Native New Orleanian Imam Omar Suleiman leads a prayer outside the ICE detention center in Jena while Mahmoud Khalil undergoes a court hearing on Thursday, May 22, 2025. (John Gray/Verite News)
In late July, officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement provided access to three detention centers they operate in Louisiana to a group of about 20 civil rights advocates.
Their tour included the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center, located on the former England Air Force Base in Alexandria. It’s become a conduit for individuals apprehended around the country to the nine ICE detention centers in Louisiana, where immigration court watchers say judges are more likely to be aligned to the Trump administration’s enforcement policy.
The other ICE facilities on the tour were the South Louisiana Processing Center in Basile, which holds only women, and the Pine Prairie Processing Center in Evangeline Parish.
The Illuminator conducted two separate interviews with attorneys who went on the tour, and excerpts from these transcripts are shared below. They have been edited for length and clarity.
One interview featured Kerry Kennedy and Anthony Enriquez with the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization, who are in Episode 17 of “The Light Switch,” our weekly podcast.
The other interview is with Alanah Odoms, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, and Nora Ahmed, the organization’s legal director.
RFK Human Rights and the ACLU of Louisiana have collaborated in the past, most notably as of late on a 2024 report – “Inside the Black Hole” – that detailed “abused and disappeared” immigrants in the state. It was compiled based on interviews with more than 6,000 interviews and seven tours with officials from the New Orleans ICE office.
Last month’s tour was just the latest trip to the state’s ICE facilities for Ahmed and Enriquez, both of whom have clients in custody.
The interviews included claims of unsanitary living conditions, inadequate medical care and abuse. Questions about these allegations were sent to the ICE media relations office, and its representatives have yet to respond.
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Q: You’ve visited these facilities before. Did you get the sense that preparations were made in advance to have each facility put its best foot forward, or was it much as you’ve seen on past visits?
Odoms: This was actually my first time inside immigrant detention. … I was really surprised that it did not seem like much preparation went into making things appear, at least visually, better than what they normally are. I think where the real dog and pony show took place was in their presentation to us about their operations and their standards and their protocols. That was like night and day, hearing from ICE about how they care for people and what their standards are, versus hearing directly from the residents.
Q: The first stop on the tour was the ICE Processing Center in Alexandria. Take us through your first impressions.
Odoms: First of all, every single one of these places has many layers of barbed wire around it, so they depict prison immediately. Then you’re brought through metal detectors and security. You’re you have to surrender everything, even a smart watch. You’re not allowed to have any recording devices, anything like that. Then you’re brought through these metal sally port doors, which are these huge metal doors that slam shut behind you, and you are very, very aware that you are in a prison.
Then you walk in and you see there are two main areas in the staging facility where people are either held in prison, like cells, like a cell block, very traditional prison … and it opens up into what they call airport-style seating area, where people are actually sitting, chained at their hands, chained at their feet, and chained at their bellies, waiting for their planes to take off.
That is what you see as soon as you walk in, and they did not try to hide the people who were waiting. There were about maybe a handful, if not maybe 10 to 12 people who were waiting for a flight, who were sitting clearly chained … at every single appendage of their body.
The second room is more of a gymnasium style room where there are between 70 to 90 people being housed in bunk beds. … This aging facility is where the male population is held inside these either cell blocks or bunk-style barracks.
In the open room, there’s a large Plexiglas or glass partition where you can very clearly see who’s inside, and they can very clearly see you. As soon as folks saw us, they immediately came to that window. And honestly, the looks on all of their faces were like, “Help.”
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Q: Kerry, your organization has a global focus on human rights concerns. What’s happening in Louisiana’s ICE facilities that has made this situation one of your priorities?
Kennedy: When we were in Louisiana, in the detention centers, we met with a woman who is also one of our clients, who her doctor told her that she might have colon cancer, and she was picked up [to see a doctor] a couple of days later. She’s been asking for four and a half months to see a doctor to see whether or not she has colon cancer, and her ability to see that doctor has been denied for four and a half months.
We met another woman, an elderly woman, who begged and pleaded to see a doctor because she came into the facility walking perfectly, and now she’s forced to use a wheelchair, and she doesn’t know why. She’s begged and pleaded to see a doctor. They finally said, ”We’ll send you to health care,” and she was sexually assaulted when she did that.
I met another young woman who’s 26 years old. She is gay. She’s from Russia. She fled Russia because of the oppression against gay people, because her life was in danger. She’s got a master’s in chemical engineering, and she was working for a pharmaceutical company, making medicines for us, for our country, and now instead, she’s in this detention center.
This makes no sense. These are people who are in our communities, who are creating change, who are paying taxes, who are making our country stronger and better. And instead, now you and I … [are] paying through our tax dollars for their breakfast, lunch and dinner every single day, and for them to be in a prison situation instead about the world creating change. So that’s why we’re attacking this.
Q: How do you mount a legal strategy for your clients against an administration that is willing to subvert due process when it comes to immigration law?
Enriquez: This is a question that actually has two answers. One is we work hand in hand with people who are living and working in the communities where detention centers exist. So for those of you who are in Louisiana, one thing that’s been interesting is when we have discussions with the workers who are guards in some of these private prisons, these detention centers. They tell us, “I really didn’t have another choice. It was either work here or in a casino, and this was the only thing around for me. This was a way that I could feed my own family.”
So a core element of what we’re doing is to try and extend the notion of human rights, not just to the people who are suffering the types of physical sexual abuse that that you just heard Kerry speak of the detained immigrants, but actually the workers who are being exploited in these detention centers as well by private prison.
CEOs … are pocketing these taxpayer dollars for their own bonuses. People might not be aware that the head of the corporate leadership of the GEO Group, which is one of the owners of many of the detention centers in Louisiana, they just gave themselves big fat raises after the passage of this last domestic policy bill. That’s money that they’re actually taking out of the hands of pockets of Louisiana workers as well. So that’s one of the ways that we really try and broaden the conception of what human rights is, and we let people know this is a big fight that’s affecting all of us.
Q: Statistics show that roughly half of the people being detained in Louisiana ICE facilities do not have a prior criminal background, and many have not been formally charged with a crime.
Odoms: The only designation that they have that separates people who they believe have criminal histories is this high- [or] low-designation, and whether you get put in a cell block or whether you get put in the barrack style living conditions.
When we asked about classification for how people were classified as either high or low, we didn’t get a very clear answer on that at all. Sometimes they were saying, “Well, they come to us that way from other facilities, so someone else is making the classification, and we’re just kind of rubber stamping that and either putting somebody in a cell block or putting someone in a barracks.” Or, “We have a point system,” and they said, “Oh, you’re going to have to request that in writing.”
So anytime we kind of brushed up against a question that would really illuminate what was happening in terms of constitutional violations and real problems, all of those questions were met with: “That would have to be something that you submit in writing.”
Q: What explanations have you been given as to why your clients are being warehoused indefinitely in ICE detention without any opportunity for bond, and what level of proof is the federal government providing to justify this?
Ahmed: We have two clients [and] we’ll be filing habeas petitions* in short order that illustrate this.
One of our clients, they’ve attempted to remove her to six different countries. All have said no, but she’s still there because apparently they’re just going to run through the list, which is … wildly preposterous.
* What is a habeas petition? It’s a legal filing with the court to require authorities to present the legal reason someone is held in prison.
In terms of bond, we’re going to bring another habeas challenge. Because right now you’ve probably heard the administration is [taking into custody] people who appear at their immigration proceedings. We have a client who appeared for her asylum proceeding, and then she was whisked away. The reason she was whisked away is because of a newfound interpretation of the United States Code, Section 1225, which no longer is interpreting mandatory detention as applicable to people appearing at the border, and is now just applying to anybody who entered the country without inspection.
So you’re now starting to see people like our client, who’ve been in the United States for two decades, showing up as they’re supposed to to an immigration court hearing. Are you really a flight risk if you’re showing up to your court hearing? Probably not. And in her particular case, there’s no criminal record. So you’re also talking about somebody who there is no conceivable way that you could possibly say that she’s a danger.
I still want to say that people who do have criminal records are also not dangerous, let’s be clear, because in this country, a criminal record could include not paying a fine or having to pick up your child and not making a court date. So I don’t like to pitch people with criminal records as people who are dangerous because the vast majority are not.
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Q: Recently in Louisiana, two powerful members of our congressional delegation intervened to secure the release of two detainees. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise stepped in to have an Iranian woman who’s lived in New Orleans for nearly 50 years released, and Sen. John Kennedy was instrumental in the release of a Mexican woman who’s married to a U.S. Marine. Does this give you any glimmer of hope that other powerful Republicans will call for the Trump administration to pause its sweeping immigration enforcement efforts?
Kennedy: I think it’s important that people at the highest levels are beginning to understand the impact of these terrible laws. You know, one of the problems with GEO Group is that it runs prisons. So this is a detention facility that is run as a prison.
But before this, we were not always putting people in detention, and a lot of these people have been in the communities, have been in the Marines, have served our country. They are our teachers. They are giving us the food that we eat every day. They’re making our medicines.
They can be in the community, and they’re great programs – proven again and again and again – where 100% of the people who are released into the community return for their detention here, for their immigration hearings and also to be deported, if that’s ultimately what’s supposed to happen to them.
So why in the world are we taking people? Why are we kidnapping people off the street and treating them with such inhumanity and harming our country at the same time? This makes no sense, unless you think about it as a way to enrich a cruel corporation, which is what’s happened.
Q: The sheer number of people being detained makes it close to impossible that everyone is represented by an attorney. Is there any solution within sight that, at the very least, would ensure every detainee receives legal representation?
Kennedy: Yeah, well, there’s a clear solution – open up the doors and let people be in the community, which was the solution under the Bush administration, the Obama administration, many of the other administrations. That’s what would happen to people, and there are proven programs where 100% of them come back to their [immigration court] hearing. So that’s the least expensive, most effective and best way to assure that people’s rights are not being compromised by the United States government.
Q: We’re seeing increasing incidents of people showing up for immigration court hearings at the appointed time and date, following official instructions only to be taken into ICE custody and placed into detention. How are you advising clients who might want to adhere to the rules but face a good chance they will be apprehended and then fast-tracked toward deportation or imprisoned indefinitely?
Odoms: We have very direct guidance for people who are able to obtain counsel. They absolutely need to do so, and they need to presume that they are going to be apprehended. Like, it’s not if they’re going to be taken. It’s when they’re going to be taken.
But here’s the thing, I really want this to come across: Everyone is still having faith in this system, that if they actually present themselves and continue to do what’s right, being compliant, being adherent, that they will actually be given some kind of consideration. And that is not true
Ahmed: … What preparations people need to do? They need to prepare in two to three very distinct ways, I think, and we can tell them, talk to an immigration attorney about a motion to reopen your immigration proceedings very quickly. Also try to ensure that you have access to a federal practitioner who will be able to file a habeas petition for you when you’re incarcerated.
… We’ve seen a lot of congressional folks start stepping up, have a privacy waiver signed and make sure that everyone important in your life, including your congressional representatives, is able to communicate on your behalf with ICE. You can download the document off of the [ICE] website. … You get to fill in the information of whoever is allowed to have access, and then they can start advocating for you with ICE. You should know your congressional representatives, who can do that, your local friends and family.
Q: Alana, your organization has always had as its bedrock the belief that our Constitution, our laws and judicial system ultimately would not let us down. Do you feel that certainty still exists?
Odoms: Yeah, it does feel like the safety net of our Constitution has started to fray in some really fundamental ways.
… Myself and every other lawyer that’s been trained in this country, we’re trained in the Constitution, both of Louisiana and of the United States of America. We’re not trained to actually respond to an authoritarian regime – that is the true issue that we’re all facing. What do you do when the Constitution doesn’t apply anymore? What do we do when we actually have laws and those laws are being completely thrown out, how do we respond?
There’s a lot for us to learn from organizers and folks who have been doing work outside of the power structure, because I don’t think we’re going to find our answers in the traditional way that we have in the past.
… That’s the outside strategy that we have to work on. It doesn’t necessarily have to do with filing a lawsuit, but it does have to do with strategizing around people power. How do we do that? Because these systems are only going to buckle under the the pressure of people saying, “Oh, hell no, that looks like an authoritarian regime. That’s not what we want. We want a process. We want due process. We want people to have access to lawyers. We want people to have access to all the things that our constitution says.”
That’s a people power movement.
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