(C) Verite News New Orleans
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Under Trump, ICE in New Orleans granted few releases. What has changed? [1]

['Bobbi-Jeanne Misick', 'More Bobbi-Jeanne Misick', 'Verite News']

Date: 2024-03-07  

In the five years since the New Orleans-based Immigrations and Customs Enforcement regional office was accused in a federal class-action lawsuit of illegally detaining hundreds of immigrants seeking asylum in the United States, release rates in cases handled by the office have significantly improved, according to the civil rights attorneys who filed the suit.

During much of President Donald Trump’s administration, immigrants sent to detention centers within the New Orleans ICE Field Office – which covers immigration detention in Louisiana and Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee – faced little to no chance of temporary release — called parole — while their asylum claims were pending.

From 2016, the year before Trump took office, to 2018, his second year in office, the parole rate in the New Orleans ICE field office dropped from about 76% to 1.5%, the lowest rate in the country at the time.

“That drop was shocking,” said Luz Lopez, senior supervising attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Immigrant Justice Project and lead attorney in the case. “We heard from persons who were in detention that they would hear officers say, ‘We’re not granting parole, so don’t bother.’”

As parole rates plummeted, immigration detention in Louisiana ballooned. In October 2016, there were 2,172 immigration detainees housed in Louisiana detention centers. By mid-2019, that number had more than doubled, to 5,073, according to data collected by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. (As of last month, there were about 6,200 detainees in the state.)

That meant that for months, immigrants who may have qualified for release under federal regulations remained locked up in privately operated detention centers, many of which were originally built as prisons. Some of those facilities later came under scrutiny over allegations of abuse and neglect.

In 2019, attorneys with the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU of Louisiana filed a federal class-action lawsuit on behalf of 12 immigrants who presented themselves for asylum at official US ports of entry. The suit, which is ongoing, claimed that New Orleans ICE officials were arbitrarily denying parole to asylum seekers, in violation of a legally binding 2009 ICE policy.

In the ensuing years, the rates have shown consistent improvement. On average, the New Orleans field office grants between 50% and 60% of asylum requests for people in the class covered by the lawsuit — primarily people who presented themselves at an official port of entry — according to Lopez and court filings in the lawsuit.

‘An unwritten policy’

Broadly speaking, immigration parole allows certain noncitizens the ability to temporarily live, and often work, in the United States for specific reason. ICE manages parole requests from immigrants who are placed in removal proceedings and are in immigration detention, mostly those seeking asylum – protection from specific types of persecution. Without the ability to parole, the agency would be forced to hold many more people than it has capacity for, including those who are likely to eventually receive asylum.

Under the Trump Administration several ICE Field Offices essentially stopped granting parole requests.

“There was an unwritten policy of denying everyone’s parole application,” said Luz Lopez, senior supervising attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Immigrant Justice Project and lead attorney in the case.

That was in spite of a written ICE policy directive from 2009, during the Obama administration. Under that policy, which had the force of law, asylum seekers who, through an interview with an asylum officer, show that they have a credible fear of persecution should be granted parole, assuming that they can establish their identities, show no flight risk and pose no threat to the community.

Lopez’ team filed the class-action lawsuit in May 2019 to force the field office to follow the policy, which had not been rescinded under the Trump Administration but was not being followed, Lopez said.

ICE declined Verite’s request for an interview or comment, as the case is still in the courts. A spokesperson for the agency said “As a policy ICE does comment on ongoing or pending litigation.”

In September 2019, a judge granted a preliminary injunction, blocking the field office from denying parole to individuals who belong to the class defined in the suit.

Still between March and December 2019 the office denied 99.1 percent of all parole requests, according to a report by the ACLU.

While grant rates did increase in 2020, Lopez said she did not see rates significantly improve until President Joe Biden took office in 2021.

“We were under a court order, both under Trump and Biden,” she said. “Only under Biden, did we actually see the numbers start to improve.”

The injunction requires the field office to provide updated parole data to the courts and provide plaintiffs with details on parole decisions. Lopez said even if the case were to settle – which court filings in the case indicate the parties are working towards – a provision to maintain the office’s reporting requirements would be in place for several years.

Analysis of data in a recent court filing in the case showed the New Orleans field office granted about half of all requests considered in calendar year 2023, through December 15.

While the recent rate for the office is an improvement it’s still significantly lower than the grant rate that Lopez said the field office produced under the Obama Administration.

Attorney Mich Gonzales worked on the case until recently. He said that even a 50% parole grant rate represents an “abuse” of labeling an immigrant a flight risk to deny parole.

“Most people want to pursue their cases. They do not want to be left in limbo.” Gonzalez said. “It’s not until they’re detained do they become terrified. If anything, detention creates a flight risk.”

Lopez said she expects numbers to plummet again if Trump, the likely Republican presidential nominee, were to become the next U.S. president.

“I fully expect that we go back to the zero parole grants, and very vigorous efforts to deport people,” Lopez said. “I’m terrified. … If this Trump person gets another term, I don’t just fear for immigrants, I fear for all of us who don’t agree with xenophobia, white supremacy. with very antiquated views on gender, etc.”

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