Louisiana: Immigrants being dropped off at bus stops and airports.
Advocates say they’re glad immigrants are being let out of detention but worry the chaotic nature of the releases could cause a ‘crisis.’
On Friday evening eight men, all asylum seekers from Cuba, recently released from U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement custody, gathered on the back porch of a simple house in New Orleans’ St. Roch neighborhood to listen to Martha Alguera, a short, commanding Nicaraguan-American woman who runs an immigrants rights organization called Voces Unidas: Louisiana Immigrants Rights Coalition.
She explained to them in Spanish that she would work with a non-profit called Miles for Migrants to help them find flights to their final destinations. The group donates frequent flyer miles to immigrants being released from detention. Alguera had arranged for the men to stay at the house where they were gathered until their flights were arranged, within the next few days.
Most were headed to Miami to join their sponsors — people who accept financial responsibility for asylum seekers while they go through the asylum process. They were released on parole after proving to immigration officers that they had a credible fear of persecution in their home country.
Earlier that day the men and several others were bused from River Correctional Center, a for-profit immigration detention facility owned by LaSalle Corrections, in Ferriday, Louisiana, to the Baton Rouge Bus Station.
It was the second large-scale release from the center that week. And, according to advocates, there were other such releases throughout the state. Local news sources have reported that 75 immigrants recently released from detention were dropped off at Monroe Regional Airport last week; another 80 from Haiti were taken to Shreveport, drawing criticism of the Biden Administration from Sen. Bill Cassidy; and more than 90 were transported from Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, Miss. to the Natchez Transit System bus station between last Monday and Wednesday.
ICE would not provide total numbers of immigrants released from detention in recent days or weeks. But advocates who help to transport immigrants let out of detention centers to local airports say ICE in Louisiana has gone from releasing just a few people from detention centers each week to letting out dozens almost daily, leaving volunteers scrambling for enough drivers, cars and resources to accommodate the surge in released detainees.
https://www.wwno.org/immigration/2021-07-21/in-rural-louisiana-ice-is-dropping-off-waves-of-detainees-at-bus-stops-and-local-airports