U.S. Rep Troy Carter, a New Orleans Democrat, accused the Trump administration of violating the rights of immigrants, including Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Öztürk, both arrested by immigration agents over political speech and shipped to immigration lockups in rural Louisiana.
“This is America,” said Carter, speaking from the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center, a privately run women’s immigration detention center, where Özturk, a Tufts University student originally from Turkey has been detained since late March. “This is not some communist state.”
Carter was at the Evangeline Parish lockup as part of a congressional delegation that was visiting to observe the living conditions at the facility and meet with immigrants detained there. Along with Öztürk, Carter also met with a constituent, Wendy Brito, a West Bank mother and wife of a U.S. citizen who U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained at a routine check-in with the agency.
Joining Carter was U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who has been outspoken against Trump’s immigration policies, and three Democratic lawmakers from Massachusetts —Sen. Edward J. Markey, Rep. Ayanna Pressley and Rep. Jim McGovern — where Öztürk lives.
The South Louisiana ICE Processing Center was the second stop of the day. Earlier, the group visited the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center, a privately run lockup in Jena, where Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born Palestinian and a permanent legal resident of the United States, was sent after ICE agents arrested him inside the lobby of his apartment in New York City.
Khalil and Öztürk’s arrests and detentions have drawn international outcry, with critics accusing the Trump administration of trampling on immigrants’ free speech rights and ignoring the rule of law.
Both were in the country legally. Neither has been accused of any crime. But they are now locked up and facing removal. On Monday, Khalil missed the birth of his first child after being denied a temporary release, which Pressley on Tuesday called a “miscarriage of justice.”
Their arrests are in response only to their political activity. Khalil was involved in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia, and Öztürk co-authored a critical op-ed in the Tufts student newspaper.
In the past two months, the Trump administration has targeted several other international students and academics who have participated in pro-Palestinian activities at American universities. Last week, the Louisiana Illuminator reported that the administration has canceled international student visas of more than a dozen people studying at colleges and universities in the state.
“They are setting the foundational floor to violate the due process and free speech of every person who calls this country home, whatever your status is,” Pressley said. “It is shameful and it is a sham … it will not go unchecked.”
In an interview after the press conference, Carter said Democrats in Congress do not currently have the voting power to do much about these detentions through legislation. But he said he and other Democrats in Congress intend to appeal to their Republican counterparts to “do the right thing.”
“This is not a party issue. This should be about people about humanity, about constitutionality,” Carter said.
Concern over conditions
The Democratic legislators expressed concern over medical care for all the people detained inside the two immigration facilities. Carter said detainees told them they were not receiving nutritious or adequate meals to eat. Öztürk has said she has suffered multiple asthma attacks while in detention and that she experienced a delay in receiving medication.
“Notwithstanding that,” Markey said, “she continues to have a sense of right that fuels her very being,”
Carter said detainees they met with were “visibly upset.”
“They spend an inordinate amount of time in tears,” he said. “They were shaken.”
Carter confirmed that the group observed multiple women at the Basile facility who appeared to be visibly pregnant, including one Nicaraguan woman who they met with. Pressley said the woman told them that she is six months pregnant and nearly miscarried twice since being detained. Carter said staff at the Basile facility said pregnant people are supposed to be released from detention once ICE learns that they are expecting.
“There’s a disconnect between what we saw and what we were told,” said Carter, who also noted the cold temperature inside of the facilities.
Carter said multiple detainees complained of being cold and being denied extra blankets which contradicted information from staff that detainees could receive them upon request.
Alanah Odoms, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana, who accompanied the delegation on the detention center visits, said Khalil, Öztürk and the other detainees discussed by name were “merely the tip of the iceberg,” noting the roughly 7,000 people in Louisiana ICE facilities at any given time.
“They are caged and warehoused and locked away in private prisons,” Odoms said.
In a phone interview before the delegation’s visits, ACLU of Louisiana legal director Nora Ahmed echoed Odoms.
“They are extraordinarily prison-like facilities that make the individuals inside feel extraordinarily dehumanized and degraded.” Ahmed said. “We are treating these individuals as though they have committed some sort of a crime, when … by enlarge all people who are detained are engaged in a legal process.”
Immigration proceedings, including deportation, are considered civil, not criminal.
Odoms called for divestment from private prison corporations like GEO Group, which operates both facilities that lawmakers visited Tuesday, and is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Louisiana has the second largest detained immigrant population in the country, after Texas. Four of the nine facilities ICE oversees in the state are operated by GEO Group.
“GEO strongly disagrees with the allegations that have been made regarding the services we provide at GEO-contracted ICE Processing Centers, including the Central and South Louisiana Centers,” said GEO spokesperson Christopher Ferreira in a written statement. “These allegations are part of a long-standing, politically motivated, and radical campaign to abolish ICE and end federal immigration detention by attacking the federal government’s immigration facility contractors.”
ICE did not responded to requests for comment from Verite News.
This story has been updated with additional comments from the delegation and from the GEO Group.
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