Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has faced criticism for sending immigrant students and scholars who were arrested at pro-Palestine demonstrations thousands of miles from where they were arrested to detention facilities. In several reports, ICE relocated detainees from Northeast cities to far-flung centers in Louisiana and Texas, raising concerns about the transfers of the agency and the availability of legal assistance to the detainees.
Students Moved Far from Legal and Family Support
On March 8, ICE agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia University, at his home in New York. Khalil was in a detention center outside of rural Louisiana, more than three hours from the closest city, the following evening.
Georgetown University professor Badar Khan Suri was arrested close to Washington, DC, and initially shipped to Louisiana, then transferred to a jail complex in Texas. Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk was arrested outside of Boston and deported to a for-profit prison in southern Louisiana within 24 hours of being detained.
These far-flung transfers highlight ICE’s control over the placement of detainees. Immigration attorneys and activists have sounded the alarm, noting how moving people far from their lawyers, loved ones, and social support networks effectively cripples their capacity to contest immigration cases.
ICE Cites Logistical Reasons, Critics See Rights Violations
ICE has justified the transfers as practical necessities. Detention, its website says, is intended to “secure [immigrants’] presence for immigration proceedings or removal from the United States” and emphasizes the system is “non-punitive.”
Attorneys for the government argued in court documents that ICE transferred Ozturk, Suri, and Khalil because detention space was in short supply where they were arrested initially.
Yet civil rights organizations have called some of these Southern detention facilities “black holes” due to deplorable conditions and restricted communication with the outside world. At least 14 of the 20 largest immigration detention facilities in the country are located in Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi, NPR reports.
Adriel D. Orozco, the American Immigration Council’s senior policy counsel, said these transfers are technically done within the immigration system. But he added, “I haven’t seen this kind of drastic transfer system, in the sense of sending folks from the Northeast down to the South.”
“It does feel more of a change under this Trump 2.0,” Orozco said to CNN.
