The Trump administration has recently detained three students and placed them in deportation proceedings in rural Louisiana, far from their homes. The human rights groups have criticized the conditions in the Louisiana facilities, calling them a black hole. The students have been taken to these remote detention centers due to the administration’s favorable immigration policy goals in the region.
The students, Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, and Alireza Doroudi, have been transferred to Louisiana without the knowledge of their legal teams. Khalil, a Palestinian protest leader, was taken from his apartment in New York City to a facility in Jena, Louisiana. Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University, was arrested in a street by plainclothes agents and taken to a detention center in Basile, Louisiana. Doroudi, an Iranian doctoral student at the University of Alabama, was also arrested and taken to the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center.
The State Department has recently revoked 300 student visas under allegations of activism supporting Hamas, which the students and their lawyers deny. Louisiana has become a hub for detaining immigrants, with over 7,000 currently in ICE custody. Reports of human rights abuses, including unsanitary conditions and lack of access to lawyers, have been documented in Louisiana facilities. The GEO Group, which runs the detention centers where the students are held, denies these allegations and states its strict compliance with federal standards.
Concerns about the students’ cases falling under the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have been raised by immigration attorneys and advocates. The students are currently in deportation proceedings in Louisiana, where they face challenges due to the jurisdiction’s differing precedents affecting the outcomes of their cases.
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