At least five of the international students and researchers arrested since the start of the second Trump administration have been sent to Louisiana detention facilities. Lawmakers from the state aren’t sure why, although some said they have theories.
“I have my suspicions,” Rep. Troy Carter, a Democrat who represents New Orleans, told NOTUS. “I think it may be because we have a Republican governor who’s very fond of our president, but I don’t know the answer.”
Louisiana, which has nine Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers, has become a central site in President Donald Trump’s crackdown on students. Four students and former students are detained in Louisiana facilities, according to news reports. (ICE’s detainee tracker confirms that people by these names are in the detention centers.)
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment on why these individuals were sent there, nor did Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry’s office.
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Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate born in Syria, was arrested in New York on March 8 and is now detained in the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena, which is also called the LaSalle Detention Facility. Alireza Doroudi, who is from Iran and a doctoral candidate at the University of Alabama, is also detained at the Jena facility.
ICE agents arrested Tufts University Ph.D. candidate Rumeysa Öztürk, who is Turkish, near the Massachusetts campus. She is now detained at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile. Kseniia Petrova, a Russian medical researcher at Harvard University, was first detained in Vermont before being sent to Louisiana; someone by that name is currently detained at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center, according to ICE’s online tracker.
Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, was arrested at his house in Virginia and detained in Louisiana before being transferred to Texas.
Immigration lawyers don’t always know when or why their clients are being sent away. But some immigration advocates and attorneys have speculated that ICE may have sent students and researchers to Louisiana due to courts in the state — the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is considered less friendly to non-Americans — or because its remote facilities provide less access to counsel.
GOP Rep. Clay Higgins suggested that the individuals have been moved to Louisiana because Immigration and Customs Enforcement has long-standing relationships with the state’s detention centers, which he said are also geographically convenient for deportations to the South.
“One of the reasons you have successful partnership between those facilities and ICE is because geographically, it’s easy to move,” Higgins told NOTUS. “The air traffic, the corridors for flights can easily get to any part of the world, and especially the southern regions of the Western Hemisphere, very accessible from Louisiana, as opposed to say, Wisconsin, right?”
The Louisiana ICE facilities have been the subject of multiple complaints of abuse by the American Civil Liberties Union and internal investigations by the Department of Homeland Security. Detainees have alleged abuse, sexual assault, medical mistreatment and limited access to legal counsel at the Jena facility, which is more than 100 miles from the closest major city.
Khalil, the recent Columbia University graduate, successfully petitioned to have his case moved to New Jersey, but is still detained in Louisiana.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, when asked by NOTUS, noted that none of the current or recent students detained are from Louisiana. But he said he didn’t have any more information than what’s been reported.
GOP Rep. Julia Letlow also said she didn’t know anything more.
“I’ll have to go do some research,” Letlow told NOTUS. “Glad you told me.”
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Helen Huiskes is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
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