The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has denied allegations that migrants in a Louisiana detention facility are kept in compromised conditions under severe human rights abuses as the reports from immigrant watchdogs accused the government of disappearing these migrants by sending them to detention facilities.
Different groups, including Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights (RFKHR), American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and others, issued a report claiming to have spoken with more than 6,000 immigrants detained in these facilities who revealed that they had suffered from different types of abuses, such as sexual assault and solitary confinement.
The situation is particularly exacerbated because these detention centers are as far away as 100 miles from urban centers, which mostly keeps them out of the public eye.
The reports indicated that keeping the migrants so far away from the urban centers essentially meant that they “disappeared” from the public, as their contact with their family members or legal teams became almost impossible.
Sarah Decker from the RFKHR stated that the perpetrators of this violence have managed to do it without any oversight and that her group only discovered the miserable situation of immigrants after physically going into those facilities and seeing the situation themselves.
Decker further noted that Louisiana’s detention centers are acting as a black hole where people have disappeared and are unable to escape due to the legal barriers.
Reportedly, human rights groups started visiting these centers in 2022 to provide legal assistance to the migrants, only to find that they were kept in abusive conditions. They visited these centers almost 60 times and interviewed at least 6,000 people who were facing trouble accessing lawyers because of their far-off locations.
Decker also stated that a large number of these migrants are brought to Louisiana from other states, including New York and California, and that only one legal service provider with 12 lawyers is present in the area, which makes most of the migrants unable to get any assistance.
The research report mentioned the story of Daniel, who entered the United States at the age of 7 and later married an American but was eventually detained and transported to the Central Louisiana Ice Processing Center during his thirties.
He had suffered from epilepsy and a seizure in the detention facility. As he was treated, doctors allegedly grabbed him forcefully to drill into his bones without administering anesthesia. He ended up having suicidal thoughts and surrendered his immigration case in November 2023 and agreed on deportation, so he was eventually separated from his American wife and two children.
The ICE spokesperson stated that the agency is committed to treating all immigrants in a humane way and taking care of all their legal rights while also providing necessary medical support.
