A new report out of Ohio chronicles persistent sexual and violent crimes by federal immigration agents.Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times via Getty
This week, we published an investigation into David Brouillette, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who reportedly killed 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine earlier this month. That investigation revealed a long history of alleged violence against Brouillette’s ex-wives and children. “To be honest, I was surprised anyone would give that man a gun,” a former friend said of Brouillette.
On July 22, the advocacy group Ohio Immigrant Alliance released a list of 59 active and former ICE and CBP agents charged with sexual and violent crimes between 2007 and 2026. Brouillette is no outlier, said Lynn Tramonte, Executive Director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance and author of the report. “But we have no way of knowing the full extent of the problem, because the agency doesn’t even look at family court records.”
A federal employment website states that “all personnel employed by ICE are mandated to undergo a comprehensive background investigation.” When asked for comment on the Ohio Immigrant Alliance report, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said “We take allegations regarding misconduct seriously and cherish the public’s trust. We work tirelessly to uphold the rule of law and hold ourselves accountable.”
Fifty of 59 cases the group documented were sex crimes, many of them committed against children. And the problem, according to their research, is getting worse: “Cases documented in 2025 and 2026 alone account for 42.4 percent of the list — 25 out of 59 cases,” Tramonte wrote. “Compare that to 2020, the previous peak year, which had just 6.”
In May 2026, a federal employee who conducted background checks for Department of Homeland Security agents during the Twin Cities ICE crackdown was sentenced for solicitation of prostitution involving a minor. In a similar case, two decades earlier, the man in charge of “Operation Predator”—an ICE program focused on deporting individuals accused of sex crimes—was found guilty of indecent exposure to a minor. He lost his job, but reportedly kept his pension.
This is not the first report alleging systemic sexual abuse by ICE and Border Patrol agents. In May of this year, the Southern Border Communities Coalition and journalist John Carlos Frey compiled a list of over 170 instances of sexual violence by immigration agents over the past 50 years. Here at Mother Jones, journalist Erin Siegal McIntyre investigated one alleged rape at the Border Patrol Academy in 2024. The officer involved is still listed as a union representative on a National Border Patrol Council website.
The federal immigration policing force now includes about 50,000 agents spanning ICE, CBP, and other law enforcement agencies. And after ICE’s internal watchdog office was gutted, they’re operating with few guardrails and near-unlimited resources.
“ICE and Border Patrol agents have a disturbing track record of sexually and violently abusing women and children, including members of their own families,” said Tramonte of Ohio Immigrant Alliance. In her report, she calls on the federal government to freeze the immigration enforcement budget—which is now sitting at about $152 billion, according to the Senate Budget Committee. “These are not people who should be given guns and free rein to roam U.S. communities.”
This story has been updated to include a statement from the Department of Homeland Security.
