Good morning. Today we’re taking you inside the troubled facility where ICE is holding Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University PhD student.
But first, here’s what else is going on:
- Legal analysts predict Harvard will prevail in its case accusing the Trump administration of unlawfully freezing its funding. A judge has scheduled a hearing for today.
- Canadians will cast ballots today to determine which party will lead the country in an election shadowed by President Trump. Here’s a guide.
- The Patriots’ missteps in last year’s NFL Draft help explain coach Mike Vrabel’s approach to this year’s, which ended Saturday. Here are the 11 players the team picked and the undrafted players it’s eyeing.
Send questions or suggestions to the Starting Point team at startingpoint@globe.com. If you’d like the newsletter sent to your inbox, sign up here.
TODAY’S STARTING POINT
Most Americans have never set foot inside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility. That can make it hard to picture the experience of people like Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University PhD student from Turkey arrested by masked ICE agents last month after she expressed pro-Palestinian views in the campus newspaper.
But court documents, media reports, and eyewitness testimony paint a bleak picture of the remote Louisiana facility where Öztürk and about 700 others are being held. Technically called the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center, immigration lawyers call the all-women facility Basile, after the rural town where it’s located. Basile is about 100 miles from the ICE detention center where Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student activist at Columbia, is being held.
A private prison company has run Basile since 2019. In recent years, detainees have described trouble reaching their attorneys, inadequate medical care, unsanitary conditions, and abusive staff. Today’s newsletter explores how Öztürk’s experiences, as she has described them, echo what other Basile detainees have reported.
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Isolated
Getting to Basile isn’t easy. Homero López, an immigration lawyer who represents detainees there other than Öztürk, says that’s by design.
The facility is a nearly two-hour drive from Baton Rouge, the state capital, and about three hours from New Orleans, where López is based. Delivering documents that need a client’s signature can take a full day, and the waitlist to arrange a remote call is long. In an affidavit this month, Öztürk alleged that officials prevented her from speaking to her lawyer until more than 24 hours after she was detained.
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Basile’s remove also isolates detainees like Öztürk — who was arrested in Somerville, taken to Vermont, then sent to Basile — from loved ones and places them in a jurisdiction where immigration judges have high rates of denying asylum requests. For detainees, López said, the location is “the perfect storm.”
Inadequate medical care
Öztürk, who is represented by a team of attorneys that includes the ACLU, claims that Basile staff failed to care for her asthma. Other detainees allege neglect for even more serious conditions.
When she had an asthma attack en route to Basile, Öztürk claims in her affidavit, immigration agents denied her request for prescribed medication. During an attack at the facility, she says she used an emergency inhaler but had to wait a “very long time” for a nurse to see her. When one finally did, all they gave her was ibuprofen, she says.
Öztürk’s experiences broadly match what other detainees have reported, said Sarah Decker, an attorney with the nonprofit advocacy organization RFK Human Rights. “If they have basically any type of chronic medical needs, like requiring an inhaler or insulin or any type of medication, we across the board hear of delays with access to that medication.”
Decker co-authored a report last August that compiled accounts from thousands of people detained at Basile and other Louisiana ICE facilities. In it, detainees reported being denied medications for HIV and sickle cell anemia and getting delayed treatment for leg, stomach, and chest pain. As one Basile detainee said of the staff, “Our health is not important to them.”
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Poor conditions
Three Massachusetts lawmakers who visited Öztürk at Basile last week say she received inadequate food and experienced frigid temperatures. Those details match other detainees’ testimonials from Decker’s report. One described waking up shivering in her housing unit, a dorm-like cell that can hold more than a dozen people.
In Decker’s report, detainees described expired milk, rotten fruit, raw chicken, frozen hard boiled eggs, and small portions that left them hungry. They also reported unsanitary conditions like stained mattresses, inadequate menstrual products, and infestations of rats and black mold.
(ICE has denied detainees’ allegations. A spokesperson for the GEO Group, the prison company that operates Basile, has called the lawmakers’ claims “part of a longstanding, politically motivated, and radical campaign to abolish ICE and end federal immigration detention.”)
Poor treatment
Basile detainees also describe uncaring, even abusive staff. Öztürk says that a nurse demanded she take off her hijab; a detainee in Decker’s report recalled overhearing staff mock her as a terrorist for wearing one. Other detainees have described being yelled at for not speaking English and being ridiculed for being transgender.
Some also allege sexual harassment, including guards groping detainees and ordering cameras pointed toward the showers. In 2022, the Department of Homeland Security investigated Basile over the harassment allegations. But both Decker and López, who have recently visited, say they see no evidence that conditions have improved.
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What’s next?
Ozturk may soon be out of Basile. A judge ordered her returned to Vermont by Thursday. The Trump administration has also begun to restore some foreign students’ legal status, although it’s unclear whether it plans to reinstate Öztürk’s visa.
What about other Basile detainees? “ For every high-profile student that’s taken into custody and disappeared to Louisiana, there’s thousands of people that reporters and the media and the American public will never hear about,” Decker said.
Until President Trump fired him this year, López was a Biden appointee to a board that hears immigration appeals. Yet he criticized Democrats for failing to reform a detention system he believes is built on cruelty. Not doing so, he says, “allows then a Trump administration to weaponize that system.”
Read more:
- ICE recently deported three children who are US citizens along with their Honduran-born mothers, their lawyers say. (AP)
- Federal agents detained more than 100 people they say are undocumented at a Colorado Springs underground nightclub. (Denver Post)
- Amid Trump’s immigration crackdown, Boston-area employers wonder: Who will fill all the jobs?
🧩 1 Down: Holy book | ☀️ 71º Abundant sunshine
POINTS OF INTEREST

Boston and New England
- Tightlipped: In a TV interview, Bill Belichick dodged a question about how he and his girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, met. “He’s not talking about this,” she said.
- Fallback: Massachusetts law schools have been inundated with applications, part of a nationwide surge fueled by economic uncertainty.
- Aging on $2.42 a day: Nursing home residents are trying to convince Massachusetts lawmakers to raise their monthly allowance for the first time since 2007.
- Wrong way: The number of Massachusetts youth in juvenile detention, disproportionately Black and Hispanic, rose for the third consecutive year.
- Voting with their feet: As Canadian tourism plummets, Vermont braces for a slow summer season on Lake Champlain.
Trump administration
- Underwater: Trump has the lowest approval ratings of any recent president this early in his term, several polls find. (USA Today)
- ‘Courts are our strongest tool’: Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell has already sued the administration more than a dozen times.
- Russia-Ukraine war: Ukrainian hopes for a more equitable peace deal with Russia rose after Trump met with Volodymyr Zelensky and criticized Vladimir Putin over the weekend. (Kyiv Independent)
- Hat in the ring? In New Hampshire, Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois, a possible 2028 Democratic presidential contender, called for mass protests against Trump. (WashPost)
- Requesting proposals: Federal funds were the lifeblood of US scientific discovery. Where will the money come from now?
- Bagged: The authorities arrested two people in Miami in connection with the theft of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s purse in DC. (Fox)
The Nation and the World
- DC plane crash: Missteps and equipment problems led to a January collision between an Army helicopter and a commercial jet. (NYT)
- Pope Francis: 250,000 people attended his funeral in St. Peter’s Square on Saturday. See photos of the event.
- Vancouver ramming: A man allegedly drove an SUV into a crowd at a Filipino community festival, killing 11. Police said he has a history of mental health issues and aren’t investigating the crash as terrorism. (CBC)
BESIDE THE POINT
By Teresa Hanafin
🗓️ Things to do: Free events in and around Boston this week include jazz performances in the South End, an Arts Fest in Harvard Yard, and a block party in Central Square.
📺 This week’s TV: Martha Stewart is back on “Yes, Chef,” season 3 of “Jeopardy! Masters,” Tina Fey’s remake of “The Four Seasons,” and more.
🤠 Yee-haw: Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” tour kicks off today at SoFi Stadium outside LA. The closest she’ll get to Boston is New Jersey at the end of May. (USA Today)
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🎵 Sing-off in Aisle 3: A former Market Basket bagger is so obsessed with the tunes that the grocery store pipes over its speakers that he made a playlist on Spotify. Listen for yourself.
😎 I’ll follow the sun: This really interesting interactive map helps you find cafes and pubs with outdoor seating that are in the sun at any given time. (Sunny Days)
🆔 Who are you? The Real ID deadline is almost here. If you don’t have yours, here’s an explainer of why you should and how you can get it now.
🐦 Wing and a pied-à-terre: Want to help the little birdies in your yard? Put up a nesting box, set up a small fountain of water, and add a hummingbird feeder.
🏠 House checklist: This Reddit new homeowners guide has an average score of 351, so you know it’s good. Even if you’ve owned your home for a while. (Reddit)
🌍 Here and there: Thinking about dual citizenship? Here’s how to get it.
Thanks for reading Starting Point.
This newsletter was edited by Teresa Hanafin and produced by Diamond Naga Siu and Ryan Orlecki.
❓ Have a question for the team? Email us at startingpoint@globe.com.
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Ian Prasad Philbrick can be reached at ian.philbrick@globe.com.