Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson during a April 8, 2025, press conference at OPSO headquarters. (John Gray/Verite News)
NEW ORLEANS – A controversial new state law that creates criminal penalties for local law enforcement officers who do not fully cooperate with federal immigration investigations is set to go into effect next month, putting the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office in a legal quagmire.
For more than a decade, under a legal settlement in a federal civil rights case, the sheriff’s office, which runs the New Orleans jail, has maintained a policy that places tight restrictions on how its employees can interact with federal immigration authorities.
But beginning on Aug. 1, under Act 399 of 2025, Orleans Parish deputies who follow that policy could be charged with committing a felony and face up to 10 years in prison. On the other hand, if the sheriff’s office goes against the policy and obeys the new state law, it risks violating a longstanding federal court settlement.
Will Harrell, senior program monitor for Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson, said the agency already collaborates with U.S. immigration and Customs Enforcement in ways that do not violate that court order — also known as a consent decree. In a phone interview Wednesday, he said the agency is constitutionally obligated to stay the course.
“To the extent that the consent decree allows, we will cooperate with the [new] law. We already do,” Harrell said, noting that the settlement was signed and ordered in place by a federal judge. The U.S. Constitution gives federal law precedence over conflicting state law. “We feel that the proper position is to maintain our compliance with the consent decree.”
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The sheriff’s office’s immigration policy — enacted in 2013 by then-Sheriff Marlin Gusman — prohibits Sheriff’s Office deputies from initiating investigations into detainees’ immigration statuses and blocks the office from honoring most “detainer” requests from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
When ICE makes a detainer request for a jail inmate, local jailers are authorized to hold that person in jail for a short period past their release date, without a court order. But honoring such requests is voluntary under federal law. And in most cases — other than those where the subject of the request is facing particularly serious charges — it is prohibited by the sheriff’s office’s policy.
The policy was adopted as part of a federal court settlement in a 2011 civil rights case. At the time, the sheriff’s office accepted detainer requests. But according to the suit, it went beyond what federal law allowed. Two Hispanic construction workers alleged in the suit that after being picked up on minor charges, they were illegally held in the city’s jail at ICE’s request for months beyond their release dates, well beyond the 48 hours federal law allows for immigration detainers.
When he adopted the policy, bringing the suit to a close, Gusman said it would allow his office to “cooperate with ICE, provided specific procedures are followed” and that it was consistent with the provisions of another, much broader federal consent decree — meant to bring the long-troubled jail up to constitutional standards — that was adopted the same year.
But the state has recently sought to undo the policy by reopening the 2011 civil rights case that led to it.
In February, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill requested that the state become a party in the federal case that yielded the policy, in an effort to get the OPSO’s immigration policy thrown out.
A federal judge has not yet decided if she will grant or deny the state’s request to intervene in the case. Harrell said until the judge makes that call, the agency is bound by the original consent judgement.
“If the consent decree goes away then we have no choice but to cooperate with ICE in all cases of detainers and we will do that,” Harrell said
Landry, a conservative immigration hardliner and ally of President Donald Trump, and other top Republicans in the state have long sought to end so-called “sanctuary” policies adopted by local governments, specifically targeting the sheriff’s office’s policy and a similar immigration policy adopted by the New Orleans Police Department in 2016 as part of its own long-running federal consent decree.
Last year, the Louisiana Legislature, with Landry’s support, passed Act 314, which prohibits government agencies from adopting or maintaining so-called “sanctuary” policies, taking aim at the OPSO policy. When that law’s passed, officials in Hutson’s office said that the agency would continue to comply with the federal consent judgement.
The newly passed law, Act 399, takes things a step further. Act 314 is a civil law, enforceable by court order and carrying no jail time for violations. Act 399, on the other hand, is a criminal law. Under the law as written, sheriff’s office employees who refuse ICE detainer requests face felony charges of malfeasance in office, which carries a potential 10-year sentence in prison.
The new law also adds to the crime of obstruction of justice, making it a misdemeanor to “knowingly … hinder, delay, prevent, or otherwise interfere with or thwart federal immigration enforcement efforts.” Under the change members of the public can face up to a year in jail. Immigrant and civil rights advocates have called the language in the law vague.
Bruce Reilly, deputy director of New Orleans criminal justice reform group Voice Of The Experienced, called the new law an example of government “overreach.”
“I think the legal question may be, ‘Can the state pass a law that forces people to be deputized by federal agencies?’” Reilly said.
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This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
