The ACLU of Louisiana's Immigrant Rights Project (IRP) aims to work with community partners to document and expose the realities of immigration detention in Louisiana by creating partnerships among directly-impacted people, private in-house counsel and/or law firms, and law school clinics, to harness their talent and resources and provide pro bono relief in the form of parole application assistance, habeas petitions, and Civil Rights and Civil Liberty complaints (“CRCL”).
The initiative seeks to educate the nation about the hard truths surrounding immigration detention in Louisiana, by telling the stories of individuals secreted away in nearly a dozen rural detention centers and deploying strategic litigation. Our goal is to be comprehensive - from investigating discriminatory policing practices in conjunction with the ACLU of Louisiana’s Justice Lab to bringing information and advocates into ICE detention centers via Know Your Rights presentations and stakeholder tours, to storytelling efforts focused on the lived experience of those who have experienced immigration detention.
Alongside Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, ACLU National, Immigration Services & Legal Advocacy, and the National Immigration Project, we have released Inside the Black Hole, a new report documenting widespread abuse and inhumane treatment at nine immigration detention facilities across Louisiana. The report cites qualitative and quantitative data collected during 59 onsite jail visits from 2022 to 2024, including information gathered during interviews with over 6,200 detained individuals and facility tours. Findings reveal that immigration detention facilities under the jurisdiction of the New Orleans ICE Field Office (NOLA ICE) routinely fail to comply with ICE’s own minimal standards of care, in addition to violating federal and international human rights law.
Read our latest immigration detention report
To learn more about the report and our coalition's call for an immediate and independent investigation into NOLA ICE, visit www.EndtheGainonPain.org.
To learn more about your rights as an immigrant, and how to express them, visit www.laaclu.org/know-your-rights/immigrants-rights.
