News from the South - Louisiana News Feed

‘They lied to us from the beginning’: Deported Louisiana family says ICE lured them with ruse

Published

6 months ago

March 14, 2025

Staff Editor

lailluminator.com – Bobbi-Jean Misick, Verite – 2025-03-14 05:00:00

‘They lied to us from the beginning’: Deported Louisiana family says ICE lured them with ruse

by Bobbi-Jean Misick, Verite, Louisiana Illuminator
March 14, 2025

Stephanie Ali did not think she and her family were being deported to Honduras in late January, until they reached their gate inside a Houston airport.

Earlier that day, she, her mother Claudia Hernandez and younger brother Jason met with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents near their home in Metairie, where they were told they were going to Houston for a hearing in immigration court, Stephanie said.

But instead of escorting them out of the airport when they deplaned in Houston, agents walked them to another gate, according to Stephanie. The flight display said “McAllen” – a Texas city close to the Mexican border.

“I was so scared,” Stephanie said in a phone interview with Verite News from her aunt’s home in San Pedro Sula, a city in northwestern Honduras. “Even just to think of it right now, I start to cry because it’s so horrible.”

She said ICE agents in Louisiana had assured her family that they were not under arrest and weren’t being deported.

But by the following day, they were back in Honduras — the country where Stephanie was born, but barely remembered. By the time the ICE agents returned her there in January, the family had been living in the United States since she was 10, 14 years earlier.

Jason, who was three when the family came to the United States, couldn’t remember Honduras at all.

Soon after they flew into the country, the Alis’ travel visas expired. The family, however, remained.

For years they sought a legal way to stay in the U.S, applying for asylum on the basis that they’d been targeted by gangs. The claim was denied.

“New Orleans was home for us, and they literally just took it away from us like they didn’t care about us,” Stephanie said.

An Ali family photo. From left: Stephanie Ali, Claudia Hernandez, Jason Ali and Julio Ali. (Photo courtesy of Ali family)

Days before the family’s abrupt removal from the country, Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term as U.S. president. As a candidate, Trump promised to take an extremely hard line on immigration — enhanced border security, vastly expanded use of immigration detention and mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.

On his first day in office, Trump signed a series of executive actions related to immigration, including one that expanded the “expedited removal” process, making it easier to quickly deport undocumented immigrants. After Trump’s election, immigrant activists in the New Orleans metro area warned communities to brace for increased encounters with ICE.

The Ali family had been on ICE’s radar, facing removal, for some time. They had a pending application for a temporary reprieve from deportation when, in mid-January, a case manager working for an ICE contractor asked them for a meeting at a nearby office, promising “good news.”

For months the family had been monitored through one of ICE’s “alternatives to detention” programs, which use various technologies to track immigrants who are not detained and pose little or no security threat. The case manager said the family didn’t need to be under surveillance anymore.

When they arrived ICE agents were waiting for them. Less than 36 hours later, they were in Honduras.

While deceptive, such “ruses,” as they are referred to in internal agency memos and operational manuals are neither illegal nor new. But some immigrants’ rights advocates said they are concerned that agents will increase their use of ruses under Trump, creating chaos in immigrant communities.

“There’s a huge human cost,” said Jeremy Jong, an attorney at immigrant support organization Al Otro Lado. “Let’s say a single parent gets tricked and detained and they don’t have any time to make sure people are responsible for their kids. What happens to their kids?”

ICE did not respond to multiple requests from Verite News for interviews, answers to questions about methods used to arrest immigrants and about the events surrounding the Ali family’s deportation.

Attorneys for the family, at Mayeaux and Associates in Baton Rouge, declined an interview request but confirmed Stephanie’s timeline of the events leading up to the Jan. 29 deportation.

‘Y’all lied to us’

Members of the Ali family had been facing removal since 2018, when they were denied an asylum claim that would have allowed them to remain in the country legally. They were then placed under a removal order.

In 2023 the family applied for a temporary stay on deportation. But that application was still in process when, in October of last year, they were placed in the surveillance program, which required them to be tracked through a GPS monitoring app on their phones and to meet periodically in person with a case manager.

Hernandez, Stephanie’s mother, said she was nervous when they were first placed under supervision. The immigrants she knew in the program had only recently arrived in the U.S.

The Ali family had been in the country for more than a decade, moving here to escape gang violence, according to filings in the family’s immigration case, which were reviewed by Verite News.

Those filings also show that in Honduras, Julio, who worked as an accountant, had become a target for extortion simply because gang members assumed he had money.

“My husband and I decided to flee for this reason, because we did not want to be killed by the gangs,” Hernandez said in a sworn statement from 2023.

The Alis arrived in the United States in 2011. Here, Claudia said, she finally felt safe.

“You could be free to do your things, be yourself and you don’t have to hide anything,” she said, speaking Spanish while Stephanie translated.

The family made a life in the New Orleans area, settling in Metairie. Julio worked in construction until his death in 2022. Hernandez said she worked as a cleaner on construction sites when the family first arrived, but switched to cleaning houses because the schedule allowed her to be home when her kids returned from school.

The children grew accustomed to American life. Jason said he only realized his family was undocumented as an adolescent.

Stephanie, now 24, had received a life-saving open heart surgery at Children’s Hospital in New Orleans when she was 11 and later attended Grace King High School in Metairie.

The family asked for the stay of removal on the basis of Stephanie’s still-delicate heart condition.

Their request was still pending in mid-January, when Stephanie and Claudia were contacted by the surveillance case manager with “good news.”

The meeting was to be held at an office in St. Rose — about a 20-minute drive from the family’s Metairie house — used by the federal contractor that manages the surveillance program. When the family arrived, they were ushered into a room with ICE agents, Stephanie said. She said one agent – a woman – said the family needed to attend a court hearing in Houston that day for an immigration judge to decide whether they would remain in the U.S. or not.

“I started to worry,” Stephanie said. “I was like, ‘This is not what we’re here for. Y’all lied to us.’”

Stephanie Ali, right, is pictured with her friend Melisa Escobar and Escobar’s daughter, Elizabeth Lilith. Before she was deported to Honduras, Stephanie’s last message to Escobar was, “Give a kiss to Lili.” (Photo courtesy of Melisa Escobar)

Stephanie said the agent assured her and her family that they were not being deported and that they were not under arrest. Still, according to Stephanie, the agents did not let them leave the office and told them they could not call their immigration attorney until they got to the Houston court.

Although New Orleans has its own immigration court, agents told the Alis that they would get a hearing faster in Houston, where there are three immigration courts, Stephanie said.

The agents took away their electronics, their jewelry and even their hair ties, Stephanie said. Before agents took her phone and turned it off, she managed to send some messages in Spanish to a friend in New Orleans, Melisa Escobar.

“I don’t know if we will return or if we will get deported,” Stephanie wrote on WhatsApp.

She wrote: “Give a kiss to Lili,” referring to Escobar’s three year old daughter. Then Stephanie stopped writing.

Agents had the family mark a couple of documents with their fingerprints, barely allowing a chance to read them, Stephanie said.

Stephanie said agents told her they would provide her with medication for her heart condition once they arrived in court in Houston, then placed the family into a van on its way to Louis Armstrong International Airport.

Three agents accompanied them on a flight from New Orleans to Houston, telling the family not to worry because “everything would be OK,” Stephanie said, adding that the agents told her they had already booked her family a flight back to New Orleans after the hearing was over. But once they arrived in Houston, she said, the agents escorted them to another gate in the airport terminal to wait for a connecting flight to McAllen.

“Are we not coming back to New Orleans?” Stephanie said she asked the agents. “What’s going on?” But they were no longer talking to her.

After arriving in McAllen, Stephanie said the family was taken to a hotel for the night. There, she said, an ICE agent visited their room and confirmed that they were being sent back to Honduras.

“They lied to us from the beginning,” Stephanie said. “What they did was wrong.”

She said the agent provided her with a 60-day supply of her medication. When she asked what would happen once it ran out, the agent indicated she’d be on her own, Stephanie said.

New Orleans was home for us, and they literally just took it away from us like they didn’t care about us.

– Stephanie Ali

“I was devastated,” Stephanie said. “It’s heartbreaking for a country that you see as home treating you this way.”

The next day Stephanie, her mother and brother were put on a plane to San Pedro Sula, where, she said, they were finally given back their belongings and called their attorney in Louisiana.

According to Stephanie, the family’s attorneys said there was nothing the family could do to change their situation, now that they were in Honduras. They would likely be banned from entering the U.S. for years as a penalty.

Stephanie called Escobar to tell her what had happened. And then, in a message, she assured her friend that she’d be OK, even if she didn’t quite believe it herself.

“No te preocupes mi mely.” Don’t worry, my Mely, she said. “Todo estará bien.” Everything will be fine.

‘They’re leaning into the tricks’

Although Stephanie and her family felt blindsided by ICE’s tactics, the deceptive methods that they say ICE agents used to deport them are not only legal, but also have also been encouraged for years.

A 2005 Department of Homeland Security memo provided guidance on the use of ruses in immigration, reminding agents at one point that if their ruses involve “adopt[ing] the guise of a different agency,” a supervisor should inform that agency of the deception. A 2010 fugitive operations handbook for ICE’s enforcement and removal operations department details how ruses are “designed to control the time and location of a law enforcement encounter.”

The agency’s use of ruses reportedly increased under the first Trump administration. And in the early months of Trump’s second term, Jong, from Al Otro Lado, said he and other immigrants rights advocates have noticed an increase in incidents of agents using deception to arrest, detain and deport immigrants.

“It’s everywhere,” Jong said. “We’ve been hearing from people across the country that they’re using tricks to get people to come in and get arrested.”

Last month, the Gulf States Newsroom reported on a separate case of an unnamed migrant under ICE supervision in Louisiana who received a text message saying they were being placed on a reduced level of surveillance, only to be arrested at an in-person meeting. And in Florida, a Venezuelan man under supervision was arrested at a routine check-in, according to a report from NBC News.

Jong said he and fellow immigrants’ rights advocates have seen a range of ruses used on their clients. Immigrants’ rights advocates have argued that ruses — especially in order to enter a subject’s home to conduct a warrantless search — can violate Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

“They almost never have a warrant,” Jong said. “ICE really relies on people giving themselves up and that’s why they’re leaning into the tricks.”

‘It’s just so humiliating’

Stephanie said she “never imagined” her family would be deported. She said she feels cut off from the community she’s known since she was a child. Her friends, her doctors and her father’s grave are back in the U.S.

As bad as it is for her, she said feels worse for those who have not yet been ensnared by the federal immigration system but soon may be.

“People think that [they] are criminals, because they arrest them. They handcuffed their hands and their feet and everything,” Stephanie said. “To my Latino people, looking at them like that, it’s just so humiliating.”

Enrollment in one of ICE’s supervision programs does not shield anyone from deportation.

Jong said he fears that Trump’s second term will bring increased data sharing between government agencies, which could allow ICE to target undocumented immigrants under surveillance who are applying for legal ways to stay in the U.S.

“Whenever there’s a Trump administration, there’s always this idea of, ‘If you apply for something, we can use that information against you,’” Jong said.

The new Trump administration, meanwhile, appears undeterred in making good on the president’s pledge to carry out “the most sweeping border and immigration crackdown in American history.”

According to an NBC News report last week, the feds are gearing up for an operation targeting undocumented families with minor children, like the Alis. Stephanie said she worries for others who may meet the same fate as her family.

“It’s just something that I wish nobody could go through,” she said.

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This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons license. PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: “https://veritenews.org/2025/03/13/deported-family-ice-deception-immigration/”, urlref: window.location.href }); } }

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com.

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News from the South - Louisiana News Feed

Wagers on touchdowns, strikeouts and even penalties: States eye limits on prop bets

Published

1 day ago

September 9, 2025

Staff Editor

lailluminator.com – Kevin Hardy – 2025-09-09 09:00:00

by Kevin Hardy, Louisiana Illuminator
September 9, 2025

As a bankruptcy attorney, New Jersey Assemblymember Dan Hutchison said he sees clients “all the time” whose betting on football and baseball quickly leads to missed car payments, delinquent mortgages and, ultimately, bankruptcy.

The rise of live, in-game bets — in which a gambler could place more than 200 individual bets during a baseball game if they wager on each pitch thrown — has only amplified his misgivings.

“And I’m like, are you kidding me? I mean, they’re betting on the next pitch, the next play, and it’s constant,” he said. “There’s no pause. It’s just not healthy.”

Worried that those bets can worsen problem gambling and threaten the integrity of sports, Hutchison, a Democrat, introduced legislation to ban New Jersey gambling licensees from offering live bets on individual plays during sporting events.

That bill illustrates growing state interest in regulating proposition bets, commonly called prop bets, a form of sports betting that is popular with fans but worrisome for sports leagues and state officials nationwide.

Unlike wagering on which team will win or the point spread of a game, prop bets can center on the performance of an individual player or even a single play that doesn’t necessarily affect the outcome of a contest. Prop bets can include trivia, such as the color of the Gatorade dumped over the Super Bowl’s winning coach, or specific stats, like how many touchdowns a certain quarterback will score during a game or which team will score first.

Critics say prop bets are easier for athletes to manipulate than the outcome of an entire game. They also make individual players more susceptible to online harassment from gamblers and increase the frequency of betting, thus raising the risk of addiction.

Ohio’s Republican governor has called for the nation’s first outright ban on prop betting on professional sports. Already, at least 15 states ban prop betting in collegiate sports, according to data maintained by the American Gaming Association, a trade group.

The heightened focus on prop bets comes amid a rapid rise of legal sports gambling, which is operational in 38 states and the District of Columbia. (Missouri plans to launch its new voter-approved program this December.) While legal betting has boosted state revenues and reshaped sports fandom, Hutchison said bankruptcy attorneys across the country are getting a preview of the financial wreckage it can wreak.

He said some clients are so distraught, he worries about potential suicides related to out-of-control gambling debts.

“That’s the reality of what’s going on. But they don’t make it seem like that when they’re doing these commercials during the football games: It’s normal, everybody does it, if you don’t do it, you’re not enjoying yourself,” he said. “That’s the glamour side of it. I deal with the other side.”

The industry’s rapid rise

The liberalization of sports gambling was made possible by a 2018 Supreme Court decision to strike down a federal law prohibiting gambling.

Since then, legal gambling has transformed the fan experience and propelled sportsbooks into major industry players: Americans are expected to wager an estimated $30 billion in legal sports betting on the NFL this season, according to the American Gaming Association. With so much money and energy flowing into gambling, academic researchers are increasingly raising concerns about the mental and financial consequences.

“The speed at which gambling has been marketed and legalized in this country is way faster than guardrails have been set to protect consumers and to try to give resources for problem gambling,” said Stephen Shapiro, a University of South Carolina professor who researches sports gambling.

Shapiro said a potential ban on prop betting in Ohio would prove a “big step” in gambling regulation. But he expects fierce opposition from the industry and consumers alike.

“They’re very popular. They’re arguably as — if not more — popular than betting on just individual games,” he said. “ … So I think there’ll be some backlash, but I also think over the next few years … there’s going to be an appetite for setting guardrails.”

The speed at which gambling has been marketed and legalized in this country is way faster than guardrails have been set.

– Stephen Shapiro, a University of South Carolina professor who researches sports gambling

The American Gaming Association, which represents casinos and sportsbooks, says that such restrictions would only drive gambling to illegal venues such as offshore betting platforms, where consumers have no protections.

But some sports leagues are ready for more restrictions on prop bets. The NCAA, the governing body for major college athletics, has been pushing federal and state leaders to ban prop betting in college sports.

The organization says 1 in 3 high-profile college athletes has received abusive messages from gamblers — the majority directed toward basketball players during tournament season. Just 12 days after North Carolina legalized sports betting last year — including prop bets on players — the University of North Carolina’s Armando Bacot reported receiving more than a hundred abusive social media messages for not accumulating enough rebounds in a game.

Women’s basketball student-athletes received about three times the number of threats as men’s basketball student-athletes, according to the NCAA.

In a March awareness campaign, NCAA President Charlie Baker said the abuse threatens the well-being of student-athletes and the overall environment of college sports.

“We need fans to do better,” he said in a statement at the time. “We need states to do better and ban player props that target student-athletes and enable detrimental abuse.”

And professional teams have their own concerns. Last month, ESPN reported the NBA and its players union supported further limits on certain prop bets. This summer, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred told reporters he would like to see some limits on prop bets.

“There are certain types of bets that strike me as unnecessary and particularly vulnerable,” Manfred said, according to Yahoo Sports.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine wants to ban prop bets after gambling allegations against Guardians players

In late July, Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine called on state regulators to outright ban all prop bets — a request he asked the professional sports leagues to support.

DeWine’s proposal followed the suspensions of Cleveland Guardians’ pitchers Luis Ortiz and Emmanuel Clase, who are being investigated by MLB. A sports betting integrity firm reportedly flagged two specific pitches Ortiz threw in early June that coincided with a pair of prop bets.

“The harm to athletes and the integrity of the game is clear, and the benefits are not worth the harm,” DeWine said in a July news release. “The prop betting experiment in this country has failed badly.”

The Ohio Casino Control Commission, which regulates sports betting, did not answer Stateline’s questions about the governor’s request. On Aug. 13, the agency said its investigation into the suspicious betting on the Guardians was ongoing.

In a statement responding to DeWine, the American Gaming Association said the Ohio incident is actually evidence that regulated gambling works: “It detects potential misconduct, it reports it, and it helps hold bad actors accountable,” said Joe Maloney, the association’s senior vice president of strategic communications.

In an interview, Maloney said eliminating legal prop betting will only move that activity into unregulated markets with no transparency. He said prop bets are a reflection of sports fandom: Bettors like to wager on their favorite players notching touchdowns or 3-pointers.

“It increases a fan’s engagement with the game they love, with the player they love. And so the idea that eliminating a legal betting market for someone really interested in increasing the level of engagement is going to prevent that activity, it’s just not the case,” Maloney said. “ … It simply will just move the activity into the shadows.”

Leagues endorse some limits

But the leagues are pushing for certain parts of the game to remain off-limits in legal betting markets.

Major League Soccer, for example, successfully pushed Illinois regulators last year to ban wagering on whether yellow and red penalty cards will be shown during a match and whether a specific player will receive a yellow or red card penalty.

Similarly, the state in February banned prop bets on NFL player injuries, player misconduct, officiating assignments, replay results and the first play of the game, following lobbying from the league.

Illinois Gaming Board spokesperson Beth Kaufman told Stateline the regulatory agency doesn’t maintain a list of specific prop bets that are allowed. But the board does require licensees to receive approval from the agency for specific wagers offered, she said.

“The IGB regularly monitors ongoing trends and developments in the industry and in major sports for any possible impact to the integrity of sports wagering in Illinois,” she said in a statement.

The NFL has pushed for similar rule changes in other states.

During a late August news briefing on gambling, David Highhill, the league’s vice president for sports betting, said the NFL has consistently objected to certain bets that raise integrity risks and provide limited fan engagement. Those include bets about officiating or player injuries and bets that are controllable by a single player on a single play.

“So things like ‘will this kicker miss a field goal’ are things that we’ve worked collaboratively across the board with operators to make sure those types of wagers are not offered,” he said.

In New Jersey, Hutchison said he doesn’t want to ban all sports betting or even all prop bets. And he knows his bill targeting so-called micro bets — those live, play-by-play bets — will face opposition, both from the industry and sports gamblers.

An avid sports fan himself, he said he doesn’t waste his money gambling on his beloved Philadelphia Eagles: “They don’t build all of those casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas because they pay out winners,” he said.

He said he’s not looking to end legal sports betting, but does think New Jersey needs to instill consumer protections and have a meaningful policy conversation about the societal costs of gambling.

New Jersey lawmakers are also considering a separate bill to ban player-specific prop bets on college sports.

The Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey says it has experienced a nearly 300% increase in calls to its problem gambling hotline since the Garden State launched legal sports gambling in 2018.

In a July statement, Luis Del Orbe, executive director of the nonprofit council, which contracts with the state on gambling addiction issues, urged lawmakers to approve the bill to ban live, in-game bets. The organization says those high-frequency bets can trigger instant dopamine releases in the brain’s reward system, fostering compulsive behaviors that can lead to addiction.

“By limiting the proliferation of micro betting, this legislation takes an essential step toward protecting citizens from the harmful effects of reckless gambling practices,” Del Orbe’s statement said.

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Louisiana Illuminator, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

The post Wagers on touchdowns, strikeouts and even penalties: States eye limits on prop bets appeared first on lailluminator.com

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

The content presents a balanced view on the issue of sports betting regulation, highlighting concerns about problem gambling and the social costs associated with certain types of bets, particularly prop bets. It features perspectives from Democratic lawmakers advocating for consumer protections and regulation, as well as industry representatives warning against overregulation. The article also references bipartisan actions, including Republican officials supporting bans on specific bets. Overall, the piece leans slightly left by emphasizing public health and regulatory measures but maintains a generally centrist tone by including multiple viewpoints and avoiding partisan rhetoric.

News from the South - Louisiana News Feed

Morning Forecast – Tuesday, Sept. 9th

Published

1 day ago

September 9, 2025

Staff Editor

www.youtube.com – KTVE – 2025-09-09 08:23:02

SUMMARY: Tuesday morning starts cool with clear skies and temperatures in the upper 50s. A few clouds and isolated showers may appear in eastern parishes and parts of Mississippi but will remain outside the main area. The region will stay mostly sunny and dry through the weekend, worsening moderate drought conditions in Arkansas. Temperatures will rise steadily, reaching the upper 90s by the weekend due to a persistent upper-level ridge over the Southern Plains. High pressure will maintain dry air and stable conditions, limiting storms. Overall, expect sunny skies, dry air, and near-zero precipitation chances throughout the forecast period.

Skies remain clear this morning as temperatures have fallen to the upper 50’s, making for a nice and cool start for this Tuesday morning. A few clouds are possible for our eastern parishes in the MS River Valley as pop-up showers and storms will be possible across parts of Mississippi this afternoon but staying outside our coverage area. More clouds could linger into tomorrow but staying mostly sunny, nonetheless. The forecast looks to stay dry all the way through the weekend, which does not help in the current moderate drought conditions in Arkansas. Temperatures will also be on the climb pushing back to the upper 90’s by the weekend.

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News from the South - Louisiana News Feed

Haynes’ defense blames DA Don Landry in bribery case

Published

1 day ago

September 9, 2025

Staff Editor

thecurrentla.com – Leslie Turk – 2025-09-09 07:00:00

SUMMARY: Assistant District Attorney Gary Haynes faces multiple federal felony charges related to a bribery scheme involving Lafayette’s pretrial diversion program. His defense argues Haynes was a victim, duped by co-conspirators Leonard Franques and Dusty Guidry, who pleaded guilty and cooperated with prosecutors. Haynes allegedly lost $219,000 investing in Franques’ business, blaming District Attorney Don Landry for appointing him and hiring Guidry. Landry testified he brought Haynes back to manage the program due to a case backlog but denied involvement in wrongdoing. Prosecutors allege Haynes conspired for bribes and obstruction, facing up to 65 years if convicted. The trial continues with Landry’s cross-examination.

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The post Haynes’ defense blames DA Don Landry in bribery case appeared first on thecurrentla.com