An Austin-based advocacy group is suing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for its contract to operate the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, a federal immigration detention facility in Williamson County where more than 500 asylum-seeking women are being detained.

Grassroots Leadership filed the lawsuit last week after ICE had yet to fulfill a public records request the organization filed in June.

Bethany Carson, a Grassroots Leadership immigration policy researcher and organizer, said ICE acknowledged the request but never sent a copy of the contract for the facility it now operates directly with CoreCivic, a for-profit private prison company. Previously, ICE also contracted with Williamson County as part of an intergovernmental agreement, but that expired in late January after Williamson County commissioners voted to end their involvement in the facility operations.

"We really have no way of corroborating that a contract exists, which is incredibly troubling," Carson said. "This is an incredibly nontransparent, unaccountable way of making these agreements to operate immigration detention facilities that we do not want to see proliferate."

Grassroots Leadership, a group focused on ending migrant detention and decriminalizing immigration, is seeking to learn the contract's duration and whether ICE followed federal procurement law and engaged in a competitive bidding process. In a February statement, ICE said the contract extension was "short-term."



The facility has seen allegations of abuse and misconduct in recent years. In 2017, a Salvadoran woman named Laura Monterrosa said that she was sexually harassed by a female guard at the facility. Months after her allegations, advocates said Monterrosa attempted suicide. After intense media coverage, a letter from Congress decrying ICE’s handling of sexual assault cases in Texas immigration detention facilities, and a federal lawsuit, Monterrosa was released while she awaited the outcome of her asylum appeal.



The 512 women at the facility, which opened in 2006, are all at different stages in the asylum-seeking process. Some of the women are awaiting appeals, and others can't afford bond. Carson said ICE could legally release many of the women.

In a statement, ICE spokeswoman Adelina Pruneda said the agency doesn't comment on pending litigation.

“However, lack of comment should not be construed as agreement with or stipulation to any of the allegations," the statement read.