A group of approximately 20 people gathered outside of an immigration check-in facility in St. Charles Parish for the second time in three days on Tuesday morning (June 17). They were there to watch people going in for their check-ins — and to make sure they came back out.
Setting up camp there was not how this group had planned to spend their Tuesday.
But when several people who are enrolled in an immigration monitoring program received a message on Saturday asking them to appear for an out of the ordinary immigration check-in, warning bells went off, according to immigration attorneys and advocates.
Jeremy Jong, an immigration lawyer, who was at the check-in facility, BI Incorporated’s Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP) center, on Tuesday, said he felt compelled to do his part as a member of the community by monitoring the situation.
“People get arrested here every single day,” Jong said, “but if they’re making the effort to say,
‘Hey, don’t come in on your scheduled day, come in now,’ the risk seems higher. It just sets off a whole bunch of alarms.”
The abnormal call for immigrants in the ISAP program to check took place while stories have spread of ICE arrests during check-ins in Louisiana and elsewhere and while the Trump administration has ramped up its deportation efforts.
On Tuesday morning the check-in facility was crowded with dozens of ISAP participants waiting inside for check-ins by 8:15 a.m. Loved ones and observers were sheltering from the heat outside. While Verite has not been able to independently verify the details, but eyewitnesses said that several people were taken into custody yesterday.
BI Incorporated, a subsidiary of private prison company the GEO Group, has worked as a contractor for U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since 2004, according to that company’s website. ISAP is part of the Department of Homeland Security’s alternatives-to-detention program, under which people with active immigration cases are placed under monitoring rather than being held in a detention facility.
Participants in the program have to attend regular check-ins, but immigrants in the program and advocates who support them thought it was unusual that dozens of people in the New Orleans area were asked to come in on Sunday, which was Father’s Day, and then again on Tuesday.
Rachel Taber of Union Migrante, an immigrants’ rights group, said that approximately 30 people that she knows received that message. She said that the mass scheduling of check-in appointments is new, with the first one happening on June 4.
“It was absolutely abnormal to have that many people scheduled for ICE check-ins on a Sunday, on a Father’s Day,” said Antonio Garza, one of the citizen observers who was there both Sunday and Tuesday.
The abnormality of the appointments created fear among participants in ISAP, according to people on site to observe the check-ins.
After observers showed up to the check-in spot Sunday, BI Incorporated posted a sign asking people to return two days later, observers told Verite News on Tuesday.
Lindsay WIlliams, an ICE spokesperson, said he was unaware of the Sunday check-in requests and referred Verite News to BI Incorporated.
Verite reached out to BI Incorporated for more details but the company did not respond in time for publication.
People observing the ICE check-ins said they have connected with one another over time through civic engagement activities, but they do not represent one single group. The connections they established helped them mobilize when word got out about the appointments.
Zach Bishof, an observer who came out on Tuesday, said that his Jewish faith and upbringing play a major role in why he was there. He said that learning about the Holocaust motivated him to bear witness to threats to people’s civil rights. It did not begin with Auschwitz, but with disappearing people gradually, he said.
“Sure enough, by the time people start caring,” Bishof said, “it’s kind of already too late. So, you have to be ahead of it.”
While observers set up lawn chairs in the grass and along the street in front of the facility, some family members of those called in waited in the parking lot to hear the fate of their loved ones.
“Wait, wait, wait,” lamented Alfredo Perez, who was waiting by his car for his partner to come out of the check-in facility. Perez said his partner is six months pregnant. “Wait Sunday. Wait today.”
He said despite being exhausted from working overnight, he drove his partner to the appointment so that they wouldn’t have to pay for a ride-sharing service.
He said he wants to marry his partner as soon as his divorce is finalized, but for now, both of them are nervous about his partner’s status and the impact that the stress could have on the unborn child. An immigrant from Honduras, who asked that his name not be published over fears that ICE will retaliate against his family, said he was waiting for his wife to come out of the facility.
He said he was calm, because he had faith in God, who he believes is more powerful than the president of the U.S., and because politics, for him, is ultimately unimportant.
“Donald Trump – they think this is very important? It’s not important,” he said. “Important for me is my family, and the man upstairs.”