Louisiana Voice

The size of Hammond may be about to swell by some 40 percent.

An otherwise sleepy college town an hour’s drive east of Baton Rouge, the city has apparently been designated as the future location of one of several human warehouses where immigrant detainees will be held in preparation for faster deportation procedures.

Apparently not satisfied with moving detainees around the country to whichever detention center happens to have space to accommodate them, the Trump administration is planning to contract with private prisons to construct the equivalent of express lanes in the form of warehouses capable of housing between 5,000 and 10,000 people each where they would be staged for more expedient deportation.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans to share the concept this week with private detention facilities like LaSalle Enterprises in Ruston, CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corp. of America) of Brentwood, Tennessee and the Geo Group of Boca Raton, Florida, to gauge interest in the plan.

On the face of it, it appears silly to offer conjecture on why a private prison may or may not be interested—of course they’re interested!

If ever there was such a thing as a cash cow, the emergence of private prisons as an economic force would certainly qualify.

Private, for-profit prisons currently house MORE THAN 91,000 PERSONS. That represents 8 percent of the total state and federal population. And the industry is one of the FASTEST-GROWING businesses in America.

And now Hammond is being considered as the possible location of a center to house up to 9,000 individuals (that’s equivalent to another 63 percent of the entire enrollment of Southeastern Louisiana University) as part of an overall plan to warehouse as many as 80,000 human beings.

It’s important to remember that private prisons are run for one purpose and one purpose only: to make a profit. That means—and history has borne this out—that private prisons prioritize cost-cutting over inmate welfare. That fact is supported by several multi-million-dollar settlements of lawsuits brought against a single private prison, Lasalle. See HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

Not only do these private prisons earn the most profit by providing the minimum in terms of health care, food and non-existent rehabilitation services, but they will even go to great length to protect those profits whenever a family squabble THREATENS THEIR BOTTOM LINE.

Other than owning a Chic-Fil-A franchise, running a private prison under contract to ICE and Homeland Security is about the MOST LUCRATIVE GIG going these days. Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, passed and signed into law last July, included a whopping $45 BILLION (with a B) for ICE to build those new immigration detention centers like the one to be located in Hammond.

Perhaps CoreCivic CEO DAMON HININGER said it best when he said back in August, “Our business is perfectly aligned with the demands of the moment.” He went on to say that private prisons “are in an unprecedented environment with rapid increases in federal detention populations nationwide and a continuing need for solutions.”

To bolster that assertion, CoreCivic reported total revenues of $538.2 million during the second quarter of 2025, up 9.8 percent from the same quarter in 2024.

In seeking a problem to fit a solution, the federal government has aided private prisons and defense contractors in turning deportation into a THRIVING BUSINESS MODEL while families are torn apart and lives disrupted—all over scare tactics that somehow are repeated in this country over and over.

Whether it’s the Irish, the Japanese (remember the internment camps?), Middle Easterners, Somalis, the Latinos, Native Americans or Blacks, we have always managed to find some group to fear and hate. That seems to be locked into our DNA.

And yet, even as we round up tens of thousands of men, women and children (some of whom are actually citizens of this country), we have yet to arrest or detain the first individual who hires them to perform landscaping, who reap our crops, roof our buildings and work in our restaurants.

Just to be sure we fear and reject those who don’t look and talk like us (whoever “us” is supposed to be), the administration has made certain to let us know that those unwanted aliens are soaking up our welfare payments and stealing our jobs and houses.

That, my friends, is a myth. They are not on Medicare or Medicaid. They don’t vote and believe it or not, if their employers are being honest, they also pay taxes. And they’re not eating our dogs and cats.

What they are doing, however, is allowing private prison operators and parish sheriffs to enrich themselves handsomely. Why do you think so many SHERIFFS are scrambling to build newer and bigger jails? It’s because the federal government pays generously to house detainees in local jails.

Why else are these local and state law enforcement agencies so eager to sign agreements with ICE?

• Bossier Parish Sheriff’s Office
• Beauregard Parish Sheriff’s Office
• St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Office
• Lafourche Parish Seriff’s Office
• Plaquemines Parish Sheriff’s Office
• Ouachita Parish Sheriff’s Office
• Union Parish Sheriff’s Office
• Arnaudville Police Department
• Greenwood Police Department
• Gretna Police Department
• Kenner Police Department
• Pearl River Police Department
• Hammond Police Department
• Morse Police Department
• Baton Rouge Police Department
• Louisiana State Police
• Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections
• Louisiana Alcohol and Tobacco Control
• State Fire Marshal
• Louisiana National Guard
• Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries
• Louisiana Attorney General

If you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed a recent spurt in the number of private prisons that have SUDDENLY APPEARED on the scene. Do you think that’s a coincidence? It’s a GROWTH INDUSTRY, pure and simple, and for a reason: a GENEROUS UNCLE SAM.

If a building program to house 80,000 people seems large, here’s some context: That number is dwarfed by the more than 580,000 people deported by the administration this year alone. It’s enough to make one wonder what the end game goal is for Homeland Security and ICE. Where does it end? What happens when they run out of Latinos, Africans and Mid-Easterners. How will they justify their continued existence (because we know that once created, an agency is rarely abolished).

Who will be targeted in the next wave of deportations? That is a question that must be asked. After all, nearly half of the 68,000 people being held at the beginning of this month had no criminal record at all. That’s more than our President can say about himself.

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The ghost of Bobby Jindal, thought to have faded into history, has reared its ugly head a decade after his leaving office.

The First Circuit Court of Appeal has reversed a lower court ruling that had said the state was immune from a lawsuit by state employees and state retirees over changes to the Office of Group Benefits (OGB) that were implemented without proper input way back in 2014.

On June3 of that year, the Jindal administration announced sweeping changes to its health-car and pharmacy plans, to go into effect August 1. Among those changes were increased out-of-pocket maximums, increased deductibles, increased co-pays, increased out-of-pocket maximums for prescription drugs and the removal of all vision coverage from the health plan options.

On Sept. 23, then-Attorney General Buddy Caldwell’s office issued an opinion that any modifications to existing plans “must be accomplished in accordance with the procedures set forth in the Louisiana Administrative Procedure Act (APA) for rulemaking” and that OGB was required to promulgate rules and regulations “for the implementation, administration,

and management of the new plans proposed by the OGB.”

The opinion concluded by saying, ” If the OGB did not follow the procedures set forth in the APA when it created new health care plans and/or modified the existing health care plans … then the validity of the plans becomes questionable.”

The Jindal administration’s response was to publish a “declaration of emergency” in the Louisiana Register with an effective start of Sept. 30 that it would be adopting emergency rules to codify the proposed changes that took effect in August.

OGB held a public hearing on the proposed plan changes on December 29, 2014, after the enrollment period closed and after the proposed plan changes were implemented and after the enrollment period had ended (emphasis ours).

OGB published a second “Declaration of Emergency” on Feb. 20, 2015, that extended the first declaration and adopted the changes that were the subject of the emergency rules, and OGB re -opened enrollment for its members on or about April 3, 2015.

The plaintiffs, Marilee Cash, Nancy Dickie, Aileen Hendricks, Rebecca McCarter, Dayne Sherman and Debra Thornton, each of whom was either an active state employee or state retiree, filed a Petition for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief on April 21, 2015, naming OGB, the Division of Administration and the State of Louisiana as defendants. The plaintiffs are represented by Baton Rouge attorney J. Arthur Smith, Jr.

In claiming that OGB had violated rulemaking procedures, that the December public hearing was a “sham” and that there had been no legitimate basis for the September 2014 emergency rule. They also asserted that the state violated their fiduciary duties by depleting the OGB fund balance and attempting to saddle state employees and retirees with the costs and burdens

resulting from their own imprudence” during the fiscal crisis that plagued the State at that time.

The plaintiffs filed several amended petitions and a motion for class certification along the way, including a Third Amended Petition to which the state filed a peremptory exception claiming plaintiffs had no cause of action because plaintiffs failed to state a cause of action upon which relief could be granted because they failed to prove damages existed. The state also claimed that OGB’s promulgation and adoption authority was protected under a statute that provided immunity from tort liability.

On Jan. 10, 2025, a full decade after the issue first arose, the 19^th Judicial District Court upheld the state’s objection and dismissed plaintiffs’ claims.

But the First Circuit on Dec. 19 revered the lower court, ruling that the state was not immune from tort liability. The ruling said, “A court

must first determine whether a statute, regulation, or policy requires the government employee to follow a particular course of action. If there is such a requirement, then there is no choice or discretion involved, and the immunity does not apply.”

The appeal court also noted that there indeed were claims of damages by the plaintiffs in the form of financial losses and that the state had failed to follow established procedure in carrying out the changes.

“The matter is remanded for further proceedings,” the three-judge panel of the First Circuit ruled, clearing the way for a lawsuit against the state to proceed.

Costs of the appeal in the amount of $3,330 were assessed equally among OGB, the Division of Administration and the State of Louisiana—another example of the state’s willingness to pay attorneys rather than do the right thing at the beginning.

The wheels of justice turn slowly—far too slowly it seems at times and all because of the stubbornness of bureaucrats.

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LouisianaVoice is proud to announced that we have been chosen to reveal early entries for possible designs for the proposed “Trump Class” battleships being proposed by the administration. To date, four basic designs have been approved for consideration.

The Crown Jewel Gold Standard, with precious jewels inlaid on a basic golden deck and hull:

The classic Golden Imperial Eagle, set off by the unmistakable Red Square oniontop cabin:

The understated Milania Rules beauty of white pearls and gold trim:

And the early favorite:

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