A 21-year-old Lebanese woman who was held at the El Valle Detention Facility in Raymondville, Texas, has alleged in a sworn declaration to the Department of Homeland Security's internal watchdog that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation officer sexually assaulted her inside the facility and offered to help her obtain a green card in exchange for sex, Newsweek reported on November 14. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, has rejected the claims outright, telling Newsweek: “Allegations of misconduct at El Valle Detention Facility are FALSE.” The allegations have not been independently verified, and no criminal charge arising from them has been announced.
Source: Newsweek via Opera News
Everything Rahaf Ali Almerhij describes is an ALLEGATION made in an interview and a sworn declaration. DHS denies the misconduct claims, says an April 2026 inspector-general review of her earlier complaints found “no impropriety,” and says the later sexual-assault allegation was not part of that review. The accused officer did not respond to Newsweek's emailed questions. Awaaz Punjab reports both sides and labels every claim.
The woman, Rahaf Ali Almerhij, who also goes by Lucy Wise and agreed to be identified, told Newsweek that ICE deportation officer Markell Wallace took her into a small, isolated, self-locking room at El Valle after her former attorney withdrew from her immigration case in April 2026, leaving her without legal representation. In her sworn declaration, she alleges that Wallace touched her sexually without her consent and began to lower his own clothing before she refused and told him to stop. She alleges he used his position over her case to pressure her. “He told me, ‘I'm going to give you a green card,’” she told Newsweek, and she alleges he threatened to have her husband imprisoned and deported if she refused his advances.
“I did not consent to any of this; I refused and told him to stop,” Almerhij said in her sworn declaration. “I was a detainee, and he was the officer who had influence over my case, my release, and my medical care, and I did not feel that I could refuse to go with him or leave the room.” In the same declaration, she wrote: “That assault was not the only one. After it, Wallace sexually harassed me or touched me on at least two other occasions.” She said he gave her his personal phone number and offered to travel to Mexico if she changed her mind.
How the complaint reached the watchdogs
Almerhij did not disclose the full sexual-assault allegation in her initial complaints while she was detained. Her husband, Sam Wise, told Newsweek he first learned about it in late August 2026, months after she had left ICE custody, through a friend to whom she had confided. He said she had kept it from him because she feared being blamed or shamed. “I am heartbroken and angry,” Wise told Newsweek. “I carry guilt that I could not protect her, and pain that she suffered alone and in silence for months. But the shame is his, not hers. I am proud of her courage, and I will never leave her.”
On October 9, 2026, Wise submitted complaints specifically alleging sexual misconduct by Wallace to four bodies: the DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG), ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility, DHS's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman. Almerhij signed her sworn declaration the following day, and on October 19 Wise sent it as a formal supplement to those bodies and to ICE's Office of the Principal Legal Advisor. On October 23, Almerhij attended an in-person interview with OIG investigators at the Anzalduas Port of Entry in Mission, Texas. She says the interview was conducted by special agents Carissa Villagomez and Jaime Perez, with her attorney, Ron Armstrong, and an Arabic interpreter taking part by telephone, and that she handed investigators her original 59-page handwritten diary from detention, with an Arabic transcription and an English translation.
The complaint has also reached local prosecutors. Wise said the sworn declaration was sent on November 5 to Willacy County District Attorney Annette C. Hinojosa, and that Hinojosa responded on November 9 that she had forwarded the report to the Raymondville Police Department, which she said had jurisdiction, and that her office's Victim Assistance Unit would contact Almerhij. Newsweek emailed Wallace a detailed list of questions on November 5 and received no response; when a reporter reached him by telephone, he confirmed his identity, then ended the call when questions about the allegations began. ICE records obtained by Newsweek identify Wallace as a deportation officer with Enforcement and Removal Operations at the Harlingen Field Office, and two sources independently confirmed his employment.
What DHS says — and what its April review did and did not cover
DHS has rejected the allegations in full. “Incidents of misconduct are treated with the utmost seriousness and investigated thoroughly. When substantiated, appropriate action is taken,” a DHS spokesperson told Newsweek. When Newsweek approached the department with the officer's identity, DHS said it would “never confirm or deny attempts to dox our law enforcement officers,” adding that publicizing officers' identities puts “their lives and the lives of their families at serious risk.” DHS said its Office of Inspector General received a complaint in April 2026, reviewed the allegations, and found “no impropriety,” and that Almerhij did not identify an officer as the subject of her allegations during that review.
The timeline matters here. The April review covered Almerhij's earlier complaints — about medical care, detention conditions and privacy, including an allegation that male staff could see naked female detainees in bathroom and shower areas. She did not make the specific sexual-assault allegation against Wallace until October, so, as Newsweek notes, the April review did not address it. DHS referred Newsweek to the OIG about the review of the allegations; Newsweek said it contacted the OIG several times and had not received a response at the time of publication. Times Now World, summarising the same reporting on November 15, likewise reported DHS's position that the allegations are false and that substantiated misconduct is acted on.
Source: Times Now World
A parallel fight over her medical care
Almerhij's case had already been in court before the sexual-misconduct complaints were filed. She alleges she was initially denied specialized eye drops and faced delays in specialist care in custody despite warnings of possible permanent vision loss. She had undergone keratopigmentation, a cosmetic eye-colour procedure, in New York in June 2025, and says she experienced complications and had glaucoma. After her February 2026 arrest, detention medical records documented complaints of eye pain, blurred vision, tearing and light sensitivity. Her husband said he tried to bring specialized eye drops derived from her own blood products to El Valle on February 23, but staff refused to accept them; DHS confirmed the attempt and said the drops were not permitted under facility rules. On March 20, ophthalmologist Dr. Alexander Movshovich warned her symptoms could indicate a risk of irreversible optic nerve damage and recommended an urgent specialist assessment.
Almerhij challenged her detention in federal court, alleging she was not receiving appropriate specialist care; the government disputed that, citing outside examinations, treatment and scheduled follow-up care. On May 14, 2026, U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. dismissed her habeas petition, ruling that claims about conditions of confinement, including medical care, must be pursued through a civil rights action rather than habeas proceedings, and rejecting her separate claim that detention without a bond hearing violated the Fifth Amendment. The ruling did not decide whether her medical care was adequate. DHS denied inadequate care, saying: “Allegations of subprime conditions or medical care at El Valle Detention Facility are FALSE. No one is denied access to medical care.” The agency said she received treatment from an outside provider for complications from her pre-detention cosmetic eye surgery, attended three medical appointments and declined a fourth.
The facility was already under scrutiny
El Valle, at Raymondville in Willacy County in the Rio Grande Valley, is operated for ICE by the private company Management and Training Corporation. Weeks before Newsweek published Almerhij's account, the facility was already facing congressional scrutiny: on October 26, Congresswoman Delia C. Ramirez, the ranking member of a Homeland Security subcommittee, led seven colleagues in opening an investigation into reported conditions at El Valle after detainees began a hunger strike on around October 11, alleging substandard medical care, poor water quality and mistreatment by guards, with some strikers reporting threats of force-feeding and transfer. ICE denied force-feeding threats or retaliation and said meals and beverages are provided daily during hunger strikes. The lawmakers demanded answers by November 2. Almerhij's allegations now land on a facility whose conditions are already the subject of a formal congressional inquiry.
Source: Office of Rep. Delia Ramirez
According to DHS, Border Patrol arrested Almerhij near the Rio Grande Valley on February 19, 2026, and she had entered the United States illegally from Montreal in August 2024. Her husband said she had been attending Texas A&M University, pursuing nursing, and working as general manager at his dental clinic. She was granted voluntary departure on May 1, 2026, left for Istanbul and then travelled to Mexico, where she now is; her husband, a lawful permanent resident, remains in Texas. DHS said she accepted voluntary return and that ICE removed her from the country.
Why this matters beyond one facility
For immigrant families — including Punjabi and Sikh families across Texas and the wider United States whose relatives pass through ICE detention — the case goes to the core question of detention oversight: a detainee's word against an officer's, tested through inspector-general complaints rather than a courtroom. Almerhij's account is supported by a sworn declaration, a contemporaneous detention diary and a documented complaint trail across four oversight bodies and a county prosecutor; DHS's position is that the claims are false and that its watchdog already found no impropriety in the complaints it reviewed in April — a review that predates the sexual-assault allegation itself. Both of those things are on the record, and readers should hold them together.
What happens next
The open tracks are now the DHS inspector general's handling of the October sexual-misconduct complaints, the referral Wise says the Willacy County district attorney made to the Raymondville Police Department, and any response from the OIG, which had not replied to Newsweek by publication. No criminal charge has been announced, and Wallace remains entitled to the presumption that an unproven allegation is just that. “I feel like all my life has been destroyed,” Almerhij told Newsweek. “I stopped everything. I can't talk with anybody.” Awaaz Punjab will update this story if the OIG, Raymondville police or DHS issue further findings.