Horrific Abuses at ICE’s Pine Prairie Louisiana Jail

Meet Darius, Mario, and Tano. They are immigrants and asylum seekers who were detained at the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center in Louisiana. During their incarceration, they’ve faced horrific conditions and human rights violations, including reckless exposure to COVID-19 and prolonged solitary confinement as punishment for hunger strikes and peaceful protests for racial justice.

Their testimonies, illustrated by RFK Human Rights’ Eli Dreyfus, are sadly far from unique. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people are needlessly locked up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) while they await a determination of their immigration status or face deportation and removal proceedings, all at tremendous taxpayer expense.

RFK Human Rights, in partnership with Immigration Services and Legal Advocacy (ISLA) and 15 other civil rights groups, has filed a formal complaint with the Department of Homeland Security, calling out Pine Prairie’s egregious pattern of abuse and demanding an end to immigration detention once and for all.