Louisiana: A Growing Hub in ICE's Expansion of Immigrant Detention
Recent reporting by USA Today’s Lauren Villagran highlights Louisiana’s growing ICE detention network. See data on these facilities at DetentionReports.com.
On Friday, I shared that we updated DetentionReports.com with the latest data published by ICE late last week. In that post, I highlighted the improvements we have already made to the tool and noted that reporters are already finding the tool to be a useful part of covering the U.S. immigration system.
Today I would like to further demonstrate the value of this new tool by connecting it to recent reporting by USA Today’s Lauren Villagran, who has been documenting the expansion of detention centers in the South—and in Louisiana in particular. Her exceptional work documenting this expansion shows that Louisiana now has more dedicated ICE detention centers than any other state besides Texas—nine in total.
Detention Reports provides data on these nine facilities, but where this data really shines is in connection with crucial on-the-ground reporting and research that shows the human landscape around these facilities.
Villagran's reporting captures the long history and human impact of the expansion of detention. In her investigation of Louisiana's detention network, she documented how immigrants are being sent "from all over the country, far from their families, communities and, often, their lawyers."
I draw on Lauren’s reporting to highlight three Louisiana facilities below, and provide links directly to facility reports for users who want to see more information. I want to note that DetentionReports.com came out after Lauren’s reporting, so the point here isn’t that the facility reports were included in the USA Today articles. Rather, I simply want to illustrate
Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center (Jena). This facility has held some of the Trump administration's highest-profile detainees. Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, represented Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil during his detention there. In a particularly striking comparison, Azmy told USA Today:
"Getting there was an all-day proposition. It reminded me of my early trips to Guantánamo, the military jail on the island of Cuba,” where he represented clients accused of terrorism in the years after the 9/11 attacks. “The desolation, the difficulty getting there. The visiting conditions were better in Guantánamo than in Jena. As horrible as Guantánamo was, I could hug my client."
Speaking of Guantánamo Bay, we also note that the Trump administration is increasing the population at JTF CAMP SIX.
Alexandria Staging Facility. This unique facility sits on an airport tarmac and serves as the cornerstone of the Trump administration's deportation operation. As USA Today reported,
"If you had to pick one ICE facility that is the cornerstone of the ICE deportation flights, Alexandria is it. There are a lot of detention centers that feed into it."
Villagran's reporting reveals the facility's central role:
"It has 400 detention beds, receives buses from the ICE jails in rural communities around the state and is run by one of the nation's largest private prison contractors, GEO Group Inc."
Winn Correctional Center. Louisiana's largest immigration facility is tucked "deep into dense pine woods nearly five hours northwest of New Orleans." Villagran reports that "the site is so remote that, for years, online maps routinely sent visitors the wrong way down a dirt road. A warning sign cautions visitors: 'This property is utilized for the training of chase dogs.'"
These excerpts add texture and human perspective to the stories in the data. Data and reporting together help to tell a more complete picture of how our immigration system is changing and how people experience these changes in real life.
Read Lauren’s latest work for more information:
You can see the most recent data on the remaining detention centers in Louisiana by visiting Detention Reports online.
Support Public Scholarship
This newsletter is only possible because of your support. If you believe in keeping this work free and open to the public, consider becoming a paid subscriber. You can read more about the mission and focus of this newsletter and learn why, after three years, I finally decided to offer a paid option. If you already support this newsletter financially, thank you.
Regarding Villagran reporting that detainees are coming in from all over the country, is there any way to determine the transit patterns of detainees, as in, how far detainees travel from arrest to the detention facility they ultimately end up in? And how often they're sent to a facility that is not nearest to the arrest even when a nearer facility has space? If so, is there historical data to compare with? It would be interesting to see if moving noncitizens far away from any support system is a large, concerted effort.