Women Voters Sue Kristi Noem
New voting rights lawsuit by the League of Women Voters comes as hundreds of sexual assault allegations against ICE and Border Patrol agents remain largely uninvestigated.
WASHINGTON — The League of Women Voters filed a federal lawsuit Monday against the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, challenging an abrupt policy change that bars nonpartisan organizations from helping new citizens register to vote at naturalization ceremonies.
The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, argues that USCIS’s August 2025 “voter registration ban” violates both the Administrative Procedure Act and the First Amendment by discriminating against speech promoting voting rights for naturalized citizens.
For decades, the League has been a trusted partner at naturalization ceremonies, registering hundreds of thousands of newly sworn-in Americans to vote. In 2024 alone, League volunteers attended 2,789 naturalization ceremonies and helped 122,141 new citizens register—roughly 8 percent of all people naturalized that year.
MIGRANT INSIDER is sponsored by:
But on August 29, 2025, USCIS announced without notice or public comment that only state and local election officials—not nonpartisan civic groups—would be permitted to provide voter registration services at administrative naturalization ceremonies.
“Purposely excluding groups like the League from administrative naturalization ceremonies is a deliberate move by this administration to deny new citizens access to the democratic process,” said Celina Stewart, CEO of the League of Women Voters of the United States.
The lawsuit names USCIS Director Joseph B. Edlow and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem as defendants, along with their respective agencies.
Pattern of Sexual Violence in Immigration Detention
The legal challenge comes amid mounting evidence of systemic sexual abuse of women detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection—abuses that advocacy groups say often go uninvestigated and unpunished.
Between 2010 and 2017, migrant women filed more than 1,224 complaints of sexual assault by ICE officials covering nearly all states with immigration detention facilities. Recent data obtained by investigative journalists reveals 308 sexual assault and abuse complaints filed by immigrants detained in ICE facilities nationwide between 2015 and 2021. More than half of all abuse allegations were directed against staff members.
In one harrowing 2020 case at an El Paso detention center, guards systematically sexually assaulted detained women in security camera “blind spots,” forcibly kissing them and touching their intimate parts. When one 35-year-old Mexican woman reported the abuse to a captain, he dismissed her. Guards told her “no one would believe her” because the assaults occurred where no footage existed.
That woman was deported while investigations were ongoing, effectively silencing a key witness.
At Stewart Detention Center in Georgia, five women accused a male nurse of sexually assaulting them during medical examinations between 2021 and early 2022. The women alleged the nurse exploited his position to force them to expose themselves and inappropriately touched them without medical justification. When two women reported the abuse while still detained, they faced aggressive interrogations, threats of extended imprisonment, and food being withheld.
A year after their complaint was filed, the nurse remained employed at the facility.
In Florida’s Glades County Detention Center, seven immigrant women filed a federal lawsuit in 2021 alleging that male guards would watch them shower or enter living areas unannounced for sexual voyeurism. One woman also reported sexual harassment by the facility’s psychiatrist.
A 2023 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that sexual assault allegations in ICE facilities were stable between 2018 and 2022, though allegations against facility staff significantly increased. The research revealed that sexual assault occurred in ICE detention at a rate up to 3.5 times higher than in the general U.S. population.
Only 2.4 percent of sexual abuse complaints filed with the DHS Office of Inspector General between 2010 and 2016 were investigated.
MIGRANT INSIDER is sponsored by
Border Patrol Agents Accused of Abuse
Border Patrol agents have also faced allegations of sexual misconduct and violence against migrant women.
Internal Department of Homeland Security documents obtained by Human Rights Watch in 2021 detailed over 160 reports of misconduct and abuse of asylum seekers by CBP officers, Border Patrol agents, and ICE officials, primarily between 2016 and 2021. The reports included allegations of physical, sexual, and verbal abuse.
In one instance, an asylum officer reported that a young girl was “forced to undress and touched inappropriately by a guard in the Ice Box wearing green,” referring to a border holding cell. The documents do not indicate how DHS responded to the allegation.
In August 2024, Border Patrol agent Shane Millan, 53, was arrested and charged with violating women’s constitutional rights after allegedly coercing several women to reveal their chests during virtual processing for entry into the United States. Prosecutors said Millan instructed women on at least three occasions to remove their clothing and display their bare chests via webcam, claiming it was standard procedure when it was actually “driven by his own personal gratification”.
And in February 2025, former CBP officer Aaron Thomas Mitchell was convicted of kidnapping and civil rights offenses after abducting and sexually assaulting a teenage girl while identifying himself as law enforcement.
A report analyzing Border Patrol complaint outcomes found that most allegations of sexual misconduct resulted in “no action taken,” including cases where agents allegedly solicited sexual favors in exchange for entrance to the U.S. or made minors remove their clothing.
“They Treat You Like You Are Worthless”
The American Civil Liberties Union has documented nearly 200 allegations of sexual abuse from immigration detainees since 2007 alone. Yet the Department of Justice explicitly excluded immigration detention facilities from coverage under the Prison Rape Elimination Act in proposed regulations.
“Without PREA’s protection, immigrants in detention remain vulnerable to abuse,” the ACLU warned.
The National Prison Rape Elimination Commission found that immigrant women in detention are especially vulnerable to sexual abuse. Despite this, in April 2025, the Department of Justice terminated all funding for the National Prison Rape Elimination Act Resource Center, which trained auditors and provided resources to sexual assault victims. The funding was restored only after a preliminary injunction in litigation.
Whistleblowers revealed that the closure of DHS’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties resulted in the abandonment of at least 25 sexual abuse complaints.
Human Rights Watch researcher Clara Long described the conduct reported in internal government documents as “jaw-dropping,” adding: “These internal government documents make clear that reports of grievous abuses—assaults, sexual abuse, and discriminatory treatment by US agents—are an open secret within DHS”.
MIGRANT INSIDER is sponsored by:
League Calls Ban Unconstitutional
The League’s lawsuit argues that USCIS issued the voter registration ban without following the Administrative Procedure Act’s required notice-and-comment process and without providing any reasoned justification. The ban also violates the First Amendment by restricting core political speech and discriminating based on viewpoint, content, and speaker identity, the complaint alleges.
“The ban discriminates—based on viewpoint, content, and the identity of the speaker—against speech promoting the right to vote for new citizens, and tramples on the League’s freedom of association,” the lawsuit states.
USCIS claimed the change was necessary to ensure “nonpartisanship” and reduce administrative burdens, but the complaint notes that state and local election officials in numerous states are themselves partisan actors elected on a partisan basis. The ban also identifies no existing problems with the nonpartisanship of groups like the League.
Since the ban took effect, state and local League chapters have been forced to cancel at least 166 planned voter registration events where volunteers expected to register approximately 10,000 new voters.
The plaintiffs are asking the court to declare the ban unconstitutional, set it aside as unlawful, and enjoin DHS and USCIS from enforcing it.
The League is represented by Campaign Legal Center, which has previously litigated to protect nonpartisan voter registration work in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Missouri and Montana.
If you’ve read this far, you understand why news like this matters. Subscribe or donate to help Migrant Insider grow.
Arrest her