This story was reported and produced by Injustice Watch, a nonprofit newsroom in Chicago that investigates issues of equity and justice in the court system. Sign up here to get their weekly newsletter.
After being detained for five days in an airport hotel, a mother filed suit against a longtime Immigration and Customs Enforcement contractor on behalf of herself and her now 23-month-old son, alleging false imprisonment among other counts.
The lawsuit was filed on September 29, more than a year after an investigation by Injustice Watch and The Intercept revealed MVM Inc. had confined Valentina Galvis, an asylum-seeker from Colombia, and her then seven-month-old infant, a U.S. citizen, in a room at the Sonesta Chicago O’Hare Airport Rosemont last summer. In that reporting, Galvis had described her captivity in stark terms, detailing how she and her son were locked in a room with no way to communicate with the outside world and no idea when, if ever, they would be set free.
Galvis is seeking monetary damages for the alleged harm and injury she and her child suffered as a result of the detention following their arrest by ICE at a Chicago immigration court in June 2025. Galvis named the Sonesta International Hotels Corporation and affiliated companies that own and operate the hotel as defendants in the complaint.
The lawsuit also named five Sonesta and two MVM executives and employees. It identifies JoAnna Granado as the MVM employee who transported Galvis and her son from the hotel to a federal office in Chicago on the day they were released, drawing on the original reporting in which Granado confirmed she was involved in the family’s detention.
Granado and other individuals named in the suit couldn’t be reached for comment. MVM didn’t respond to questions about the lawsuit. During the original investigation, Sonesta said that it “does not condone illegal behavior of any kind” at its hotels. The company declined to comment on the lawsuit.
The suit accused both the ICE contractor and the hotel of detaining Galvis and her child for profit, and alleged the companies engaged in a civil conspiracy by working together to use the hotel room as a detention cell.
“MVM, a federal contractor, physically seized, transported, and confined Ms. Galvis and her infant son,” the suit claimed. “Sonesta knowingly provided and maintained the hotel room used as a makeshift detention cell, profiting from the arrangement while a mother and her infant were locked inside.”
The suit seeks more than $50,000 in compensatory damages, plus punitive damages, and demands a jury trial.
In the complaint, Galvis alleged that her detention at MVM’s hands caused her and her baby a range of physical, emotional, and caregiving harm. Her son had just recently started transitioning to solid foods before the pair were seized by ICE; the suit alleged the infant was provided only scraps of food that were nutritionally inadequate for his age. Meanwhile, confinement-induced stress caused Galvis to decrease her breastmilk production at a time when her son needed it most.
Her baby suffered sleep disturbance and a worsening skin condition, the lawsuit claimed. While MVM had given Galvis an adequate change of clothing, the garments provided for her baby didn’t fit him. Because no laundry service was available, Galvis “washed [the infant’s] clothing in the bathroom sink multiple times,” she stated in an affidavit filed with the court, hanging “the wet clothes near the bed where the air conditioning would dry them quickly.” The infant wore only diapers while his clothes were being washed, and left the hotel on a Tuesday wearing the same outfit he’d worn since he and Galvis were detained by ICE the previous Thursday, according to the affidavit.
In court documents, Galvis alleged MVM confined her and her infant to a room near O’Hare International Airport. Galvis said she was sometimes told she would be taken to a Texas detention center and, on one occasion, that she would be deported to Colombia. She was released by MVM after a federal judge ordered that Galvis and her baby couldn’t be removed from Illinois.
The practice of using hotel rooms as makeshift detention sites has drawn little media attention; far more scrutiny has centered on conditions inside the growing network of ICE detention centers around the country. An inspector general’s report published last month found that ICE had failed to manage its detention space contracts. When asked about it at a September 30 press conference, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin defended facility conditions, saying detention centers meet and often exceed federal standards — and that comfort isn’t the department’s priority.
“We’re not providing Holiday Inns,” said Mullin.
While ICE agents don’t generally place people in hotels, the agency contracts with MVM to transport immigrant children and families; the contractor sometimes places them in hotel rooms across the U.S. Since fiscal year 2020, MVM has received more than $1.3 billion in ICE contracts, much of it for transporting families.
The lawsuit doesn’t name the federal government as a defendant.
William G. McLean III, who represents Galvis and her baby, underscored the companies’ role in their confinement. “The corporate defendants in this case unlawfully imprisoned and permanently traumatized my clients,” he said, “over five terrifying days after the Department of Homeland Security illegally arrested them.”
Galvis remains at risk of deportation — a final decision on her asylum claim is still pending in immigration court. She’s currently in therapy after an evaluation determined she’s experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from the detention.
“I isolate myself to avoid anything that reminds me of what happened. I stay home and I do not go outside unless I really need to,” she said in an affidavit.
“Even now, when I go out, I get very nervous, and I feel terror.”
