A former detention officer at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Louisiana has pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a Nicaraguan woman with whom he had a romantic relationship over several months while she was imprisoned.
David Courvelle, 56, entered a guilty plea in federal court Monday. He was charged with a single count of sexual abuse of a ward or individual in federal custody, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 15 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
According to court documents, Courvelle worked as a contract detention officer at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center between January 1 and July 30. The facility is operated by private prison contractor Geo Group Inc., ICE’s largest contractor.
In May, Courvelle and the victim “participated in sexual contact on multiple occasions,” and Courvelle “smuggled gifts such as food, jewelry, letters and pictures” of the woman’s daughter, according to prosecutors. Courvelle arranged for “lookouts” to avoid detection, prosecutors wrote.
Staff at the facility spotted the pair “coming out of a janitorial closet” in July, and officials immediately transferred Courvelle to a different unit. He resigned from his position later that month.
He initially denied his relationship during a September interview with investigators from the ICE Office of the Inspector General but confessed “about half an hour into the interview,” prosecutors wrote.
Courvelle was released on a $10,000 bond and a sentencing date is scheduled for April 10.
Fourteen of the 20 largest ICE detention centers in the United States are in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, a network that immigrant advocates have labelled “deportation alley.” The jails — most of which are operated by private prison companies — hold thousands of people each year.
For-profit contractors operate roughly 90 percent of all ICE detention centers. All but one of Louisiana’s nine facilities are run by private prison firms, including Geo Group, which reported third-quarter revenue in 2025 of $682.3 million, roughly $80 million more than it netted at the same point one year earlier.
More than 65,000 people are currently detained inside ICE facilities across the country, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
The case against Courvelle arrived weeks after a coalition of civil rights groups filed federal complaints against the facility on behalf of one woman and three transgender detainees who alleged rampant sexual abuse, harassment, forced labor, retaliation and denial of medical care between 2023 and 2025.
The complaint alleged that a former assistant warden, prison officers and ICE employees engaged in abuse, including instances of sexual assault, forcible touching, groping, denial of seizure medication, and retaliatory solitary confinement.
Reports of abuse and neglect inside ICE facilities across the country have exploded in the months after Donald Trump launched his nationwide mass deportation campaign.
A series of sworn testimonials from detainees at the largest ICE facility in the country allege deteriorating conditions and routine beatings at the military complex in Texas that have left several people hospitalized, including detainees whose testicles were “firmly crushed” by guards.
Federal judges have intervened to force ICE to improve conditions inside makeshift detention centers in New York and Chicago, where detainees were allegedly forced into cramped cells near open toilets without adequate food, water, clean clothing or a place to bathe or brush their teeth
The Independent has requested comment from ICE.
