my visit to Louisiana ICE detention centers

to live a life free of violence is a right

first, some business:

1. The next Nah Brah community zoom will be Wednesday, May 14th at 7:00pm. I’m really excited about this one, because our guest speaker is the bad ass Director of the ACLU of Louisiana, Alanah Odoms. Not only is she brilliant, but she is a goddamn delight and she never gives less than THE MOST energy. Watch her speak here in front of the Supreme Court and get inspired af. Register here for the community zoom, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite nights of the month (only available to paid subscribers of this newsletter for troll purposes. If you would like to join the zoom and support this work, become a paid subscriber here).

2. ELECTION DAY IS THIS SATURDAY, MAY 3. lol I know. It feels like there’s an election every other week. The main ballot measure in Orleans Parish is a millage renewal for the Sheriff’s office. You can read more about it here, here, here, and here.

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Right above my desk, taped to the window, I have a picture of a makeshift sign on a Mexican mountaintop that reads: Vivir una vida libre de violencia es un derecho. Which translates to: To live a life free of violence is a right.

I took that picture fifteen years ago in the summer of 2010, when I was traveling up and down the Mexican-Guatemalan border doing research for my dissertation about Mexican immigration policy. I was following the migrant route from Central America to the United States, interviewing migrants, volunteering in safe houses, and visiting all the official and unofficial crossing points along the border. From the coastline to the jungle.

The sign was in the middle of nowhere, somewhere deep in Chiapas, where the border was a literal line emblazoned into the earth that went as far as the eye could see. I stood in front of this sign for a while, overwhelmed. Overcome by the spirit of a people and the demand for dignity that is universal in its appeal. Comforted by the fact that no matter where you are on this earth, even if you travel to its most remote corners, the values of freedom and peace will always reign supreme.

Last week, I went to two detention centers in rural Louisiana, in Jena and Basile. Both are former prisons encased in barbed wire, but now they hold immigrants instead of prisoners. They hold people who have committed no criminal offense, just a civil offense—the civil offense of being undocumented—and some of them haven’t even committed that.

Some of them have just committed “thought crimes,” as declared by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the case of Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent U.S. resident who is currently being detained in Jena, who wasn’t even granted a monitored furlough to witness the birth of his first child, even though he has committed no crime. Some of them just wrote an op-ed in their school newspaper, like Rümeysa Öztürk, a former Rhodes scholar and a PhD candidate with a legal student visa, who was taken by plainclothes ICE agents in broad daylight while she was walking down the street in Somerville, Massachusetts and then shipped to Basile, Louisiana, where she is still detained.

I went with the ACLU of Louisiana and met up with a congressional delegation that included Rep. Troy Carter, Senator Ed Markey, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Rep. Jim McGovern, and Rep. Bennie Thompson. We drove from New Orleans to Alexandria (203 miles) and spent the night. Then drove from Alexandria to Jena (38 miles), Jena to Basile (108 miles), and finally Basile back to New Orleans (169 miles).

I give you the mileage and show you the map so that you can see the rurality of these places, which in and of itself is a strategy. It’s easier to disappear people when they are far from their communities, far from urban centers, and far from legal counsel. The remoteness of our detention centers, coupled with the harshness of our immigration judges, makes Louisiana incredibly attractive for this bloodthirsty administration. Not to mention the airstrip connected to the detention center in the Alexandria Staging Facility—the only ICE jail in the country directly connected to an airport—that has become “a national nerve center for ICE Air, the group of charter airlines contracted by ICE to operate deportation flights.” Which makes it oh so easy to ship people off in the dead of night (or in broad daylight) without due process.

In fact, Louisiana is the second highest incarcerator of immigrants in the country, behind only Texas. At any given time, there are 7,000 detained immigrants in Louisiana, and 98% of them are held in for-profit ICE jails. Eight out of the nine immigration jails in Louisiana are run by GEO Group and LaSalle Corrections, which are private prison companies.

GEO and LaSalle are paid $164 a day by ICE to house a single adult in immigration detention, which means they make more money for each additional body in their beds. But if they spend less than the $164 on any given person, they pocket the rest. Meaning the more they deny detained people decent food and healthcare and sanitary conditions and clean clothes, the more they pocket. Meaning the more they violate ICE’s own minimum standards of care in addition to state, federal, and international law and legal standards*, the more money they make. In 2024, GEO Group reported a total revenue of $2.4 billion, 41% of which came from ICE. So, you do the math.

The congressional delegation met with both Khalil and Öztürk while the rest of us stood outside under the glare of Melissa Harper, the director of the ICE New Orleans office, who denied Khalil’s request to witness the birth of his first child. Then we all went and had lunch at a Mexican restaurant down the road that was filled with locals who were probably somehow affiliated with GEO Group, since it’s one of the largest employers in the area. They all seemed to really enjoy their chips and salsa.

Ever since we left, I keep looking at this picture right in front of me. I keep thinking about how the values of freedom and peace are being bastardized by this administration right in our own backyard. Every time I feel the sun on my face, I’m reminded that Mahmoud and Rüymesa are still inside those prisons, with no evidence of any wrongdoing, with only the evidence of exercising their First Amendment rights.

I am no longer comforted by this picture. I am enraged because it is true. To live a life free of violence is a right that everyone should have, but it is too often violated.

I asked the ACLU team what we as regular people could do, and they said we should all divest from private prison corporations, especially since proliferating detention centers is essential to the new administration’s mass deportation plan and GEO is a key partner with them in that fight (and is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange). Here’s a PSA from Nora Ahmed, the Legal Director of the ACLU of Louisiana, on divestment:

In fact, GEO Group’s stock price is intimately tied to the Trump campaign. In just one week, from November 4th to November 11th, GEO Group’s stock price jumped 86.74%, from $14.18 to $26.48, and has stayed consistently high, almost double what it has been in the past 5 years.

Here is the call to action: Check your 401K and other investments to ensure you are not investing in GEO Group through mutual funds. Ensuring GEO knows they are being watched and will be held accountable for their human rights violations is key.

Let’s sink those mother fuckers.

Mahmoud’s wife had a son, by the way. Another human being who has the right to live a life free of violence, even though his birth was preempted by it.

*If you want to read more about the violations committed across detention centers in Louisiana, read this report by the ACLU, but be warned. It’s a tough read.

**If this newsletter struck a nerve and you want to know more, I highly suggest you join this month’s community zoom in conversation with Alanah Odoms, Director of the ACLU of Louisiana. Alanah and her team are on the front lines of this issue and are a wealth of information and advocacy tips.

Data and statistics in this newsletter came from the ACLU of Louisiana, unless otherwise cited.

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more reading and resources:

1. You can download the Nah Brah Session Starter Kit here, which is a quick rundown on the basics you need to create impact during the 2025 legislative session.

2. You can download the Nah Brah Political Shitstorm Prep Plan Workbook here. It’s a quick shitstorm prep sesh to make sure you have your basic political shit in order, including: voter registration, knowing who your elected officials are, reassessing where you're getting your local news/information, getting familiar with local advocacy networks, discovering volunteer opportunities, subscribing to reliable local news sources, and assessing your strengths, capacity, joys, and sustainability practices, etc.

3. You can read my essay series about the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina here. Published on the 29th of every month in remembrance of where we were twenty years ago today.