KARNES CITY -- A caravan full of protesters used songs, posters and theatrical demonstrations Saturday outside the Karnes County Residential Center to denounce the use of for-profit facilities to detain immigrants seeking asylum.

The rally aimed to bring attention to the plight of hundreds of Central American women and children who are being housed at the shelter while they wait for the federal government to decide their fates.

Numbering close to 100, protesters came by bus and cars from Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Houston to vent their frustrations about the detention center, operated under contract by GEO Group Inc. for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The demonstration comes on the heels of allegations this month that women at the center were sexually abused by staff, a complaint that was formally submitted to the Homeland Security Department by a group of legal representatives including the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

A spokesman for the GEO Group reiterated in an emailed statement Saturday that the company rebuts the allegations, characterizing the center as a “safe, clean, and family-friendly environment for mothers and children.”

GEO Group spokesman Pablo E. Paez added that the company has “created an open and transparent policy of allowing visits” to the center by the public, local and national officials and nongovernmental organizations. A security officer was parked at the entrance on Saturday and did not allow demonstrators to walk to the front of the building to deliver a bundle of handwritten letters for children.

Elaine Cohen, who works with Grassroots Leadership, an Austin nonprofit that fights to end for-profit incarceration, said she's visited the center. She complained about the practice of housing children in what she said were jail-like conditions while a woman next to her held a bright-orange poster that said “Children need freedom and sunshine to grow.”

“You can paint laughing broccolis and smiling bananas on the walls all you want, but this is still a prison for children,” Cohen said, adding that this is the first of several protests. She noted that a larger detention center is slated to be built in Dilley, between San Antonio and Laredo, and said the group will be vigilant of others.

Since October 2013, agents have detained more than 66,000 unaccompanied children crossing the Southwest border, and as many as 66,000 more immigrants traveling in families. ICE only had one detention center for families when the surge started but has now opened a 700-bed family detention center in Artesia, New Mexico, and converted the 532-bed facility in Karnes County to house families.

Demonstrators became actors in what they called a “detention and deportation machine” drama -- playing the parts of lamenting women who missed their families and greedy businessmen and conniving politicians ready to make money from their detention. The small play, which included volunteers from the diverse group, also included a dig at “mainstream media” reporters whom they characterized as missing the larger picture. In the end, other actors intervened to comfort the women, render legal assistance, silence the politician and jail the businessman.

Natalie Goodnow, a University of Texas at Austin theater department graduate who helped direct the play, said the theatrical demonstration helps remind people that “we're connected to something bigger.”

Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, an Austin-based immigration attorney who has been working with families pro bono, said those seeking asylum have to pass an interview proving they have credible reasons to fear a return to their home country. She added that she's seen airtight cases fall through the cracks because of poor translation or because the asylum officer is in a bad mood or doesn't believe the person.

Lincoln-Goldfinch said the federal administration -- in an attempt to quell the influx of more Central American immigrants -- has also fought to release detainees on bond as a way to send a message to others who might be thinking of crossing.

“I want to get family detention ended for good,” she said as she watched her own daughter play in the grass outside the shelter. “This is an absolutely cruel response to a humanitarian crisis and it's not who we are as a nation.”