ACLU: Rümeysa Öztürk: I Saw the Horrors of ICE Detention Firsthand. It is No Place for a Child.

Rümeysa Öztürk: I Saw the Horrors of ICE Detention Firsthand. It is No Place for a Child.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Rümeysa Öztürk was unlawfully detained by ICE agents in Massachusetts in March 2025 for an op-ed she co-authored in the Tufts Daily. She was held in a for-profit detention facility in Louisiana for weeks. She has spent her time after being released working on her dissertation. She now holds a Ph.D. in child study and human development.

Each day, I read more news about children as young as two years old who are detained in a for-profit ICE detention center in Dilley, Texas, away from their friends, schools, and communities. I see reports of handwritten letters from children asking to be released, as they describe the fear they experience day in and day out while in detention. As an applied developmental scientist who spent more than 13 years studying child and youth development, as well as someone who has firsthand experienced the horrors of encountering immigration enforcement and the inhumane treatment and conditions that follow, I am deeply concerned for children impacted by immigration enforcement surges.

There is no shortage of research that demonstrates the connection between family detention and deportation proceedings of children and negative educational outcomes, elevated levels of distress, mental and physical harm, trauma, and decline in multiple aspects of well-being. Currently, approximately 1 in 12 children in the U.S. face risk of deportation of a loved one and the lasting negative impacts on their psychological and physical well-being. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has detained at least 3,800 children since mid-January 2025. Of those 3,800 kids, more than 600 unaccompanied children have been put in custody of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and were taken from their parents in many cases.

Regardless of my role as researcher, on a human level I am constantly thinking: What do children feel when they first encounter immigration enforcement, who are usually armed and masked? Do their little bodies tremble or freeze? What happens when federal agents take their parents away from them? What does it mean for a preschooler to be detained? What is their crime? Is it being born or, perhaps, seeking asylum? What sense of childhood remains when immigrant children are detained in inhumane conditions?

What I experienced as an adult paints enough of a bleak picture. As a 30-year-old, I was unlawfully abducted from the street by masked and armed agents for being a co-author in a school op-ed at Tufts Daily that advocated for Palestinian human rights. I was sent to a for-profit ICE prison thousands of miles away from school and the community I’d built in Boston, not to mention thousands of miles away from my family in Turkey. The experience has been profoundly harmful to me, even as an adult. Despite the immense care, love, and support from my community, there has still not been a single day when I have felt safe walking the streets again — not even on my way home or to school. It’s not just the moment of abduction that is terrifying, but also where one will go and the inhumane treatment they may face that cannot be considered developmentally appropriate for any single child. Research suggests that interacting with the immigration system poses harm to children’s long-term development. Previous personal accounts indicate that suffering continues throughout the lifetime.

As I continue to heal from my own experience in a for-profit ICE prison, I can’t help but wonder if children detained will ever feel safe again. I worry about how they will grow up and carry this adverse experience for a lifetime. Interacting with immigration enforcement not only poses developmental risk to children detained in those shameful places for longer periods of time, but also to children (including citizen children) whose parents are detained at the for-profit ICE prisons. In the for-profit prison where I was unlawfully detained, I met countless mothers who cried everyday longing for their children. I met mothers in the deportation process whose hearts were shattered when their children were taken into foster care. I listened as some mothers tried to speak with their children on tablets, only to have officers order them to close the tablets or take them away, leaving their children in tears. I met mothers whose babies were taken from them just weeks after birth. I met with a pregnant mom waiting for her deportation. Her children are American citizens.

But these cruel immigration raids aren’t only harming immigrant children or children with immigrant parents. The experience also affects classmates who are waiting for their detained peers to return. These same children are trying to make sense of what they see on news reports of kids being detained, of disappearing classmates, students, and adults on the street during ICE raids. Children and their teachers are being taken from their communities, leaving classrooms and communities in fear. There are accounts of BIPOC and immigrant children being bullied at school.

We must all ask ourselves: is this really the world we want for our children — one where they are afraid to go to school, home, hospitals, neighborhoods, playgrounds, museums, and libraries for fear of immigration detention?

I hope there is an end to family detention so that these parents and young children can proceed with their cases while living in their communities, going to school, getting medical treatment, and playing with their friends. Too many children are facing detention because of ICE’s rampant operations. But detention is no place for a child. It’s cruel and unnecessary. We can all take action, whether that means raising our voices to demand an end to child detention, or simply educating ourselves on how current immigration policies are impacting children.

Published February 25, 2026 at 01:03AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/RbPciWs

ACLU: Rümeysa Öztürk: I Saw the Horrors of ICE Detention Firsthand. It is No Place for a Child.

Rümeysa Öztürk: I Saw the Horrors of ICE Detention Firsthand. It is No Place for a Child.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Rümeysa Öztürk was unlawfully detained by ICE agents in Massachusetts in March 2025 for an op-ed she co-authored in the Tufts Daily. She was held in a for-profit detention facility in Louisiana for weeks. She has spent her time after being released working on her dissertation. She now holds a Ph.D. in child study and human development.

Each day, I read more news about children as young as two years old who are detained in a for-profit ICE detention center in Dilley, Texas, away from their friends, schools, and communities. I see reports of handwritten letters from children asking to be released, as they describe the fear they experience day in and day out while in detention. As an applied developmental scientist who spent more than 13 years studying child and youth development, as well as someone who has firsthand experienced the horrors of encountering immigration enforcement and the inhumane treatment and conditions that follow, I am deeply concerned for children impacted by immigration enforcement surges.

There is no shortage of research that demonstrates the connection between family detention and deportation proceedings of children and negative educational outcomes, elevated levels of distress, mental and physical harm, trauma, and decline in multiple aspects of well-being. Currently, approximately 1 in 12 children in the U.S. face risk of deportation of a loved one and the lasting negative impacts on their psychological and physical well-being. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has detained at least 3,800 children since mid-January 2025. Of those 3,800 kids, more than 600 unaccompanied children have been put in custody of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and were taken from their parents in many cases.

Regardless of my role as researcher, on a human level I am constantly thinking: What do children feel when they first encounter immigration enforcement, who are usually armed and masked? Do their little bodies tremble or freeze? What happens when federal agents take their parents away from them? What does it mean for a preschooler to be detained? What is their crime? Is it being born or, perhaps, seeking asylum? What sense of childhood remains when immigrant children are detained in inhumane conditions?

What I experienced as an adult paints enough of a bleak picture. As a 30-year-old, I was unlawfully abducted from the street by masked and armed agents for being a co-author in a school op-ed at Tufts Daily that advocated for Palestinian human rights. I was sent to a for-profit ICE prison thousands of miles away from school and the community I’d built in Boston, not to mention thousands of miles away from my family in Turkey. The experience has been profoundly harmful to me, even as an adult. Despite the immense care, love, and support from my community, there has still not been a single day when I have felt safe walking the streets again — not even on my way home or to school. It’s not just the moment of abduction that is terrifying, but also where one will go and the inhumane treatment they may face that cannot be considered developmentally appropriate for any single child. Research suggests that interacting with the immigration system poses harm to children’s long-term development. Previous personal accounts indicate that suffering continues throughout the lifetime.

As I continue to heal from my own experience in a for-profit ICE prison, I can’t help but wonder if children detained will ever feel safe again. I worry about how they will grow up and carry this adverse experience for a lifetime. Interacting with immigration enforcement not only poses developmental risk to children detained in those shameful places for longer periods of time, but also to children (including citizen children) whose parents are detained at the for-profit ICE prisons. In the for-profit prison where I was unlawfully detained, I met countless mothers who cried everyday longing for their children. I met mothers in the deportation process whose hearts were shattered when their children were taken into foster care. I listened as some mothers tried to speak with their children on tablets, only to have officers order them to close the tablets or take them away, leaving their children in tears. I met mothers whose babies were taken from them just weeks after birth. I met with a pregnant mom waiting for her deportation. Her children are American citizens.

But these cruel immigration raids aren’t only harming immigrant children or children with immigrant parents. The experience also affects classmates who are waiting for their detained peers to return. These same children are trying to make sense of what they see on news reports of kids being detained, of disappearing classmates, students, and adults on the street during ICE raids. Children and their teachers are being taken from their communities, leaving classrooms and communities in fear. There are accounts of BIPOC and immigrant children being bullied at school.

We must all ask ourselves: is this really the world we want for our children — one where they are afraid to go to school, home, hospitals, neighborhoods, playgrounds, museums, and libraries for fear of immigration detention?

I hope there is an end to family detention so that these parents and young children can proceed with their cases while living in their communities, going to school, getting medical treatment, and playing with their friends. Too many children are facing detention because of ICE’s rampant operations. But detention is no place for a child. It’s cruel and unnecessary. We can all take action, whether that means raising our voices to demand an end to child detention, or simply educating ourselves on how current immigration policies are impacting children.

Published February 24, 2026 at 07:33PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/BO6Z9nV

ACLU: Congress Must Rein in ICE to Improve the State of the Union

Congress Must Rein in ICE to Improve the State of the Union

In times of war and peace, prosperity and depression, American presidents have complied with their constitutional obligation to deliver to Congress an update on the nation.

It’s a hallowed tradition, but this year, due to President Donald Trump’s own actions, the state of this union is bleak. However, the good news is that We the People are showing tremendous courage and pushing back to protect each other.

Our country approaches a crossroads at ever-increasing speed, pushed to this brink by the Trump-Vance administration’s lawless immigration force. The administration says U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol are pursuing the president’s cruel mass deportation agenda. But the implications are far broader, causing violence, chaos, and civil rights abuses at an accelerating rate. Around the country, federal agents have descended upon communities, targeting citizens and noncitizens alike, going after young children and families.

Department of Homeland Security Lawlessness Affects All of Us

For months, the Trump administration has encouraged federal agents to commit horrifying abuses claiming they have "absolute immunity.” The results have been devastating: Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Ruben Ray Martinez, and Keith Porter Jr. are dead at the hands of federal agents. Another 39 people have died in ICE custody in the second Trump administration, including 8 just this year. And it’s only February. In addition, ICE has detained at least 3,800 children under this administration.

Federal agents have masked up, demanded to see people’s papers, scanned their faces, and taken people off the street simply for “looking” Somali, Latino, or Asian. Citizens have been dragged from their homes in their underwear, thrown in unmarked vans, driven to detention centers in federal buildings, shackled at the ankles, and denied water. Communities in Minneapolis, Chicago, Charlotte, D.C., New Orleans, Los Angeles, and beyond live in fear — their anxieties justified by accounts of federal agents dragging children from their beds in the middle of the night, stalking families outside hospital emergency rooms, staking out schools, and following kids home.

None of this can be justified as pursuing people who pose a serious public safety theat. According to a leaked internal DHS document, fewer than 14 percent of people detained have been convicted of a violent crime. Instead, these tactics are calculated to inflict terror on anyone not born in the U.S., regardless of their immigration status, as well as on their families and communities.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents, acting more like a secret police force from a totalitarian country than from a nation of laws, have also targeted people exercising their First Amendment rights. People who record federal agents, peacefully protest, offer mutual aid in their communities, or even pray in front of ICE facilities are being sprayed directly in the face with tear gas and pepper spray, shot with pepper balls, surveilled digitally, and followed home. Many have suffered injuries, had property damaged, and experienced severe trauma.

Communities Pushed Back. Congress Should Follow. 

Despite these direct assaults on our constitutional freedoms, we are also seeing the fortitude and resilience of our communities. Minnesotans have turned out week after week — sometimes in sub-zero temperatures and always at personal risk from violent federal agents — to document and peacefully protest the attacks on their neighbors. And their courage has already forced the administration to retreat. The administration has said they’re pulling back agents from Minnesota, although they have not even suggested they are stopping their unlawful policies and practices. The Border Patrol’s ringleader, Greg Bovino, was demoted. Some agents have admitted to lying about agents’ violence.

Public opinion is firmly against Stephen Miller’s dystopian police state and the federal government’s violence overall, and we’re making it known. Nearly 300,000 people joined the ACLU to send messages to their members of Congress, urging them to reject any bill that would fuel ICE and Border Patrol’s lawless operations.

Thanks to the powerful advocacy of people across the country, Congress recently refused to fund DHS without new restrictions. Now, the administration is grudgingly acknowledging a need to negotiate further limits on ICE.

Congress has the power to rein in this rogue agency. Congress must protect our rights by ending ICE's rampant racial profiling and halting the construction of huge human warehouses. It must stop ICE from putting small children behind bars and push for accountability so victims of abuse can get justice. Congress must mandate transparency, so federal agents take off their masks, turn on body cameras, and fully cooperate with any federal, state, and local investigations into wrongdoing.

These important steps would serve as just a downpayment on dismantling the lawless and bloated secret paramilitary force, with a budget bigger than the Marine Corps’, currently terrorizing our communities. We’ve seen the cost of Miller’s hate-fueled terror campaign, from rights violations to the suffering of small businesses because their employees are targeted. People are afraid to get urgent medical care, even to give birth. Classrooms are half-empty. Witnesses to crimes are afraid to come forward. Immigrant family members, friends, and neighbors are afraid to leave their homes and take part in daily life — unable to make the many contributions to our communities we have long counted on.

Ultimately, we need to remake an immigration system that roots enforcement in the rule of law, creates a pathway to citizenship for those who have been longstanding residents, and celebrates the ways immigrants make our country stronger rather than scapegoating and dividing.

You can count on President Trump telling us tonight that the state of the union is the strongest it’s ever been. He may be right, but not in the way he thinks. His attacks are backfiring because we know that our union is strongest when we defend the rights of all of us. It’s up to us to create a stronger, better America, and it starts with Congress reining in the president’s rogue DHS paramilitary.

Published February 24, 2026 at 06:35AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/dx3avoj

ACLU: Congress Must Rein in ICE to Improve the State of the Union

Congress Must Rein in ICE to Improve the State of the Union

In times of war and peace, prosperity and depression, American presidents have complied with their constitutional obligation to deliver to Congress an update on the nation.

It’s a hallowed tradition, but this year, due to President Donald Trump’s own actions, the state of this union is bleak. However, the good news is that We the People are showing tremendous courage and pushing back to protect each other.

Our country approaches a crossroads at ever-increasing speed, pushed to this brink by the Trump-Vance administration’s lawless immigration force. The administration says U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol are pursuing the president’s cruel mass deportation agenda. But the implications are far broader, causing violence, chaos, and civil rights abuses at an accelerating rate. Around the country, federal agents have descended upon communities, targeting citizens and noncitizens alike, going after young children and families.

Department of Homeland Security Lawlessness Affects All of Us

For months, the Trump administration has encouraged federal agents to commit horrifying abuses claiming they have "absolute immunity.” The results have been devastating: Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Ruben Ray Martinez, and Keith Porter Jr. are dead at the hands of federal agents. Another 39 people have died in ICE custody in the second Trump administration, including 8 just this year. And it’s only February. In addition, ICE has detained at least 3,800 children under this administration.

Federal agents have masked up, demanded to see people’s papers, scanned their faces, and taken people off the street simply for “looking” Somali, Latino, or Asian. Citizens have been dragged from their homes in their underwear, thrown in unmarked vans, driven to detention centers in federal buildings, shackled at the ankles, and denied water. Communities in Minneapolis, Chicago, Charlotte, D.C., New Orleans, Los Angeles, and beyond live in fear — their anxieties justified by accounts of federal agents dragging children from their beds in the middle of the night, stalking families outside hospital emergency rooms, staking out schools, and following kids home.

None of this can be justified as pursuing people who pose a serious public safety theat. According to a leaked internal DHS document, fewer than 14 percent of people detained have been convicted of a violent crime. Instead, these tactics are calculated to inflict terror on anyone not born in the U.S., regardless of their immigration status, as well as on their families and communities.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents, acting more like a secret police force from a totalitarian country than from a nation of laws, have also targeted people exercising their First Amendment rights. People who record federal agents, peacefully protest, offer mutual aid in their communities, or even pray in front of ICE facilities are being sprayed directly in the face with tear gas and pepper spray, shot with pepper balls, surveilled digitally, and followed home. Many have suffered injuries, had property damaged, and experienced severe trauma.

Communities Pushed Back. Congress Should Follow. 

Despite these direct assaults on our constitutional freedoms, we are also seeing the fortitude and resilience of our communities. Minnesotans have turned out week after week — sometimes in sub-zero temperatures and always at personal risk from violent federal agents — to document and peacefully protest the attacks on their neighbors. And their courage has already forced the administration to retreat. The administration has said they’re pulling back agents from Minnesota, although they have not even suggested they are stopping their unlawful policies and practices. The Border Patrol’s ringleader, Greg Bovino, was demoted. Some agents have admitted to lying about agents’ violence.

Public opinion is firmly against Stephen Miller’s dystopian police state and the federal government’s violence overall, and we’re making it known. Nearly 300,000 people joined the ACLU to send messages to their members of Congress, urging them to reject any bill that would fuel ICE and Border Patrol’s lawless operations.

Thanks to the powerful advocacy of people across the country, Congress recently refused to fund DHS without new restrictions. Now, the administration is grudgingly acknowledging a need to negotiate further limits on ICE.

Congress has the power to rein in this rogue agency. Congress must protect our rights by ending ICE's rampant racial profiling and halting the construction of huge human warehouses. It must stop ICE from putting small children behind bars and push for accountability so victims of abuse can get justice. Congress must mandate transparency, so federal agents take off their masks, turn on body cameras, and fully cooperate with any federal, state, and local investigations into wrongdoing.

These important steps would serve as just a downpayment on dismantling the lawless and bloated secret paramilitary force, with a budget bigger than the Marine Corps’, currently terrorizing our communities. We’ve seen the cost of Miller’s hate-fueled terror campaign, from rights violations to the suffering of small businesses because their employees are targeted. People are afraid to get urgent medical care, even to give birth. Classrooms are half-empty. Witnesses to crimes are afraid to come forward. Immigrant family members, friends, and neighbors are afraid to leave their homes and take part in daily life — unable to make the many contributions to our communities we have long counted on.

Ultimately, we need to remake an immigration system that roots enforcement in the rule of law, creates a pathway to citizenship for those who have been longstanding residents, and celebrates the ways immigrants make our country stronger rather than scapegoating and dividing.

You can count on President Trump telling us tonight that the state of the union is the strongest it’s ever been. He may be right, but not in the way he thinks. His attacks are backfiring because we know that our union is strongest when we defend the rights of all of us. It’s up to us to create a stronger, better America, and it starts with Congress reining in the president’s rogue DHS paramilitary.

Published February 24, 2026 at 01:05AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/EADq74R

ACLU: Into the Black Hole: Navigating the Center of Trump’s Deportation Force in Louisiana

Into the Black Hole: Navigating the Center of Trump’s Deportation Force in Louisiana

EDITOR’S NOTE: Nora Ahmed joined the ACLU of Louisiana as Legal Director in 2020. She has helped to build the organization’s policing, immigration, voting rights, and First Amendment dockets from the ground up. Under her leadership, the Justice Lab program has secured nearly $1.5 million in settlements for police brutality victims and changed Louisiana’s statute of limitations after two Supreme Court cases, expanding constitutional protections for thousands of Louisianans. She’s now leading the newest iteration of Justice Lab focused on freeing immigrants wrongfully detained in Louisiana’s carceral system.

Last year on October 30, I drove six hours to an immigration detention facility at night, looking for my 18-year-old client, Juan. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) kidnapped Juan, who uses a pseudonym due to age and privacy concerns, off the street in New York while he was on his way to work. ICE then sent him to Louisiana where he languished in the Jackson Parish Correctional Center for nearly three months. Driving up to the facility at 11 p.m., I had a federal court order in hand, signed by a judge who had ordered Juan’s immediate release. But when I showed up, the correction officers refused to set him free. So, in the middle of the night, our partner attorneys and I filed a motion alleging ICE was disobeying the court order. The next morning, we secured Juan’s freedom.

Here in Louisiana, we often refer to the state as the “black hole” of immigration detention, where people simply disappear. According to some estimates, over 60,000 people have been trapped by this system annually. Immigrants detained in Louisiana face abhorrent conditions, along with a lack of access to legal support. It took a while for our team to get to the point of trying to free a client in the middle of the night in rural Louisiana. But against innumerable odds, we have been able to release dozens of people from immigration detention centers here over the years — through parole applications, advocacy, litigation, assistance for people representing themselves in court, and habeas petitions. A habeas petition asks the federal court to order the release of someone in immigration detention who has been wrongfully detained. While thousands who deserve justice remain left behind, the ACLU of Louisiana is expanding our work to connect them with crucial immigration services and obtain their freedom.

Building immigration work from the ground up in Louisiana

Through years of intentional relationship building, my colleagues and I were able to gain a foothold within this black hole. We now understand how it works in ways we did not a few years back. As the Trump administration has cracked down on immigration and used Louisiana as the center of its mass deportation campaign, our foothold has allowed us to expose injustices from within, while continuing to free wrongfully detained immigrants.

When I joined the ACLU of Louisiana during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, I was tasked with building out our immigration practice. A critical first step in my role as legal director was to seek out the people already doing legal support on the ground, including the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Immigration Services and Legal Advocacy (ISLA), and other local advocates.​ While working with these groups, and the current Director of Strategic U.S. Litigation at the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center, I quickly learned that local organizations were stretched thin. In fact, when we first began our immigration work at the ACLU of Louisiana, the actual daily population of people detained and the number of detention centers operating in the state was unclear. The incredibly remote locations of most detention facilities in the state, and how often authorities transported people from one detention center to another, only made things harder. I now know it can take at least three hours, and sometimes more than seven, to get to certain facilities depending on traffic and road closures. At this point, I have been to every single detention center in our state multiple times.

To get to this point, it was critical to gain access to all the detention centers operating within our state. To do so, we developed Know Your Rights packets and presentations that we submitted for approval to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). That rigorous approval process ultimately provided us with access to all operating detention centers in the state by 2022. By presenting critical legal information to those detained, we learned that there were thousands of individuals detained in Louisiana without representation, a much higher number than we anticipated. This is not suprising considering Louisiana operates ten ICE detention centers, each of which falls within the jurisdiction of the ICE Field Office in New Orleans. The office also oversees detention centers in Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Tennessee. Louisiana alone is second only to Texas in detaining the highest number of immigrants in the country.

The state is also home to the only detention center attached to an airport in the country: the Alexandria Staging Facility. Tens of thousands of people get deported from, or pass through, the staging facility annually. Many, if not most, are never to be seen or heard from again. When a person arrives at the staging facility, the government has already deemed them deportable, which means there is little recourse to be had. When ICE sends immigrants there, attorneys and family members struggle to obtain the most basic information about how their client or family member ended up there and, most importantly, how they can get out.

Against this bleak backdrop, we became familiar faces to the wardens and correctional officers in charge of these ICE facilities, and with the individuals heading up the New Orleans ICE Field Office. Having access allowed us to be a resource for detained individuals. While it did not ease the sense of injustice immigrants felt in the detention centers, it helped people detained understand their legal options and pathways to release, if any.

As part of the ACLU of Louisiana’s immigration work, we prioritized visiting clients consistently, staying on site all day, and interacting with facility staff. That type of lasting presence brings people together, as long as all parties are respectful of one another’s work. The Field Office and the facilities came to understand that we would be respectful of their constraints if they could accommodate us. As we conducted Know Your Rights presentations in 2022 and 2023 at every detention center across the state, I was the point person on our team liaising with the facility. For that first year, I was there, every time, constantly conferring with detained individuals, facility staff, and with ICE.

Expanding immigration work despite surging cases under the Trump administration

Prior to the elections in 2024, we published our initial report on the Louisiana immigration system: “Inside the Black Hole.” It outlined the conditions we saw at these detention centers firsthand: abusive and discriminatory treatment; lack of access to basic hygiene and food; denial of care for medical emergencies, and more. Once Trump took office again, detention cases surged and conditions only worsened. Armed with years of relationship building and research, we were prepared. Our team was uniquely positioned to quickly get ahead of the surge and free unjustly detained individuals. This included high-profile cases like Mahmoud Khalil, and lesser-known cases like Juan’s. We have recently updated the report with new research explaining what detention looked like in Louisiana under the first year of the current Trump administration.

We hope our work highlights two crucial lessons for other legal practitioners. Firstly, be prepared for detained immigrants to end up in Louisiana. The Alexandria Staging Facility is the spoke in a wheel of mass detentions and deportations. Secondly, investing early in relationships and infrastructure is crucial for immigration providers, especially to gain access to facilities and get the work done from within. When there’s a crisis, it is often too late to build relationships from scratch.

The detention system in Louisiana may still function like a black hole in many ways, with no information coming in or out. But years of patient relationship building, legal advocacy, and documentation have created a blueprint for how we can pull people out of this opaque system. We are working to take that knowledge to others, through our Justice Lab: Immigration project, a volunteer corps that mobilizes attorneys barred nationwide to provide free legal habeas representation to detained immigrants in Louisiana. Our initiative partners overworked immigration attorneys with trained federal litigators to provide crucial habeas support. To answer the call of thousands in need of legal assistance at this critical point in our nation’s history, we aim to build a bench of at least 50 federally-barred litigators to work on cases in Louisiana, representing individuals from across the country detained within the state.

Our work is far from over, but these strategies can be replicated and expanded to protect more people from disappearing into detention. And while our own work is limited to Louisiana, residents across the country can contact their elected officials and urge them to end DHS abuses and hold ICE accountable. Learn more about our Justice Lab: Immigration project, spread the word, and if you are a fit, consider volunteering. Attorneys interested in volunteering can contact the ACLU of Louisiana.

Published February 11, 2026 at 12:33AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/3oWpCge

ACLU: Into the Black Hole: Navigating the Center of Trump’s Deportation Force in Louisiana

Into the Black Hole: Navigating the Center of Trump’s Deportation Force in Louisiana

EDITOR’S NOTE: Nora Ahmed joined the ACLU of Louisiana as Legal Director in 2020. She has helped to build the organization’s policing, immigration, voting rights, and First Amendment dockets from the ground up. Under her leadership, the Justice Lab program has secured nearly $1.5 million in settlements for police brutality victims and changed Louisiana’s statute of limitations after two Supreme Court cases, expanding constitutional protections for thousands of Louisianans. She’s now leading the newest iteration of Justice Lab focused on freeing immigrants wrongfully detained in Louisiana’s carceral system.

Last year on October 30, I drove six hours to an immigration detention facility at night, looking for my 18-year-old client, Juan. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) kidnapped Juan, who uses a pseudonym due to age and privacy concerns, off the street in New York while he was on his way to work. ICE then sent him to Louisiana where he languished in the Jackson Parish Correctional Center for nearly three months. Driving up to the facility at 11 p.m., I had a federal court order in hand, signed by a judge who had ordered Juan’s immediate release. But when I showed up, the correction officers refused to set him free. So, in the middle of the night, our partner attorneys and I filed a motion alleging ICE was disobeying the court order. The next morning, we secured Juan’s freedom.

Here in Louisiana, we often refer to the state as the “black hole” of immigration detention, where people simply disappear. According to some estimates, over 60,000 people have been trapped by this system annually. Immigrants detained in Louisiana face abhorrent conditions, along with a lack of access to legal support. It took a while for our team to get to the point of trying to free a client in the middle of the night in rural Louisiana. But against innumerable odds, we have been able to release dozens of people from immigration detention centers here over the years — through parole applications, advocacy, litigation, assistance for people representing themselves in court, and habeas petitions. A habeas petition asks the federal court to order the release of someone in immigration detention who has been wrongfully detained. While thousands who deserve justice remain left behind, the ACLU of Louisiana is expanding our work to connect them with crucial immigration services and obtain their freedom.

Building immigration work from the ground up in Louisiana

Through years of intentional relationship building, my colleagues and I were able to gain a foothold within this black hole. We now understand how it works in ways we did not a few years back. As the Trump administration has cracked down on immigration and used Louisiana as the center of its mass deportation campaign, our foothold has allowed us to expose injustices from within, while continuing to free wrongfully detained immigrants.

When I joined the ACLU of Louisiana during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, I was tasked with building out our immigration practice. A critical first step in my role as legal director was to seek out the people already doing legal support on the ground, including the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Immigration Services and Legal Advocacy (ISLA), and other local advocates.​ While working with these groups, and the current Director of Strategic U.S. Litigation at the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center, I quickly learned that local organizations were stretched thin. In fact, when we first began our immigration work at the ACLU of Louisiana, the actual daily population of people detained and the number of detention centers operating in the state was unclear. The incredibly remote locations of most detention facilities in the state, and how often authorities transported people from one detention center to another, only made things harder. I now know it can take at least three hours, and sometimes more than seven, to get to certain facilities depending on traffic and road closures. At this point, I have been to every single detention center in our state multiple times.

To get to this point, it was critical to gain access to all the detention centers operating within our state. To do so, we developed Know Your Rights packets and presentations that we submitted for approval to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). That rigorous approval process ultimately provided us with access to all operating detention centers in the state by 2022. By presenting critical legal information to those detained, we learned that there were thousands of individuals detained in Louisiana without representation, a much higher number than we anticipated. This is not suprising considering Louisiana operates ten ICE detention centers, each of which falls within the jurisdiction of the ICE Field Office in New Orleans. The office also oversees detention centers in Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Tennessee. Louisiana alone is second only to Texas in detaining the highest number of immigrants in the country.

The state is also home to the only detention center attached to an airport in the country: the Alexandria Staging Facility. Tens of thousands of people get deported from, or pass through, the staging facility annually. Many, if not most, are never to be seen or heard from again. When a person arrives at the staging facility, the government has already deemed them deportable, which means there is little recourse to be had. When ICE sends immigrants there, attorneys and family members struggle to obtain the most basic information about how their client or family member ended up there and, most importantly, how they can get out.

Against this bleak backdrop, we became familiar faces to the wardens and correctional officers in charge of these ICE facilities, and with the individuals heading up the New Orleans ICE Field Office. Having access allowed us to be a resource for detained individuals. While it did not ease the sense of injustice immigrants felt in the detention centers, it helped people detained understand their legal options and pathways to release, if any.

As part of the ACLU of Louisiana’s immigration work, we prioritized visiting clients consistently, staying on site all day, and interacting with facility staff. That type of lasting presence brings people together, as long as all parties are respectful of one another’s work. The Field Office and the facilities came to understand that we would be respectful of their constraints if they could accommodate us. As we conducted Know Your Rights presentations in 2022 and 2023 at every detention center across the state, I was the point person on our team liaising with the facility. For that first year, I was there, every time, constantly conferring with detained individuals, facility staff, and with ICE.

Expanding immigration work despite surging cases under the Trump administration

Prior to the elections in 2024, we published our initial report on the Louisiana immigration system: “Inside the Black Hole.” It outlined the conditions we saw at these detention centers firsthand: abusive and discriminatory treatment; lack of access to basic hygiene and food; denial of care for medical emergencies, and more. Once Trump took office again, detention cases surged and conditions only worsened. Armed with years of relationship building and research, we were prepared. Our team was uniquely positioned to quickly get ahead of the surge and free unjustly detained individuals. This included high-profile cases like Mahmoud Khalil, and lesser-known cases like Juan’s. We have recently updated the report with new research explaining what detention looked like in Louisiana under the first year of the current Trump administration.

We hope our work highlights two crucial lessons for other legal practitioners. Firstly, be prepared for detained immigrants to end up in Louisiana. The Alexandria Staging Facility is the spoke in a wheel of mass detentions and deportations. Secondly, investing early in relationships and infrastructure is crucial for immigration providers, especially to gain access to facilities and get the work done from within. When there’s a crisis, it is often too late to build relationships from scratch.

The detention system in Louisiana may still function like a black hole in many ways, with no information coming in or out. But years of patient relationship building, legal advocacy, and documentation have created a blueprint for how we can pull people out of this opaque system. We are working to take that knowledge to others, through our Justice Lab: Immigration project, a volunteer corps that mobilizes attorneys barred nationwide to provide free legal habeas representation to detained immigrants in Louisiana. Our initiative partners overworked immigration attorneys with trained federal litigators to provide crucial habeas support. To answer the call of thousands in need of legal assistance at this critical point in our nation’s history, we aim to build a bench of at least 50 federally-barred litigators to work on cases in Louisiana, representing individuals from across the country detained within the state.

Our work is far from over, but these strategies can be replicated and expanded to protect more people from disappearing into detention. And while our own work is limited to Louisiana, residents across the country can contact their elected officials and urge them to end DHS abuses and hold ICE accountable. Learn more about our Justice Lab: Immigration project, spread the word, and if you are a fit, consider volunteering. Attorneys interested in volunteering can contact the ACLU of Louisiana.

Published February 10, 2026 at 07:03PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/EyJVgao

ACLU: Cómo una ley de la época de COVID que prohíbe las "noticias falsas" en Puerto Rico acecha a la prensa

Cómo una ley de la época de COVID que prohíbe las "noticias falsas" en Puerto Rico acecha a la prensa

En el punto más crítico de la pandemia de COVID-19, cuando Puerto Rico aprobó una ley que pretendía prohibir las “noticias falsas”, dos periodistas temieron que la prohibición los expusiera a procesos penales por sus reportajes los cuales eran críticos sobre el gobierno, sus funcionarios y sus medidas de respuesta a la emergencia. Según la ley, cualquier persona acusada podía enfrentar hasta tres años de cárcel y miles de dólares en multas.

La ley se dirigía a cualquier persona acusada de dar "una falsa alarma" o difundir información falsa que resultara en un riesgo para la vida, la salud o la propiedad durante una emergencia pública declarada en la isla. ACLU y ACLU de Puerto Rico presentaron una demanda para impugnar la ley en mayo de 2020, representando a Sandra Rodríguez Cotto y Rafelli González Cotto, ambos periodistas de larga trayectoria que han cubierto emergencias públicas. El Tribunal de Apelaciones de EE. UU. para el Primer Circuito, que decidirá sobre la constitucionalidad de la ley, escuchó los argumentos orales del caso en octubre.

"Creí que era esencial seguir adelante con este litigio porque el gobierno había cruzado una línea que amenazaba la esencia misma de la participación democrática", dijo González Cotto. "Cuando el estado se otorga a sí mismo el poder de decidir qué información es verdadera o falsa, especialmente durante una emergencia, abre la puerta a la censura, la intimidación y el amordazamiento del escrutinio legítimo".

En este segmento de Prensa en peligro, examinaremos el desafío de ACLU a esa ley en Puerto Rico y por qué proteger las "noticias falsas" de la regulación gubernamental protege todas las noticias.

Las leyes contra la desinformación pueden limitar la responsabilidad del gobierno

La demanda argumenta que permitir que el gobierno se convierta en el árbitro del debate público viola la Primera Enmienda. En este caso, la ley intenta criminalizar los informes que el gobierno considera peligrosamente falsos, poniendo en riesgo los derechos de cada periodista y poniendo en peligro al público en el proceso. En el 2017, por ejemplo, el secretario de la gobernación acusó públicamente a Rodríguez Cotto de mentir después de que ella revelara que la cifra reportada por el gobierno de los muertos a causa del huracán María estaba muy por debajo a la cifra real. Si la ley en cuestión hubiese estado vigente en ese entonces, podrían haberla procesado penalmente.

Puerto Rico no es el único lugar que ha introducido una ley contra las "noticias falsas", pero si se permite que la ley se mantenga, se encontrará en una compañía preocupante, como señaló la Clínica de la Primera Enmienda de la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad de Georgia en su alegato de amicus curiae en nombre de grupos de libertad de expresión y prensa. Hungría, por ejemplo, prohíbe la cobertura "desequilibrada" y exige que los medios se registren ante el estado. Rusia ha castigado duramente a periodistas por su cobertura del gobierno bajo la apariencia de combatir las "noticias falsas". Egipto ha prohibido medios de comunicación por "publicar noticias falsas" sobre Israel y Gaza.

"Un pueblo libre requiere una prensa libre", dice Brian Hauss, subdirector del Proyecto de Expresión, Privacidad y Tecnología de ACLU y abogado principal del caso. "Si los recientes ataques de la administración Trump a los medios, desde CBS News hasta Jimmy Kimmel, nos han enseñado algo, es que no se puede permitir que el gobierno dicte qué debatimos o cómo lo debatimos. Pero eso es exactamente lo que esta ley intenta hacer".

En 2023, un juez federal estuvo de acuerdo y derogó la ley: "Los tribunales deben estar vigilantes para asegurar que la Primera Enmienda no se debilite durante periodos de emergencias declaradas. La función de vigilancia de la libre expresión nunca es más vital que durante una crisis a gran escala".

¿Puede el gobierno regular las noticias falsas y los engaños?

La ley en Puerto Rico es alarmante precisamente por su lenguaje amplio: podría permitirle al gobierno controlar todo tipo de información durante crisis como una pandemia o un huracán. Un poder de censura tan abarcador y su efecto y el consiguiente efecto inhibidor sobre expresiones que se aparten de la narrativa oficial del gobierno, podría poner en peligro a las personas al limitar sus fuentes de información y disuadir a periodistas e individuos de contradecir a quienes ostentan el poder. Por ejemplo, como describió el Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press en su alegato de amicus curiae (https://www.rcfp.org/briefs-comments/rodriguez-cotto-v-gonzalez-colon/) a nombre de organizaciones de medios, leyes de “noticias falsas” como la de Puerto Rico podrían haber disuadido a reporteros de cuestionar los intentos de la administración de George W. Bush de minimizar la devastación causada por el huracán Katrina.

Aunque Puerto Rico insiste en que su ley de "noticias falsas" es esencial para evitar que las falsas alarmas causen pánicos masivos peligrosos, la regla de la FCC sobre engaños en las transmisiones de la década de 1990 demuestra que es posible redactar una ley que proteja la seguridad pública sin socavar las libertades de prensa. Esa regla se introdujo como una forma de combatir los engaños radiales comunes a partir de los años 70s. Varios programas de radio realizaron montajes falsos al aire con fines promocionales, que iban desde confesiones falsas de crímenes violentos hasta secuestros ficticios de locutores. En un ejemplo muy sonado, el director de la emisora WALE-AM en Rhode Island anunció falsamente que el presentador del programa, Steve White, había recibido un disparo en la cabeza afuera del estudio mientras se tomaba un descanso para fumar.

El anuncio provocó que la policía y los medios acudieran a la estación, desperdiciando recursos públicos y causando pánico entre los oyentes. Después de décadas de engaños similares con diversos grados de respuesta pública, la FCC creó la regla de engaños en transmisiones basada en los comentarios de los radiodifusores y del público. La regulación castiga la transmisión de información falsa sobre un "crimen o catástrofe" si la estación sabe que la información es falsa, es prácticamente seguro que el discurso causará un daño público inmediato y sustancial, y la transmisión, de hecho, crea ese daño.

La mayoría de las estaciones saben que la regla de engaño puede invocarse solo si emitieron, por ejemplo, una amenaza de bomba falsa o una transmisión engañosa sobre un tiroteo masivo. Esto contrasta fuertemente con el lenguaje amplio de la ley de Puerto Rico, que potencialmente criminaliza el discurso sobre cualquier tema durante una emergencia declarada, desde especulaciones sobre el origen de COVID-19 hasta reportajes sobre el resultado de una elección.

Como ha sostenido el Tribunal Supremo, el gobierno no tiene la autoridad para castigar el discurso falso, especialmente en asuntos de interés público, excepto en contextos muy limitados, como prohibir el perjurio o el hacerse pasar por un policía. La ley de Puerto Rico va mucho más allá de esos contextos limitados y viola la Primera Enmienda.

Protegiendo el derecho de libertad de prensa para los puertorriqueños y más allá

Para Puerto Rico, el futuro está en el aire. El gobierno apeló el fallo de 2023 que derogó la ley, y el Primer Circuito escuchó la apelación en octubre. El resultado tendrá implicaciones mucho más allá de los reportajes en la isla.

Para González Cotto, este es el punto: "Para mí, lo que estaba —y sigue estando— en juego es si los puertorriqueños pueden vivir en una sociedad en la que cuestionar al gobierno está protegido, no criminalizado", dijo. "Este caso nunca se trató solo de una ley. Se trataba de establecer un precedente que impidiera que futuras administraciones utilicen leyes vagas como armas para silenciar la disidencia”.

La historia enseña que sin una prensa robustamente libre, el gobierno puede salirse con la suya en abusos de poder con poca oposición. Para González Cotto, los periodistas son un medio a través del cual el público puede ejercer su poder para cuestionar, verificar y responsabilizar a las instituciones. "Una prensa libre asegura que ningún gobierno, corporación o interés poderoso pueda operar sin control", aseveró. "Cuando la prensa es restringida, el público se vuelve vulnerable. Cuando la prensa es libre, el público se vuelve invencible”.

En un momento en el que el gobierno está restringiendo el acceso de la prensa y utilizando a la FCC para castigar a comediantes, mantener esa libertad es más importante que nunca. Permitir que el gobierno decida qué es verdad y qué no lo es, resulta peligroso para todos nosotros. Pero la historia también nos ha enseñado algo más: cuando luchamos por ella, la Primera Enmienda es lo suficientemente fuerte como para capear la tormenta.

TAMBIÉN:

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Published February 3, 2026 at 02:42AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/oR6nFxM