Guards at Louisiana ICE facility accused of illegally pepper-spraying detainees

A group of guards at a Louisiana immigrant detention center “indiscriminately” deployed pepper spray against hundreds of detainees who were participating in a January protest in their dorm unit before sealing them in the unit for hours, according to a complaint filed Wednesday by civil rights groups.

The complaint, which was submitted to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) New Orleans Field Office as well as several ICE oversight offices in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, alleges that on January 26, officers at Winn Correctional Center deployed the chemical agent without warning, spraying directly into detainees’ faces at close range for several minutes. The officers then exited the unit, locking the doors and windows and shutting off water and power, leaving the detainees inside for hours without the ability to rinse the spray off their eyes and skin, according to the complaint.

“For a period of approximately three hours, detained individuals remained locked in the dorm without access to medical care,” reads the complaint, which was signed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Immigration Services and Legal Advocacy, among other groups.  “A few individuals who had lost consciousness due to medical emergencies were taken out of the dorm, but even those individuals were denied sufficient medical treatment.”

The groups say the incident violated state laws and ICE policy, along with the detainee’s constitutional rights, and that it forms part of a broader pattern of abuse at Winn. The privately operated Winn Parish facility, a former state prison, houses a daily average of about 1,500 immigrants, according to data from late last year.

Winn’s operator — private prison company LaSalle Corrections — and staff at the facility have previously come under criticism for other alleged violations, including using pepper spray to quell peaceful protests, neglecting detainees’ medical needs and improperly sending detainees to solitary confinement units. In 2021, investigators with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties recommended that ICE stop transferring immigrants to Winn, citing a “culture and conditions that can lead to abuse.”

The Wednesday complaint likewise demands that the facility be shut down.

“These longstanding issues at Winn can only be remedied by the facility’s closure and demands to hold those in authority accountable,” the civil rights groups wrote.

LaSalle Corrections did not respond to a request for comment.

According to the complaint, the officers used the pepper spray in response to a protest over conditions at Winn, particularly a recent incident where water flooded the detainees’ dorm unit.

“Despite numerous complaints to Winn officers and ICE, detained individuals were forced to remain in their flooded dorm, without access to dry or sanitary bedding and clothing, for approximately ten days,” the complaint reads.

According to the complaint, on Jan. 26, about 200 immigrants living in the unit — mostly people from Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan who have requested asylum in the United States  — refused their lunches and declared a hunger strike. The group began chanting, demanding the Biden administration release them from the facility: “Mr. Biden, help us! Give us freedom! Winn Correctional is no good! Louisiana is racist!”

A group of about 20 guards entered the unit, allegedly deploying the chemical agent without warning and continuing to spray the group for five minutes before locking the detainees inside the dorm.

In an interview, Ayubkhon Mdadminov, an Uzbek detainee who has high blood pressure and hypertension, said although he was not one of the men actively protesting that day, an officer approached him and released pepper spray into his face.

“I closed my eyes. I couldn’t breathe,” he said. “I was afraid that maybe I would die or maybe I could stay blind for the rest of my life.”

In an emailed statement last month, an ICE spokesperson offered a different version of events than the one described in the complaint this week. According to the spokesperson, Sarah Loicano, officers at Winn released a “two second burst” of pepper spray in response to detainees becoming “disruptive and confrontational with facility staff.”

According to ICE, the detainees filled their subunits with water and threw food trays and other objects, including shampoo bottles, on the floor and at staff, and even attempted to damage televisions and microwaves in the unit where the incident took place. There were 126 detainees involved and that the use of force was “consistent with agency protocol,” Loicano said.

But the civil rights groups allege that the use of the pepper spray not only violated the detainees’ civil rights, it did not meet the requirements outlined in ICE’s use of force policy. According to the complaint, pepper spray should only be used in situations where a detainee is armed and barricaded, cannot be approached safely or when a failure to immediately address a situation could compromise the safety of guards or detainees.

“None of those conditions were met during this incident at Winn,” the complaint reads.

The groups behind the complaint say they have found no evidence that detainees were acting violently or destroying property. Instead, they say the detained men were exercising their First Amendment right to protest.

“It’s actually protected activity and that can’t be punished by a use of force,” Sarah Decker, an attorney at nonprofit RFK Human Rights, said in an interview with Verite.

Decker, who wrote the complaint, interviewed multiple men in the unit after immigrants’ rights advocates learned about the incident during a visit to the facility.

Many of the men told Decker that they have been detained for longer than six months. The average length of stay for immigration detainees nationwide was between 44 and 52 days as of late last year, according to ICE data published by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

“Everyone was angry,” Bek, an Uzbek detainee who asked to be identified by a nickname out of fear of retaliation from officers at Winn, said in a phone interview through an interpreter.

Bek said that some protestors threw their food trays to the ground, but denied that any were tossed at guards.

“We didn’t target anyone. We just threw [the food trays] to the hall to express [to] them that we didn’t want to eat their food.” Bek said.

After he was sprayed, Mdadminov said he felt faint as he crawled toward the door. He said officers allowed a nurse to enter the room and transfer him to the medical unit, where he was given medicine for his high blood pressure and what he believed was a sleeping pill.

However, multiple men interviewed by Decker said they remained confined to their units for hours without medical help. According to ICE’s policy, following a use of force, detainees should be assessed by medical staff and sustained injuries should be documented.

In her statement to Verite, sent before the complaint was filed, Loicano said that 126 detainees were given medical evaluations after the incident.

This article first appeared on Verite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.