NEW ORLEANS – The American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana today condemned the significant expansion of ICE detention centers in Louisiana. According to Mother Jones, jail populations that have been reduced by criminal justice reforms are now being replaced by immigrants and asylum seekers being detained by ICE.
ACLU of Louisiana executive director Alanah Odoms Hebert made this statement:
“This massive expansion of ICE detention facilities betrays Louisiana’s commitment to decarceration and exposes thousands of immigrants and asylum seekers to brutal and inhumane conditions. The wholesale detention of immigrants and asylum seekers is an affront to our values and a violation of DHS policy, which states that asylum seekers who meet certain requirements be released on humanitarian parole while they await decisions in their case. Louisiana should not be complicit in the Trump administration’s dangerous anti-immigrant agenda – an agenda that’s included forcibly separating thousands of children from their parents and brutalizing immigrant communities.
“For years the ACLU has received serious complaints about abysmal medical care and extreme brutality in these very facilities that will now be housing immigrant detainees. We are dismayed to see unsafe prison beds now being occupied by immigration detainees and call upon ICE to release as many people as possible to avoid exposure to the conditions. Reform is needed now to combat mass detention and ensure people are released while their immigration claims are considered, rather than detained in dangerous and abusive conditions.”
