Francisco Govea holds a photograph of his mother Silvia Reyna Mendoza, an undocumented U.S. immigrant from Mexico.José Luis Villegas/The Globe and Mail
The lewd messages began to appear on Silvia Reyna Mendoza’s phone in 2023. They came, she said, from a man who was her case specialist at BI Inc., a company that does contract work monitoring migrants for United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Some were suggestive: “What else can I show you?” one asked, followed by tongue and water droplets emojis. “You’re going to like it.”
Others were explicit. A picture showed the case specialist naked with an erect penis, according to a lawsuit filed in October in a Sacramento court against BI and several of its employees. A video showed him masturbating. Another time, the lawsuit states, he told her: “If you’re good to me, I’ll be good to you.”
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The allegations made by Ms. Reyna Mendoza, an agricultural worker in northern California who has lived in the country for nearly four decades and has seven children that are U.S. citizens, have not been tested in court. Neither BI nor its employees have responded in court, but the company said in a statement that it maintains “a zero-tolerance policy as it relates to such matters.”
Nonetheless, Ms. Reyna Mendoza’s case adds to a growing body of complaints against ICE and its contractors at a moment when U.S. President Donald Trump has reinforced federal agents with billions of dollars in new funding and a mandate to accelerate the eviction of migrants from the country. Earlier this year, his administration slashed the work force at three watchdog offices that were charged with oversight of the immigration system.
Through the actions the President has taken, “he encourages the brutality that’s going on,” said Francisco Govea, Ms. Reyna Mendoza’s son.
Mr. Govea had enlisted in the U.S. Army in part so he could secure citizenship for his mother.José Luis Villegas/The Globe and Mail
“It sounds like they have an unlimited amount of power, with no constraints,” he said. Mr. Govea recently completed his military service. He had enlisted in part so he could secure citizenship for his mother, whose lack of status hung heavy over his childhood. But Ms. Reyna Mendoza had not been able to secure status in the U.S., working instead at jobs like harvesting walnuts. She had a previous DUI charge, but has been sober for years.
And when she complained about the messages she had received, a BI supervisor took the phone to examine the images and texts, according to the lawsuit. When Ms. Reyna Mendoza regained possession of the phone, the messages were gone.
She asked why they had been deleted. The supervisor pleaded ignorance. When Ms. Reyna Mendoza asked in subsequent meetings what was being done to investigate her complaint, she was told that was not a subject for discussion, Mr. Govea said.
Ms. Reyna Mendoza, however, had saved some of the messages and images, which The Globe and Mail viewed.
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In the months that followed, she was fitted with an ankle monitoring bracelet, without explanation. She had previously spent years being monitored through a cellphone app, and attending regular check-ins with BI.
Then, in September, she was taken into detention. After decades in the U.S., officials told her she had been classified as a flight risk. Shortly after her family told local media about her situation, she was told she would be deported. Her lawyers obtained a court-ordered emergency stay. She was sent to Mexico nonetheless.
“Instead of conducting a full and fair investigation into these very, very serious allegations that were backed by video and photographic proof, they went the opposite route and decided to circle the wagons and destroy the evidence and attack the messenger,” said Israel Ramirez, a lawyer representing Ms. Reyna Mendoza.
“They’re about covering things up, and they’re about retaliating against people who complain.”
BI did not respond to detailed questions from The Globe about whether the employees in question remain on its payroll or whether the sudden deportation of Ms. Reyna Mendoza was an act of retaliation.
“BI Incorporated takes all allegations of sexual abuse and harassment with the utmost seriousness,” GEO Care spokesperson Monica Hook said in a statement. BI is a subsidiary of the GEO Group, one of the largest private contractors to ICE. Federal records show the group has been paid billions of dollars in recent years for work that includes case management and monitoring.
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“We have a zero-tolerance policy as it relates to such matters and takes steps to ensure a thorough investigation of all related complaints,” Ms. Hook said.
Contractors like BI, which got its start tracking cattle, do not formally hold the power to detain or deport. But they have the ability to make recommendations to an ICE docket officer. A negative notation from BI could “make ICE look at the case and say, ‘yeah, then we should take this person back into custody,’” said Claire Trickler-McNulty, who served at ICE under the administrations of Mr. Trump, Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
That is doubly true today, when those docket officers are saddled with far greater caseloads, leaving little time for review.
“There’s so much more stress on the system,” Ms. Trickler-McNulty said.
In a system built on deep power imbalances – migrants enjoy few protections and fear angering those who oversee their cases – allegations of misconduct are not new. Ms. Trickler-McNulty spent several years as the ICE co-ordinator for the Prison Rape Elimination Act. It was a position that involved “trying to prevent sexual abuse and assault – and it was a huge and painful uphill battle,” she said.
Changes made by the Trump administration have not helped. It slashed funding from the Department of Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, as well as ombudsman offices under U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman. Advocacy groups have accused the administration of closing those offices and freezing their work.
Those offices “existed as the watchdogs, a place where whistle-blowers could go and the government would investigate its own,” said Pablo Manríquez, who has closely watched ICE at Migrant Insider, a news Substack he operates. “They weren’t perfect, but they existed and they did do the job for some people.”
Now, accountability is left largely to individuals and advocates willing to seek public support or fight in court.
Even if federal agents are held to account for crimes, some fear Mr. Trump will intervene.
“Trump, by pardoning the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, created a baseline for pardoning the worst of the worst,” Mr. Manríquez said. That has left lawyers representing migrants to calculate statutes of limitations, he said. The hope is to ensure any findings of criminal guilt are made after Mr. Trump leaves office.
The suit filed on behalf of Ms. Reyna Mendoza seeks unspecified punitive damages and measures of restitution.
ICE said it has no comment on contractors named in a lawsuit.
After being deported to Mexico, she was allowed back into the U.S., where she was once again placed in detention. When she re-entered the facility where she is currently incarcerated, it fell to one of her cellmates to give her a blanket, Mr. Govea said.
Migrants in detention are accused of being criminals, he said. “But they’re showing more compassion than ICE ever has.”