Inside the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, Louisiana, a group of women detained in red uniforms recorded a video on a tablet and aimed it at everything the facility’s official statements have never mentioned: untreated miscarriages, a toe amputation with no explanation, children taken without a word of information, and officers accused of sexually abusing the people in their custody. The video, which has circulated with English dubbing, represents some of the most direct testimony yet from inside a facility that has faced documented complaints since at least 2025 — complaints serious enough that a GEO Group officer was convicted in 2026 for sexually abusing a detainee.
What the Women Said, in Their Own Words
One of the women identifies herself as Lorena. Speaking directly to the camera, she describes a facility where discrimination is not incidental — it is structural. “There is all kinds of unfair discrimination here,” she says, “not just in the GEO Center, but also in ICE.” That distinction matters: detainees at the center are managed by GEO Group, a private prison contractor, but they remain in federal ICE custody. Lorena’s framing suggests the women understand exactly where accountability sits.
The testimonies that follow are methodical and specific. A woman named Nancy, from Ecuador, was three months pregnant when she miscarried in her bed and received no medical attention. Kelly, a Venezuelan woman with a single functioning kidney, is described as being in renal failure with no treatment. Another unnamed detainee developed a condition serious enough that four of her toes were amputated — and she was reportedly never told why. “They refuse to give us medication,” Lorena states. These are not vague allegations of poor conditions; they are named people with named medical crises. how ICE detention facilities have faced scrutiny for years
The video also raises allegations that go beyond neglect. Detainees describe staff exposing their personal information to enable trafficking, staff entering into relationships with people in custody, and forced labor shifts of more than six hours compensated at $1. “Most of the women who are detained here don’t know where our children are,” Lorena adds, “because they take them away from us and don’t give us any information.” Child separation without notification has been documented at other facilities; here, detainees say it is still happening.
What the Record Shows Beyond the Video
CC Plus is not in a position to independently verify every claim in the footage. DHS previously deemed some allegations at this facility unfounded. But the video does not exist in a vacuum. Advocacy groups filed formal complaints in 2025 documenting similar abuses at the center. Those complaints were not ignored: in 2026, a GEO Group officer was criminally convicted for sexually abusing a detainee at the same facility. That conviction did not come from nowhere. It came from a pattern that women inside had been describing for years before anyone with the power to act paid attention.
The South Louisiana ICE Processing Center has appeared in investigative reports going back years, consistently flagged for inadequate medical care, use of solitary confinement, and poor living conditions. What makes this video different is not the nature of the allegations — it is the faces, the names, and the decision these women made to press record and trust that someone on the outside would watch. That trust is not abstract. It is a calculated risk made by people who have very little left to lose.
