National Guard members accused of sexual exploitation of asylum-seekers at New York relief center, lawsuit says
A federal lawsuit accuses members of the New York National Guard and publicly contracted relief workers of sexual exploitation and violence against asylum-seekers.
A federal lawsuit accuses members of the New York National Guard and publicly contracted relief workers of sexual exploitation and violence against asylum-seekers.
Seven asylum-seekers alleged that the incidents happened after they were transported to the Quality Inn in Cheektowaga, near Buffalo Niagara International Airport.
DocGo, a New York City-based company that houses migrants, set up a Humanitarian Emergency Relief and Response Center at the hotel. The lawsuit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, alleges that the hotel was “dilapidated” and that migrants were forced to sleep on mattresses with “deep stains” that “were infested with insects, leading to the children living there being repeatedly bitten across their bodies.”
The migrants were also sexually exploited by New York National Guard Sgt. Deven Colon and other unnamed people, the suit alleges. DocGo employee Rigoberto Nuñez was also accused of physically assaulting an asylum-seeker.
Colon is alleged in one incident to have taken gifts to a female asylum-seeker, made “sexual comments” and taken the unidentified woman “out of the facility to his home and to other locations for what Colon called ‘dates,’” according to the lawsuit.
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