![An editorial collage set against a muted gray-purple background, combining three layered elements. On the left, a torn envelope or piece of mail bearing the logo and address of the GEO Group's North Lake Processing Center. In the center, a heavily distorted, glitched portrait of a person whose face is obscured through digital fragmentation, suggesting anonymity and erasure. On the right, a partially visible medical report form with several fields heavily redacted in black. Visible handwritten entries include an incident date of 3-16-2026, a time of 09, a checked "Yes" box next to "necessary to notify physician?", "N/A" written next to a "Fighting" checkbox, and a handwritten description reading "Sexual assault from housin[g]" occurring at "3-4am."](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/81aae84/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1920x1080+0+0/resize/840x472!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F9f%2F3d%2F1547e7294b60b5ff7f4823f3a84d%2Fq-story-headers-wip-10.png)
This story contains graphic descriptions of sexual assault.
As a transgender woman, Venezuela has been a dangerous place for Q to live. Like many LGBTQ people there, she has faced discrimination and violence.
Michigan Public is only using Q’s initials because she's a victim of an alleged sexual assault.
Last summer, Q was looking forward to starting a new life when she arrived in Pontiac, Michigan. She was working at a barbershop and around her neighborhood, doing odd jobs and volunteering.
“That was what I was looking for—a way to help myself,” she said. “And God sent many angels who helped me.”
As her 50th birthday approached in February 2026, her new life started to take shape. She had found friends, a new church, and a sense of belonging.
The barbershop's owner confirmed to Michigan Public that he and others were planning a celebration for Q. She'd begun to suspect something was in the works after a new friend from church called her on the phone.
“She asked me for two things: my shirt size and whether I was planning to do anything special for my birthday,” Q said.
Q said she didn’t have enough money for any special plans. But she was grateful for the new friends she’d celebrate with.
Q came to the U.S. on a tourist visa that had already expired. She had planned to apply for asylum. But before she got around to applying, Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Q.
They transported her to the North Lake Processing Center — a for-profit immigration detention center 200 miles northwest of Pontiac that holds hundreds of people the U.S. government is trying to deport.
Instead of celebrating with her new chosen family, she spent her 50th birthday getting settled as best she could at the ICE detention center in Baldwin.
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, you are not alone.
RAINN's National Sexual Assault Hotline offers free, confidential, 24/7 support in English and en Español. Call 800.656.HOPE (4673), chat at RAINN.org/hotline, or text "HOPE" to 64673.
”And that's when my hell began,” she said. “That's when all the madness began.”
Q told Michigan Public she was repeatedly sexually harassed and assaulted at North Lake and that her attempts to alert administrators initially went unheeded. She said she was strangled with a bed sheet, masturbated on, and forcibly penetrated.
“I was terrified,” she told Michigan Public, in Spanish. “I didn’t know what to do.”
In an emailed statement, ICE confirmed that “an alleged victim” of sexual assault was transferred out of North Lake following a medical examination on March 16.
Within a month of this alleged assault, Q was deported to Venezuela. ICE’s investigation was still “ongoing,” according to the agency’s statement.
Building a new life in America
In Pontiac, Q said she began to heal. She arrived there with a few hundred dollars she borrowed from a family member.
Q fled Venezuela after she was viciously beaten for being trans. She said her assailants left her with a large wound on her chest that required hundreds of stitches.
Her plan was to seek asylum in the United States in hopes of starting her own business as a hairstylist after working for 36 years cutting and coloring hair.
She came to Pontiac because of a connection with a friend from Venezuela who owned a barbershop and offered her some work. At first, Q said she just got the barbershop ready — cleaning bathrooms, removing hair, taking out trash — before they opened.
“I earned their trust because they gave me the keys to the business and I would walk blocks and blocks [to get to the barbershop],” she said. “Believe me … necessity leaves no choice.”
As the employees got to know her and her work ethic, Q said they began to give her more responsibilities. She recalled with pride the day she got the chance to prove her skills, by repairing a client's wig after another barber botched it.
“I took that wig and gave it a fabulous cut, Whitney Houston-style, something divine. I left her looking spectacular,” she said.
After that day, Q said “all the American women who wore wigs came looking” for her.
By the time she was arrested by ICE, Q said she became the salon’s go to stylist for women’s haircuts and color treatments.
Detention facility obligated to protect people from sexual assault
North Lake, like every detention facility in the U.S., is required to prevent sexual assaults under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA).
Some advocates said Q’s case raises questions about whether GEO Group took basic steps to ensure her safety at the company’s Baldwin facility.
“I think that there's this sort of cultural tick we have… that once people are locked up, like sexual abuse is inevitable,” said Jesse Lerner-Kinglake, Just Detention International communications director.
“These are some of the most tightly surveilled places in the world,” Lerner-Kinglake said. “There are cops everywhere. They control everyone's movements. The fact that this is where sexual assault could just happen without just multiple failures across the board is ludicrous.”
ICE’s PREA standards require facilities to assess whether detainees are at risk of sexual victimization based on sexual identity, gender, appearance, and other factors. Detention centers must not rely “solely” on trans peoples’ officially documented gender or “physical anatomy” when deciding where to place them.
Q remembers telling staff that she was gay and trans when she arrived at North Lake. Still, she said they placed her in a cell block for men who had not been charged with any crimes. She was assigned a cell number and a bunkmate.
“He told me that I could take the bottom bunk and he would move to the top,” Q said of her bunkmate. “He appeared really welcoming and friendly towards me.”
The first few nights there, Q felt uneasy with the attention her bunkmate gave her and the questions he asked.
“We would be chatting normally and then he would say something completely out of place - like with double meaning – and I just remember it just not sitting right with me at all,” she said.
Other detainees also noticed her bunkmate’s behavior.
“They would say… ‘look how he’s looking at us, I can’t get too close to you or else he’ll get mad,’” she said.
The behavior escalated quickly, Q said. When she got up to use the bathroom at night, Q said she’d find her roommate masturbating.
“While I was peeing, he was exposing himself to me…and he would touch his privates…and I would go sit down and lie down quickly,” Q added.
This went on for several days when everyone was in bed and the staff at North Lake were cleaning the facility, she said.
Q said her cell was on the second floor at the end of the hallway in front of a staircase, allowing her bunkmate to hear when staff was coming. GEO Group did not respond to a request to confirm this layout.
Inappropriate behavior escalates
Nearly a week after the masturbating incidents began, Q said her bunkmate started taking it a step further.
“He would masturbate at night and then throw that on me,” she said. “If anyone was around, he could hear them coming up the stairs, and he would get back in his bed and no one would notice what was happening.”
“I was a victim of sexual abuse, I had no help or support from anyone, not from the deportation officials, not from the judge, not from anyone."- Q
Q said she asked an administrator at North Lake if she could be placed elsewhere.
“[The] administrator told me that the only other place they could put me was in isolation,” Q said. “It’s what they call the hole.”
Q said she told the administrator that she didn’t think it was “right” for her to be in the male block. But the prospect of isolation scared her, so Q agreed to stay.
“I said to myself, ‘Oh my God, well God please take control’ and whatever God wants may happen.”
Advocates told Michigan Public isolation is fairly common for incarcerated trans people.
“Generally, because the prison officials and administrators have not created appropriate protections for them in the population,” said Dee Farmer, a legal consultant and founder of Fight4Justice. “So the only way to ensure their safety is to place them in segregation, at least that's what their answer is to it.”
Farmer is one of the first trans people to have a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. In a landmark 1994 decision, the court unanimously ruled that prison officials can be held accountable for failing to keep incarcerated people safe from sexual abuse. That laid the ground work for the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) in 2003.
A spokesperson for GEO Group, the company that owns North Lake, declined an interview. “GEO mandates zero tolerance towards all forms of sexual abuse and sexual harassment in all its facilities,” the company said in a written statement.
The spokesperson pointed to the company’s federally required prevention and staff training programs, and annual PREA audits. But North Lake hasn’t appeared in those audits since 2022 because it was closed until last summer.
“No one ever answered me”
The first time Q’s bunkmate sexually harassed her, she said she felt terrified, in shock, not knowing what to do. But then she remembered a way to report the abuse.
“They post these emergency numbers everywhere [in the facility] that say ‘no violence, zero tolerance.’ That's a lie,” she said. “I tried to call these numbers a thousand different ways and no one ever answered me.”
GEO Group and ICE did not respond to questions about the hotline.
Q said she tried to stay away from her bunkmate during the day. She’d do crossword puzzles at the library to keep her mind off what was happening at night.
“He was threatening me to stay quiet,” Q said. “I thought if I said something my stay in this place would drag on.”
One night after her bunkmate jumped on her bed and ejaculated on her body, Q said she opened up to fellow detainee, Jesus Moran, about the sexual abuse.
“This has to be reported,” Moran recalled saying to Q, in an interview with Michigan Public in April. “This can’t just be left like this. You can’t stay silent, because if it happens to you again, then what?” he said he told her.
Then Moran told her about the call button in every cell.
“He said, ‘inside your cell there is a button on the door…when something is happening, you press that button immediately’ [and] security will arrive to defend you,” Q said.
That same day, an immigration judge issued Q a removal order. Q said she did not tell the judge during the hearing that her bunkmate was sexually abusing her at North Lake.
“I asked for help and told them, ‘Please, get me out of there. Get me out of there, because I’m really not doing well. I belong to the LGBTQ community, and I’m really struggling,’” she said.
She never got the chance to hit her cell’s call button before her bunkmate began to sexually assault her in the early hours of March 16.
She said her bunkmate jumped on her, choked her with a bedsheet, and sexually penetrated her. Shortly after the assault, Q said the lights came on and the cell doors opened, so she ran out of the cell.
“I began to call, and call, and call [the facility’s emergency line],” she said. No one answered, she said.
Desperate for help, Q said she told a guard on duty she needed help. The guard didn’t speak Spanish.
“I told him, ‘but I need you to help me, for God's sake, help me, I am desperate.’” She said the guard went to an office and came back with a device for translating, but the battery was dead.
Q isn’t sure how, but eventually her pleas got through, and a group of North Lake staff, including a translator, took her to the medical room to talk to her.
The alleged assaults were reported to the Lake County Sheriff and Q said two “very nice” North Lake staffers drove her to a hospital in Cadillac.
“They took me handcuffed, of course, in a van with my feet shackled and my hands without any consideration, even though I had been through all that,” Q said.
After Q was examined at the hospital, records show a Munson Healthcare doctor referred Q to get a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) exam. Q traveled 55 miles from Cadillac to Shelterhouse in Gladwin. Providers there took photos and DNA samples, documenting possible evidence of bruising, bite marks, and “anal tearing.” Medical records obtained from Munson Cadillac Hospital say imaging of Q's neck was "negative for acute findings."
When Q got back to North Lake, she said staff didn’t provide her with the medications prescribed for her injuries.
The next day, she met with a Lake County Sheriff’s Office deputy. The report says Q told the deputy that she thought her bunkmate was trying to kill her during the assault and wanted to press charges.
Q’s bunkmate was placed in isolation, according to the sheriff’s report. In his statement to the deputy, he denied that any physical contact or sexual activity occurred between him and Q.
“[Bunkmate] stated that he is Christian and does not believe in the behavior he is being accused of,” the sheriff’s deputy wrote.
The bunkmate also agreed to take a DNA test. The sheriff’s office did not include the test results in the report obtained by Michigan Public and did not respond to questions about it.
ICE did not answer questions about what happened to Q’s bunkmate, but several detainees still held in the same cell block told Michigan Public they believe he was transferred out.
Two days after the sheriff’s deputy interviewed Q, she was transferred out of North Lake.
Over the next few weeks she was bounced around to four other immigration detention centers in Texas and Arizona. In mid-April, she was deported to Venezuela.
Unclear next steps in sexual assault investigation
The movement between facilities could be evidence of ICE and GEO Group “trying to be responsible,” said attorney and deputy executive director of Just Detention International Cynthia Totten.
“Perhaps they determined ‘Oh, there's actually not a place where we can keep her safe here,’" said Totten. “And it also begs the question of like, why couldn't she have been safe at [North Lake]?”
Regardless of whether an alleged victim or perpetrator is moved to another facility or deported, experts said the law requires a thorough investigation by ICE and GEO Group.
Still, such movement “really hampers any kind of investigation,” said legal consultant Dee Farmer.
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“Even in cases where people are not transferred, we see very deep problems with investigations all the time,” said Totten.
A lack of a “robust” investigation hurts the facility too, she added.
“Because of course that has everything to do with your ability to prevent it happening in the future,” Totten said.
Police records show a separate sexual assault was reported at North Lake roughly a week before the facility reported Q’s alleged assaults.
In that police report, two detainees alleged they were threatened by an individual who was later deported. One of the accusers told the Lake County Sheriff’s deputy the alleged perpetrator “grabbed his buttocks” on two occasions, called him a slur and threatened “to commit further sexual acts.”
In the report dated March 10, one accuser also told police he reported the incident to a guard at North Lake who “did not take any action.”
In a statement, an ICE spokesperson said allegations in this incident were found to be “not credible” based on security camera footage. ICE did not respond to further questions.
Lake County Prosecutor Tom Evans told Michigan Public he is still reviewing the evidence in Q’s case.
From Venezuela, accountability feels very far away.
Q’s deportation didn’t just remove her from the country – it cut her off from the support typically available to people who report a sexual assault.
“I was a victim of sexual abuse, I had no help or support from anyone, not from the deportation officials, not from the judge, not from anyone,” she said.
![An editorial collage combining a black-and-white photograph of the Patrick V. McNamara Federal Building, home to the Detroit Immigration Court, with colorful torn-paper fragments of text clipped from immigration court bond hearing documents. The scraps — in pink, blue, and green — display partial phrases including "Granted" (with a checked checkbox), "Denied" (with a checked checkbox), "a flight risk," "Respondent is a flight risk," "the Immigration Judge denied Pe[titioner]," "(ICE), released Petit[ioner]," "under bond of $5,000," "bond of $15,000, with," and "Denied, because." The overlapping fragments visually contrast bond grants and denials, evoking the bureaucratic and high-stakes nature of immigration detention proceedings.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/c57a8e5/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1920x1070+0+5/resize/560x312!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F75%2F7b%2Fa875b7d043b4b67d5862f5501af5%2Fbond-headers-5.png)
