Earlier this year, buses full of immigration detainees began rolling into Jonesboro, headed to the Jackson Correctional Center, our media partners at The Advocate/Times Picayune report.
They’re among a sudden influx of nearly 7,000 immigration detainees brought to Louisiana by ICE over the past 18 months. As the number of immigrants held behind bars nationwide has grown under President Donald Trump, ICE has turned to Louisiana sheriffs and private prison operators. Louisiana is now the No. 2 jailer of immigration detainees, behind Texas, the newspapers report.
At the Jackson Correctional Center, dorms that had long housed Louisiana convicts are now home to about 1,000 immigration detainees.
The prisoners are being held indefinitely by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement while their cases wind their way through backlogged immigration courts. Most traveled long distances to the U.S.-Mexico border to seek asylum in the United States, claiming they fear violence, persecution or discrimination in their home countries, the newspapers report.
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