Liliana’s blood pressure is dangerously high, a complication of her poorly managed diabetes. Her doctors are urgently concerned for her health, pointing to signs of liver failure and potential symptoms of recurring cancer.
Yet she is unable to get the care she needs. That is because Liliana, who I am referring to by her middle name to protect her confidentiality, has spent more than a year in an immigration detention center in Louisiana, more than 1,000 miles from her children in Maryland and from a community where she has built her life for almost a decade.
Liliana has missed the birth of her first grandchild. Now her daughter is pregnant again.
During that time, Liliana has missed the birth of her first grandchild. Now her daughter is pregnant again. And as yet another family milestone approaches without her, two independent physicians have warned immigration authorities that Liliana’s health is rapidly deteriorating.
I have been representing Liliana for the past year as she remains in detention. She has no criminal record. She has strong ties to her community, finds joy doing painting and remodeling work and spends her free time making arts and crafts.
As an immigration attorney, I have represented dozens of immigrants seeking humanitarian relief. After a while in this line of work, you believe you have mapped the full geography of our broken system. But working on Liliana’s case dismantled that certainty, showing me the depths of injustice our immigrant neighbors face.
Under the Trump administration, I have witnessed firsthand the devastating outcomes of shortsighted executive memos and the steady militarization of our immigration system. With recent reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has ordered its agents to increase the number of daily nationwide arrests by 1,000, we are likely to only see more detentions like this — detentions that protect no one, but inflict incredible harm on people and communities across the country.
Liliana should never have been detained in the first place. When her daughter survived human trafficking as a minor, Liliana supported her cooperation with U.S. federal law enforcement, leading to her daughter becoming a T-visa applicant. Through this specialized status established by Congress to protect trafficking survivors, Liliana is eligible for protection through a pending derivative T-visa application. In coming forward to help the U.S. federal government, their family entered into the government’s intended framework: assist law enforcement and receive protection from detention and removal while their case is pending.
Instead, a year ago Liliana was detained during a routine ICE check-in, after explaining she could not wear an ankle monitor for medical reasons related to her diabetes. Rather than accommodating her, the ICE officers laughed, she told us. Then they sent her across the country to Richwood Correctional Center, a detention facility in Monroe, Louisiana. Longtime immigration attorneys understand that transfers to the Fifth Circuit in Louisiana are not due to a lack of capacity in local facilities. More often than not, it is an intentional tactic to move a client across state lines, limit their access to counsel and keep them in due-process limbo.
According to the ACLU of Louisiana, the state’s detention centers have become a “black hole” for systematic human rights abuses, medical neglect and inhumane living conditions. Under the second Trump administration, detentions have skyrocketed, with nearly 13 % of all detained immigrants nationwide held in Louisiana-based facilities. And now the administration is seeking to potentially increase that number.
Richwood Correctional Center officials have largely ignored the urgent warnings from the two doctors who have evaluated Liliana’s condition and warned of her dangerously high blood pressure and early liver failure.At the same time, my organization, Ayuda, has partnered with Louisiana pro bono counsel Flavia Moody, who is admitted to the Fifth Circuit and is preparing an amended petition and a temporary restraining order in an existing habeas corpus case to challenge the lawfulness of her detention. The habeas process is actively moving forward, but the process is moving at a painfully slow pace, notoriously common within the state’s Fifth Circuit.
Under ICE’s own Performance-Based National Detention Standards, individuals with severe, deteriorating medical conditions, pending humanitarian relief claims and clean records are prime candidates for release on humanitarian parole or supervision. Any single one of these reasons are grounds for her release. Liliana has all three. And yet she remains miles away from her family, in limbo and under unimaginable conditions.
Through my weekly conversations with Liliana, I have witnessed her rapid deterioration. We have limited time together, which makes it even harder to get information, assess how she’s doing and see what can be done to help. Her health is spiraling on multiple fronts, aggravated by the systematic neglect at the Richwood Correctional Center. Her unmanaged diabetes is causing hypertension so severe, Dr. Sugarman warns it could trigger a stroke. Most recently, I learned her hand is discolored due to an untreated surgical wound from a recent procedure performed in detention.
I am also concerned since she has a history of cancer and has been showing symptoms pointing to a possible recurrence. At every turn, it seems like there is no reprieve for her health. Liliana tells me no one at the facility takes her or her needs seriously, and that she’s facing harassment from staff and another detainee. Along with Liliana’s family, I’m alarmed by her condition and deeply worried for her.
Liliana’s ordeal is not an accident of bad luck or an isolated bureaucratic failure. It’s the deliberate architecture of our deportation policy, working as it is currently designed to.
As a lawyer, a daughter dedicated to keeping families whole and an American citizen, I am appalled to witness our government inflict such suffering — not in the service of the law, and certainly not in defense of public safety, but out of a hollow impulse to wound the already wounded. Liliana’s ordeal is not an accident of bad luck or an isolated bureaucratic failure. It’s the deliberate architecture of our deportation policy, working as it is currently designed to, treating congressionally enacted protections as inconveniences to sidestep rather than binding law.
Since July 23, 2025, Liliana has been unlawfully detained, separated from her family and fighting for her life. We have exhausted every legal and humanitarian path. Her prolonged detention violates binding precedent (ICWC v. Noem), squanders taxpayer funds and actively jeopardizes her health and safety.
It is Liliana herself who best captures the sheer cruelty of the system holding her hostage. From inside the Louisiana facility, she told me, “There is a lot of injustice here, how they treat us, the food they give us is for animals and they don’t give us the medication we need to live. I hope there is justice for all the mothers who are here, who have kids back at home, who are sick, who have autism, who cry for their kids. The only thing I can say is that I hope there is justice for everything that is happening to us.”
Justice begins with ICE releasing Liliana today.
The post I’ve represented dozens of immigration cases in my career. This is the one that broke me. appeared first on MS NOW.
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