On September 19, 2025, news broke about cases being filed against the warden of the Basile Detention center in Louisiana. Because Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has increased arrests in the past few months, more immigrants than ever are incarcerated in Basile and across Louisiana. Four of the people previously incarcerated in the Basile facility have filed legal complaints against the warden for sexual abuse, physical abuse, and coerced labor. In addition, transgender detainees report consistent abuse by prison staff.¹ Immigrants detained in the Angola Prison have begun a hunger strike to protest lack of medical care, medication, clean water, toilet paper, and hygiene products.²

Intentionally, the stories of abuses in Louisiana prisons are only reported on the second page of local newspapers, and completely ignored by national papers. Instead, articles and statements by pundits and politicians decried “political violence” in response to the most recent high-profile killing. While incarcerated transgender people are abused in prison, the right-wing attempts to blame “transgender gangs” for the violence throughout our society.³ While liberal centrists claim that we are too polarized and need to learn to have conversations again, they refuse to allow any criticism of Israel.⁴

The United States, Martin Luther King said, “is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”⁵ Dr. King correctly identified that the violence in the streets was simply a reflection of how the United States government reacts to things that threaten it. When a child grows up, seeing police, prison guards, FBI agents, the US military, and ICE agents “solving” their problems with murderous violence, they begin to believe that this is the way to solve their own problems. Certainly, any crime that an individual teenager in Chicago or DC or New Orleans commits pales in comparison to Baton Rouge PD’s “Brave Cave.”⁶ It pales in comparison to ICE tearing families apart, wrongly arresting and detaining people like Rümeysa Öztürk for their free speech. It certainly cannot compare with the genocide in Palestine, fully funded and backed by our taxes. Are these things not political violence? They were enacted for political reasons against members of a political underclass. These things are considered necessary political violence, and are allowed by those on both sides of our limited political binary.

The unjust detention of immigrants in the United States is not unique to Donald Trump. It would certainly be easier if the end of President Trump’s administration meant the end of political violence toward immigrants in the United States. However, mass deportations are a bipartisan cause. Barack “Deporter in Chief” Obama earned his nickname, much to Donald Trump’s chagrin.⁷ The groundwork for today’s fascism was laid by his presidential predecessors, both Republican and Democrat.

Despite claims to be “tough on crime,” the majority of politicians refuse to do the difficult things that are proven to reduce crime. Like that child who believes only violence can solve their problems, our political leaders believe that only state violence via police, prisons, and execution can solve theirs. If our leaders truly want to be tough, they should stop accepting donations from private prison corporation Geo Group,⁸ which runs the detention center in Basile and the one in Jena, Louisiana that incarcerated Mahmoud Khalil. If they want to do the difficult thing, they must do what Dr. King demanded when he said, “The real cost lies ahead” and describes a world with equal education, guaranteed jobs, and housing millions of people: ⁹

"The Constitution assured the right to vote, but there is no such assurance of the right to adequate housing, or the right to an adequate income. And yet, in a nation which has a gross national product of $750 billion a year, it is morally right to insist that every person have a decent house, an adequate education and enough money to provide basic necessities for one’s family. Achievement of these goals will be a lot more difficult and require much more discipline, understanding, organization and sacrifice."

Our “tough on crime” politicians are not tough enough to do what is necessary: end the unjust prison-industrial system that breeds crime, abuse, and community destruction.¹⁰ Instead, they continue violently arresting and locking people in cages while claiming that will keep us safe. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Louisiana doles out some of the longest sentences in the country. While we must not fall for the fiction that crime is increasing and “out of control” in the US, we cannot ignore the immense violence within our communities. Nor can we ignore that incarceration simply replaces one type of violence for another. Two million people are in prison, and 113 million people, in a country of 340 million, have an immediate family member who has been in jail or prison. Prisons are not keeping “society” safe.¹¹ Millions of members of “society” are incarcerated, and they are not safe. The recent abuse in the Basile detention center makes the point.

ICE, the US’s gestapo, is a non-solution to a non-problem. It is making our already existing problem of mass incarceration even worse by caging more people in ICE detention centers, which are prisons by another name. Like all fascist movements, MAGA has sought to blame the failures of capitalism on an outside “other,” creating an underclass of hyper-exploited workers. ICE must be abolished. But ICE is just the most visible part of this system. It is not coincidental that Louisiana’s Angola prison is built on a former forced labor camp (a so-called “plantation”). Similarly, it is not a coincidence that poverty and crime are interlinked. Our politicians are so concerned with the latter, but have no solutions for the former.

A world without prisons, without detention centers, without poverty is possible. It will take a lot of work, but it is possible. If those deploring “political violence” are serious about stopping it, let’s start with abolishing ICE.

Join the Baton Rouge Democratic Socialists of America. A better world is possible. Together, we can make it real.🌹

References

1. Complaints allege sexual, physical abuse at Louisiana ICE facility
2. State officials deny mistreatment, hunger strike claims at Angola ICE site
3. Charlie Kirk railed against transgender rights. His killing has further fueled the fight
4. Democrats reject Gaza protesters' demand to give speaking slot to Palestinian
5. Excerpts from Martin Luther King, Jr., "Beyond Vietnam": Speech at Riverside Church Meeting, New York, N.Y., April 4, 1967. In Clayborne Carson et al., eds., Eyes on the Prize: A Reader and Guide (New York: Penguin, 1987), 201-04.
6. Four Louisiana officers charged in ‘Brave Cave’ abuse investigation
7. Obama Has Deported More People Than Any Other President
8. Open Secrets: Geo Group
9. King, Martin Luther Jr. (2010). Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos Or Community?. Beacon Press. pp. ix–xxi. ISBN 978-0-8070-0067-0.
10. Why Punishing People in Jail and Prison Isn’t Working
11. Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2025