lost.” 

She said officials never gave her the standard national ID card that Nicaraguans need to work, enroll in school, or access basic services.

“I knew what I was about to experience was going to be hard,” Jennyfer said. “My mind was in that survivor mode.”

A path forward

Jennyfer is now trying to rebuild her life from scratch in Nicaragua while remotely pursuing justice in the U.S. She recently filed a sworn statement about the assault to be added to her ongoing DUI case, and she and her advocate are preparing civil rights complaints over how police and ICE officials handled her disclosure. Local law enforcement has meanwhile opened a sexual assault investigation, though no charges have been filed. Meanwhile, the assistant manager Jennyfer accused was quietly transferred to another location of the restaurant, Jennyfer said.

Jennyfer said that after the assault, the woman reached out to Jennyfer’s family in an apparent panic and also spread false rumors at her workplace that she had “run off with an ex.”

Jennyfer said she has been struggling to sleep, losing hair, and hitting barriers trying to access mental health support in a country whose language she does not speak with sufficient fluency. She hopes to return to the U.S. one day and rebuild the life that was stolen from her.

“Justice to me means having the person who sexually assaulted me take accountability, for them to never have the power to do this to someone else,” Jennyfer said, “and for any complaint filed with those authorities who have let me down also take accountability.”

Her sister Ame wants local police to fully investigate the sexual assault and for ICE to be held accountable for obstructing Jennyfer’s ability to collect evidence or access victim services. She also wants a reassessment of the DUI case in light of the assault and a viable pathway for Jennyfer to return to the U.S., including a U-visa certification acknowledging her as a victim of crime. Meanwhile, they are continuing to fundraise for Jennyfer’s legal support.

The ordeal has only strengthened her resolve, Ame said. 

“It felt like they were waiting for me to tire myself out,” she said. “I’m aware that this is going to be a long fight.”

Editorial Team:
Sahar Fatima, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor