Rural Economy Becomes Dependent on Immigration Prisons

Benavides said he was sent here this year after he and his father sought asylum in June at a port of entry in El Paso, Texas. The two were detained together in Texas and Mississippi, then taken to separate jails in Louisiana. They haven't been allowed to speak to each other since.

In interviews, immigrants and their families said officials sometimes used a solitary confinement cell to hold detainees accused of violating rules. To Winn's Spanish speakers, it is known as a pozo, meaning a well or a hole.

ICE says it complies with its own rules on segregating inmates, which say detainees can be placed in solitary confinement for "presenting a clear threat to the security of the facility," and said in a statement that it is "committed to ensuring that those in our custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments and under appropriate conditions of confinement."

Authorities at Winn say there's been little trouble so far, as immigrants are better behaved and easier to oversee than convicts.

"When you have convicted felons, they act a lot different," said warden Keith Deville.

The 51,000 immigrants that ICE is holding across the country is just short of an agency record set this year and is several thousand more than authorized by Congress. The number of detainees has remained above 50,000 even as border crossings have fallen in recent months and the Trump administration has enacted new asylum restrictions and programs to reject immigration, including forcing tens of thousands of people to wait in Mexico while immigration courts review their cases.

Advocates blame the administration for detaining legitimate asylum-seekers who could be released with court dates. They say the jails in Louisiana epitomize the problem.

A federal judge recently ruled that ICE was unlawfully refusing to release asylum-seekers in Louisiana under its authority to grant parole. Lawyers say very few people are granted parole from Winn or other immigration prisons in the state. Without it, detainees must request bond from an immigration judge, which can take months.

The relatives of one person detained at Winn provided the AP with a typewritten list of conditions for release they said was posted inside the jail, weeks after the judge's ruling. The four conditions were pregnancy, being underage, critical illness such as Stage 4 cancer, or being a witness in a federal criminal case.

Luz Lopez, an attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center, said she has heard many reports of immigrants being given the list, which she said appears to violate ICE's own guidelines for granting parole.

ICE said reports about the list were "false" and said it decides whether to release inmates on a case-by-case basis — a statement received with grave doubt by immigration attorneys.

Pedro Cordoves Diaz, a 26-year-old from Cuba, was released from Winn in late September, the day the AP visited the facility. He was released on $10,000 bond, paid by relatives in New Jersey.

"I stayed in my bed waiting for the moment to leave to arrive," he said.

Immigration detention has become increasingly controversial during the Trump administration, which separated thousands of families as part of a "zero-tolerance" policy at the Mexican border.

ICE has expanded its presence in Louisiana as other states have told the agency to stay out.

California and Illinois have banned private immigration jails altogether, and even in conservative Texas, the Republican-led government in Williamson County voted to end ICE detention at a 500-bed jail.

There's no such resistance in Winn Parish or other rural Louisiana communities.

Winnfield is the largest city in the parish, with 4,400 people — down from 5,700 two decades ago — and the birthplace of legendary Gov. Huey Long. Its tiny downtown has as many empty storefronts as open shops. Timber trucks carrying chopped logs from surrounding forests roll down the highway. Sheriff Cranford Jordan said that aside from lumber, the area's two biggest job engines are schools and the prison.

A decline in prison population could lead to the prison closing, Jordan said.

"It would be devastating," he said. "You'd see people moving, bankruptcy. It would be like an automobile plant closing."

Jordan, ICE, and LaSalle Corrections, which was already running the prison, agreed in May to a five-year contract, with an option to add five more.

ICE pays around $70 per day per inmate, Jordan said, more than double what the state was paying to house criminals. That is still well below what ICE pays nationally, which it estimated at $133 per day in 2017.

Jordan said he supported ICE coming in and called the influx of immigrant detainees a "blessing" of jobs and funding.

As ICE detention has grown in the state, so has the role of LaSalle Corrections, a privately held company based in Ruston, Louisiana.

LaSalle operates six of the eight converted jails that have opened since last year. In August, LaSalle hired the former acting director of ICE's enforcement and removal division in New Orleans as a development executive. LaSalle also made a $2,000 contribution to the sheriff's campaign in March.

It has faced criticism at its prisons before.

LaSalle was sued after an inmate died in 2015 at its jail in Texarkana, Texas. A federal magistrate judge this year found that jail staff failed to do daily checks and violated "basic nursing standards" in their treatment of the inmate.

Four former guards at the Richwood Correctional Center in Louisiana, also operated by LaSalle, were sentenced to federal prison terms after a 2016 incident in which inmates were pepper-sprayed while kneeling and handcuffed. Richwood became an immigration prison this year.

LaSalle declined to comment on complaints about mistreatment or about how immigration detention factors into its business.

The facilities are spread out across Louisiana, connected by rural roads winding through forests and farmland. To advocates, the isolation is a serious problem.

"Just the fact that you're detaining people in such rural, isolated places makes it not only difficult for the person themselves to fight their case, but it even makes it nearly impossible for them to get attorneys to represent them," said Homero López, executive director of the New Orleans-based Immigration Services and Legal Advocacy.

One of the few people to visit most of the facilities across Louisiana is Alex Melendez, who with his son runs a taxi service to pick up immigrants.

For rates starting at $100, he drives people to the long-distance bus station or airport in Alexandria, just over an hour away from Winn, or sometimes to New Orleans or Houston, each four hours away.

Calls for pickups have surged in the past year, sometimes with calls from four jails in one day.

Melendez says he listens to the people’s stories about why they fled their homes and what it was like for them inside. Some Spanish speakers are confounded by grits, a Southern staple seldom found outside the United States, and refer to them as "arroz sin sabor" — tasteless rice.

Sometimes they get emotional. It happened recently when Melendez drove up to another jail to pick up someone who had just been released.

"He just kneeled down," he said. "He praised the Lord. He thanked the Lord he was free."

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