Rooted in slavery, Angola’s monstrous legacy underscores underlying racism of immigration detention
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: media@freedomforimmigrants.org
NEW ORLEANS — Following the Trump administration’s announcement that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will begin detaining people at the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary as a tactic to force people to give up on their immigration cases, Laura Hernández, executive director of Freedom for Immigrants, issued the following statement:
“With the use of Angola for immigration detention, the Trump administration is once again saying the quiet part out loud. Immigration detention has long served as a means to torture and abuse people to the point where they have no choice but to give up on their immigration case. An increasing piece of the largest prison system in the world, immigration detention is a machine of state-sponsored violence, rife with human rights abuses and preventable deaths.
“Immigration detention functions as an expansion of America’s racist prison system and is inherently anti-Black. It comes as no surprise that Black people face disproportionate levels of racism and violence in ICE custody. ICE’s use of Angola underscores how these incarceration systems work as one: While many different agencies play a role in the evolving prison industrial complex, the system continually targets and oppresses our communities.
“Angola stands as a particularly notorious monument to the United States’ legacy of racial terror. There is perhaps no more singular site where past and present are indistinguishable, where the systematized degradation of Black people has been reinvented over the centuries — from plantation, to forced labor camp, and now detention — always in service of white supremacy and anti-Blackness. We must shut down Angola once and for all — not just for ICE, but for everyone!”
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Freedom for Immigrants is an abolitionist organization working to end immigration incarceration by organizing with and following the leadership of currently and formerly incarcerated immigrants. We’re building a future in which all people can move freely and thrive. Learn more at www.freedomforimmigrants.org/.