"We visited Ms. Ozturk [Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk] earlier this week at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Basile, La., operated by the for-profit company Geo Secure Services, contracted by the federal government. It’s part of the network of ICE facilities in Louisiana that the American Civil Liberties Union has described as a 'black hole' — hard to reach and isolated, making visits from lawyers and family members prohibitively difficult and expensive. ... When we met Ms. Ozturk in Basile, she told us she feared for her life when she was taken off the streets of her neighborhood, not knowing who had grabbed her or where they were taking her. She said that at each step of her transit — from Massachusetts to New Hampshire to Vermont to Louisiana — her repeated requests to contact her lawyer were denied. Inside the detention center, she was inadequately fed, kept in facilities with extremely cold temperatures and denied personal necessities and religious accommodations. She suffered asthma attacks for which she lacked her prescribed medication. Despite all this — and despite being far away from her loved ones — we were struck by her unwavering spirit."
— Testimony of Sen. Edward J. Markey, Rep. Jim McGovern, and Rep Ayanna Pressley (New York Times, 25 April 2025)

"Detained people who had previously served sentences in criminal facilities reported experiencing worse conditions in [Louisiana] ICE jails. A woman at Basile who had recently completed a criminal sentence at a federal prison in Aliceville, Alabama, said: 'In many ways, the conditions here are the same. I’m wearing a jumpsuit. I’m surrounded by barbed wire. I can’t go to the yard without permission from guards. But some parts here are worse. The food is smaller portions and rotten, about half the portions we got in prison. I have to represent myself in my legal case, even though I’m not a lawyer. And the guards here are more racist. They mock us just for being immigrants.'" (Testimony reported in ACLU, "Inside the Black Hole," August's, 2024)