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← Signal: State & Power

Mother sues ICE contractor and hotel for five-day confinement in airport hotel room with infant

Confirmed1 source · Oct 15, 2026

Valentina Galvis, an asylum-seeker from Colombia, filed suit against MVM Inc. and the Sonesta Chicago O'Hare Airport hotel for allegedly locking her and her then seven-month-old U.S. citizen son in a room as a makeshift detention cell.

Mother sues ICE contractor and hotel for five-day confinement in airport hotel room with infant
Image via The Intercept

What happened

In June 2025, ICE arrested Valentina Galvis and her seven-month-old son at a Chicago immigration court. MVM Inc., an ICE contractor, confined them to a locked hotel room at the Sonesta Chicago O'Hare Airport Rosemont for five days with no communication access to the outside world and no clear timeline for release. The lawsuit, filed September 29 and reported more than a year after an initial Injustice Watch and Intercept investigation, names MVM Inc., Sonesta International Hotels Corporation, and five Sonesta and two MVM employees and executives as defendants. Galvis alleges she was told at various points she would be taken to Texas or deported to Colombia. She was released after a federal judge ruled she and her son could not be removed from Illinois. The suit accuses the companies of confining the family for profit and engaging in civil conspiracy.

Context

Since fiscal year 2020, MVM has received over $1.3 billion in ICE contracts, much of it for transporting families. While ICE agents do not generally place people in hotels, MVM contracts to transport immigrant children and families and sometimes places them in hotel rooms across the U.S. The use of hotel rooms as makeshift detention sites has received little media attention compared to scrutiny of ICE detention centers. An inspector general's report published last month found ICE failed to manage its detention space contracts. Galvis seeks more than $50,000 in compensatory damages plus punitive damages. She remains at risk of deportation pending a final decision on her asylum claim and is currently in therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosed following the detention.