Crimes of ICE

David Courvelle was 56 years old when he was hired as a contract detention officer at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, Louisiana. He worked there for seven months. During that time, he sexually abused a Nicaraguan woman who was being held in federal immigration detention and had no power to stop him.

On June 26, 2026, he was sentenced to three years in federal prison.

Three years. For sexually abusing a woman in federal custody.

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This Is the Same Facility Where Multiple Women Have Filed Abuse Complaints

Courvelle’s conviction does not exist in isolation. It is the latest confirmed incident at a facility that has been the subject of serious and repeated allegations of sexual abuse, physical abuse, coerced labor, and medical neglect for years.

The South Louisiana ICE Processing Center is one of the largest ICE detention facilities in the country. It is run not by the government but by the GEO Group, a private prison corporation and ICE’s largest detention contractor. The facility houses women and detainees of various gender identities.

In September 2025, the ACLU of Louisiana, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, and the National Immigration Project filed formal complaints with DHS and ICE on behalf of four detainees who described repeated sexual harassment, sexual assault, physical abuse, coerced labor at $1 per day, solitary confinement used as retaliation for filing complaints, and denial of medical care. Three of the four complainants identified as LGBTQ and said they were specifically targeted by a former assistant warden named Manuel Reyes, who allegedly orchestrated a late-night forced labor scheme and enabled repeated sexual abuse against transgender and gender-nonconforming detainees.

One woman with epilepsy who was sexually abused at the facility and placed in solitary confinement after filing a complaint said: “I begged the U.S. government to help me. I filed complaints and grievances. I told ICE officers and medical staff. But they did nothing.”

DHS called the accusations false. A “hoax.”

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The Complaints Were Ignored Until They Could Not Be

Attorneys for the detainees who filed civil complaints described a system designed to bury their clients’ allegations.

“These people screamed for help,” said Sarah Decker, a senior staff attorney at RFK Human Rights. “They filed grievances. They filed complaints under the Prison Rape Elimination Act. They filed verbal complaints through the Office of the Inspector General.” The complaints, she said, were “systematically ignored” and “buried.”

“There’s a deep underbelly of abuse that we haven’t fully uncovered yet,” Decker said.