Dissenting Immigrant Students Arrested and Jailed in Louisiana
As US authorities tighten anti-immigrant crackdowns at universities in a bid to crack down on pro-Palestinian protests, some detainees are being sent to remote facilities in Louisiana, writes Associated Press.
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Lawyers for Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student who faces possible deportation for participating in campus protests, are calling his detention in Louisiana a "Kafkaesque" attempt to suppress free speech.
Louisiana is becoming a key part of the immigration detention system during Donald Trump's second term. The facilities where people are detained are located far from New Orleans and beyond the reach of most civil rights groups and lawyers.
On the subject: Three Prominent Professors Quit Yale and Will Live in Canada in Protest Against Trump's Policies
Immigration detentions in Louisiana increased sharply during Trump's first term, when facilities that had previously functioned as prisons began to be used for the purpose.
At the time, criminal justice reform in the state had reduced the prison population, threatening the economies of small towns that depended on those facilities.
Rural parish officials contracted to house immigrants, guaranteeing millions of dollars in local revenue. Immigrants and advocates complained of prolonged detention, abuse, and isolation, including solitary confinement that sometimes resulted in death.
Prison for immigrants
Today, Louisiana, behind only Texas, has the second-largest number of immigrants in ICE custody in the United States. Louisiana holds about 7000 detained immigrants, according to government data compiled by the Transactional Records Research Center at Syracuse University.
Khalil's transfer from the New York area to Louisiana complicates his legal fight for release.
Justice Department attorney August Flentje wants the case heard in Louisiana "to provide jurisdictional certainty." A judge in Newark, New Jersey, heard arguments on jurisdiction on March 28 and plans to issue a written ruling.
Immigration authorities are also holding 30-year-old Turkish student Rumeysa Ozturk at the Basile Detention Center, about 270 miles west of New Orleans.
The Tufts University graduate student was detained by immigration officials on March 25 on a street in the Boston suburb of Somerville. She was immediately transferred to Louisiana before a federal judge ordered her to remain in Massachusetts.
Lawyers for another detained scientist, University of Alabama graduate student Alireza Dorudi, said March 28 that he would likely be sent to an ICE facility in Jena, Louisiana. The community of about 5000 is also far from major cities.
When immigration agents arrested Dorudi, 32, in his apartment in the middle of the night, he was initially being held at the Pickens County Jail in Carrollton, Alabama.
Dorudi was detained for a visa revocation in 2023, although his lawyers say he never participated in the campus protests. The Department of Homeland Security said Dorudi poses a “significant national security risk,” but provided no details.
Louisiana has a relatively low immigrant population. Foreign-born residents make up less than 5 percent of the population, compared to a national average of 13 percent.
The number of people detained has reached a five-year high
Trump's executive orders signed on the day of his inauguration and promises of mass deportations of "millions and millions" of people are contingent on additional funding for detainees.
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The number of immigrants held in ICE facilities reached 47 this month, the highest since October 892, as the administration experiments with the use of overseas facilities, including the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.
Authorities have begun to house some detainees in federal jails again, reverting to a strategy that drew allegations of abuse during Trump’s first term. The administration has also resumed a practice it stopped during the Biden administration of holding immigrant families in a facility in south Texas.
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