DHS Watchdog: ICE Officers Choked and Stabbed Detainees at Louisiana Facility

Federal investigators found officers at a Louisiana ICE facility put a man in a chokehold and stabbed another with a pen. The DHS inspector general's report details systemic mistreatment.

DHS Watchdog Finds Officers Choked and Stabbed Immigrants at Louisiana ICE Facility

Federal investigators have documented serious physical abuses at a Louisiana immigration detention facility, including an officer placing a detainee in a chokehold and another stabbing a man with a pen, NYT US News reports, citing a new report from the Department of Homeland Security's internal watchdog.

The findings, released by the DHS Office of Inspector General, focus on detention centers overseen by the New Orleans ICE field office, known as NOLA ICE. The report describes a pattern of conduct that investigators say amounts to mistreatment of people held in immigration custody.

Louisiana currently holds more than 7,000 people in immigration detention — the second-highest number of any state in the country, behind Texas. Close to 98% of those detainees are held in facilities run by private prison operators GEO Group and LaSalle Corrections.

Documented abuses at for-profit facilities

Advocates and investigators have, over several years, catalogued conditions at Louisiana's nine immigration jails. Reported abuses include five-point shackles applied over open wounds, prolonged solitary confinement lasting months, and food described as expired and contaminated with black mold, insects, maggots, and rodent feces. Peaceful protests and grievances by detainees were, according to investigators and advocates, met with physical force and sexual assault by guards.

One of the facilities at the center of complaints is the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center (CLIPC), operated by GEO Group. In 2016, three people detained at CLIPC died following what investigators described as medical neglect, a finding corroborated by a government inquiry. In 2017, CLIPC ranked among the top five immigration jails nationally by number of sexual assault complaints. In 2020, guards at the facility deployed pepper spray against detainees during presentations on COVID-19 safety protocols.

Daniel Cortes De La Valle, a 32-year-old man formerly held at CLIPC, was denied treatment for a life-threatening seizure condition, according to complaints filed by advocacy group Kennedy Human Rights in March 2023 and December 2024. When Cortes De La Valle filed internal grievances, officials responded with threats and what the complaints describe as torturous medical abuse, including drilling into bone without anesthetic. He was ultimately coerced into accepting deportation.

"Whenever I close my eyes, I relive the drilling into my bone. It has become a trauma for me," Cortes De La Valle said.

Pine Prairie and prolonged solitary confinement

A separate Kennedy Human Rights investigation in 2021, conducted alongside Immigration Services and Legal Advocacy (ISLA), examined the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center, another GEO Group facility. That report found Pine Prairie relied on prolonged and racially driven solitary confinement — a practice classified as torture under international human rights law — and failed to provide detainees with clean water, medical care, or access to legal counsel.

Angel Argueta Anariba, a 46-year-old Honduran immigrant who had lived in the United States since 1998, was held by ICE at Pine Prairie for more than seven years. He spoke out against conditions at the facility during his detention.

Funding and private prison revenues

In 2025, Congress appropriated $45 billion for immigration detention. The federal government currently imprisons more than 73,000 people per day in immigration custody nationwide.

GEO Group, which operates several of the Louisiana facilities, reported $2.6 billion in revenue in 2025. That same year, deaths in immigration detention reached their highest level in more than two decades, according to advocacy organizations tracking custody fatalities.

Kennedy Human Rights has filed federal lawsuits seeking accountability for abuses it says were inflicted on people held in Louisiana detention, including during and after deportation flights to Cameroon in the case J.K.A. v. United States of America. The organization has also published a report titled Inside the Black Hole, compiled from two years of facility visits, more than 6,384 interviews, and seven jail tours conducted with ICE officials.

ICE has not publicly responded to the specific findings outlined in the DHS inspector general's report as cited by NYT US News.

Source: NYT US News