Accusations of forgery seem to have become part of the ICE playbook, especially with Latino people, as recounted by other U.S. citizens who have been detained. “They kept telling me I’m a criminal because I’m showing false papers, and that my penalty was going to be much higher because I’m hiding the person who created them,” the woman said.

That same day, one of the woman’s neighbors began working on her release. The neighbor, who also asked his name be withheld for safety reasons, had watched a sheriff’s bus and unmarked cars without plates begin setting up what appeared to be a checkpoint around 6 a.m. on Wednesday, he said. The checkpoint was at the only entrance to their apartment complex, where most residents are Black and Hispanic, he said.

Few residents wanted to drive through a law-enforcement checkpoint, he said. “People were scared to go to work.”

After hearing that the woman had been wrongly detained, the neighbor, who is also U.S.-born and Latino, sprang into action. He picked up the woman’s birth certificate from her distraught mother, who was “trying hard not to cry in front of her grandchildren,” he said.

He then made a copy of the birth certificate and brought that to the ICE office. But that still wasn’t enough for the agents. “They said, ‘Oh, we need the original copy…because this could be AI.’”

The neighbor tried to convince them, but stopped when an agent raised his voice in anger and said that they would not be releasing the woman.

Taken to Basile in shackles

After hours of questioning, ICE transported the shackled young mother to Basile, about an hour away, arriving around 6 p.m. She was processed and booked into the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center, which is operated by the private prison company GEO Group.

There she was put inside a shared detention area with people awaiting deportation. “I thought of my kids,” she said. “And my little five-month-old, because she had a high fever.” Before ICE took her, she’d wanted to take the baby to the doctor. Her mother, who was now watching the children, was frightened and would be unable to bring the baby to the hospital if the fever worsened.

“The whole time that I was there, I was just thinking about my kids and being afraid for my little one,” she said. While she was hopeful that she would be released soon, she knew some damage could never be undone. “If something were to happen to my five-month-old, they [ICE] wouldn’t be able to bring her back,” she said.

Immigration attorney Bridget Pranzatelli was able to secure the woman’s release by sending identification documents to ICE over email. Around 2 a.m., about 18 hours after she’d first encountered the deputies, the woman was released. ICE agents drove her back to Lafayette.

She never got an apology, nor an explanation. ICE kept her Social Security card. They also told her she cannot leave the state, she says. Though immigration courts have no jurisdiction over U.S. citizens, ICE officers gave her instructional documents, also reviewed by The Lens.

One form, labeled “Order of Supervision,” instructs her to report back to ICE in person next month. The other document is a letter about her release, saying that “ICE will continue to make efforts to obtain your travel document that will allow the United States government to carry out your removal.”

The woman plans to go to the ICE check-in accompanied by an immigration lawyer to clarify to the agency that she is in fact a U.S. citizen.

The ordeal suggests serious gaps in ICE’s ability or willingness to investigate people’s immigration status before arresting them, amid what has long been called a “detain first, investigate second” approach. “There is just no justification for a U.S. citizen to be in immigration customs enforcement detention,” Pranzatelli emphasized. 

In jurisdictions like Lafayette with 287(g) agreements, “where the local law enforcement ends up getting deputized to do these federal immigration enforcement functions,” that risk of unjustified detentions is heightened, Pranzatelli said. “No one along that chain is doing the due diligence necessary to be sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen.”

More neighbor photos of roadblock, taken from safe distances.

The focus of the ICE roadblock seemed to be vehicles with out-of-state plates, neighbors said.

Local law enforcement often lacks immigration expertise

Lafayette Parish Sheriff Mark Garber has praised his department’s partnership with ICE — specifically noting that it would help his deputies quickly determine a person’s immigration status. But there is little to back his claims that the partnership enhances public safety. Research instead shows that involving local law enforcement in federal immigration matters puts public safety at risk by making undocumented victims less likely to report crimes, for fear of being asked about their immigration status.

That should matter in Lafayette Parish, in the heart of Cajun country, which has become the fastest-growing place in the state thanks to both domestic and international migration, Census data shows. Lafayette’s growth makes it an outlier in Louisiana, which is grappling with severe population decline.

But in December, the Lafayette sheriff’s office entered a 287(g) agreement with ICE, which empowers deputies to detain individuals suspected of immigration infractions, even if they aren’t suspected of having committed a crime. Over the last year, sheriff’s offices across the state have signed agreements with ICE. Sheriff Garber opted to partner with ICE under the “warrant service officer and task force models,” a particularly aggressive form of the partnership, which allows specially trained deputies to arrest people suspected of immigration offenses, according to The Current, an online newsroom in Lafayette. 

The task force program has been criticized for encouraging racial profiling. The 287(g) agreement has faced significant pushback from religious and civil rights leaders and sparked protests in Lafayette. 

The task force program is what allowed sheriff’s deputies to work alongside ICE agents to create the checkpoint that resulted in the woman’s arrest.