Heading south

Next week I’ll be traveling to Louisiana doing what I’m calling a roadtrip residency. Will probably share more about what’s behind that residency in a future newsletter but for now, I just wanted to share a few things my pre-trip research has turned up, both horrifying and fantastic. That sums up the way it feels to me to be alive in our country right now, with artists still creating and babies still learning new words and delicious food still finding its way into my belly even as our entire democratic experiment is being dismantled all around us, with fresh horrible news every hour.

The delightful

I learned about the Festival International de Louisiane, which takes place in Lafayette, Louisiana each year and bills itself as “the largest international music & arts festival in the US.” Quite the claim! With four free days of local, national, and international acts and 300,000 attendees, it seems credible.

I am entranced by the festival’s origin story shared on its website. According to founder Herman Mhire, he organized an exhibit of paintings from Senegal at the University of Louisiana Lafayette in 1985, and as part of the exhibit, some Senegalese musicians performed in various venues around the city. Mhire was struck by some of the cultural similarities between Francophone West Africa and the former French colony of Louisiana. After this experience and a few other large-scale festival encounters, including Spoleto in South Carolina, he decided that Lafayette could benefit from a similar endeavor.

The late 80s were a difficult time for the oil-dependent region, and Mhire writes, “I believed staging a world-class arts festival in Lafayette had the potential to lift our community’s spirits, to inspire and educate our citizens, and serve as an economic development vehicle aimed at strengthening cultural tourism.” A bunch of civic leaders got together and the first festival was born in 1987, “celebrating the francophone heritage of Louisiana. … People of all ages and from all walks of life were welcome, and they were, at the end of the day, mesmerized by the experience.”

I’ll only be at the festival for one day, where I’ll be working two volunteer shifts!, and I look forward to “enjoy[ing] authentic Asian, Cajun or Greek food, while listening to an acclaimed African band, as beautifully costumed Belgium stilt walkers dance by?!” This explicit celebration of diversity and international exchange and collaboration feels like it flies in the face of the hurricane from DC.

The horrifying

At the same time, I’m going to be driving around rural Louisiana for 10 days and have felt compelled to learn more about the ICE detention centers that are in the state. Mahmoud Khalil is in one. Rümeysa Öztürk is in another, after being snatched off the street in Somerville, Massachusetts last month. Isolation from their communities and legal representation is a goal.

Below are a few things I learned or was reminded of. The best source I found for information about these facilities is from a 2024 report from the ACLU: Inside the Black Hole: Systemic Human Rights Abuses Against Immigrants Detained & Disappeared in Louisiana. All abuses documented, including denial of language access, lack of food and basic sanitation, horrific solitary confinement, and medical abuse and neglect were from 2022-2024, before Trump took office.

--Individuals detained by ICE are not being detained for a criminal charge nor are they serving a criminal sentence.

--86% of immigrants in detention are representing themselves, pro se, because they cannot find or cannot afford a lawyer.

--Immigrants with an attorney are ten times more likely to win their case and avoid deportation.

--As of last month, there were 47,900 detained in ICE facilities. Roughly 6000 of those were in Louisiana, which is the second-highest number in the country, after Texas.

--There are 8 detention centers and 1 transfer staging area in Louisiana, all operated as for-profit facilities, most run by the GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut Corporation) and La Salle Corrections. GEO Group had revenue of $2.41 billion in 2023. All of the detention centers in Louisiana were previously used as criminal detention centers. All are located at least 100 miles from the nearest urban center.

--U.S. law classifies immigration detention as civil confinement and is not supposed to have punitive conditions. This is not the case in practice. And people in criminal custody have a constitutional right to legal representation, unlike those in immigration detention.

--Last year the Department of Homeland Security had $3.4 billion for ICE custody operations. Trump is seeking to raise this to $45 billion. As writer Philip Gourevitch puts it, “this is a staggering amount of money to build camps—suggesting that building & running a gulag will be the primary function of the otherwise gutted Trump-state.”

--The Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, which previously fielded and investigated complaints about conditions in ICE detention facilities and could update detainees about the status of their case, has been gutted.

--Freedom for Immigrants (FFI) hotline – People who have been detained by ICE can call this hotline for resources, at 9233#.

Sisterly Affection (a bit of Philadelphia appreciation)

 I spotted this amazing shirt while on a stroll in Mt. Airy the other day. A private dance studio, Pointe Flex, choosing to center their 2021 recital on the idea that "it's all political" and keeping the commemorative shirt in their window for the next four years? Standing ovation for these future dance studies scholars and their progressive teachers and guides!

If you are new here, welcome! You can find a bit more context on the 'about' page and feel free to forward along to anyone who might be interested. There is usually a loose focus on Philadelphia and dance/performance-related news bits. Each email ends with a moment of Sisterly Affection, as seen and appreciated while out and about in Philly.