I was shocked to read that the family of Pastor Daniel Fuentes Espinal paid thousands to bring him home from immigration detention in Louisiana. As The Banner article mentioned (After weeks in ICE custody, Maryland pastor embraced by family in emotional homecoming, Aug. 16, 2025), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement takes no responsibility for the transportation costs of released detainees. This is not right.

If you are convicted of a federal crime and then released from prison, the Federal Bureau of Prisons is required to provide transportation back to your home city or place of conviction. You’ll also likely get some money to pay for food en route. But what does an ICE detainee (often not charged with or convicted of any crime) get?

Maybe a ride to the nearest bus station but no money to buy a ticket or cover basic expenses. Even though ICE drags detainees far from home — much farther than the convicts held by BOP are typically sent.

ICE moves large numbers of detainees to the U.S. southern border. More than one in five detainees ends up in Texas and one in eight in Louisiana. Both states are over a thousand miles from Maryland with centers typically in rural areas far from transportation hubs.

I understand that ICE’s strategy is to put maximum pressure on detainees to return to their countries of origin. But that’s not realistic for everyone, and especially not for many detainees who have made their cases for release, who have justified asylum, jobs, strong community ties and needy dependents here.

Some released detainees, like Pastor Espinal, are fortunate enough to have families who can scrape together funds to bring them back. Others surely do not.

What happens to them? If they are lucky, ICE may direct them to already overburdened shelters, volunteer groups, and other “local community service organizations” (though the detainee handbook I found notes that not all facilities have a list of such organizations).

As for ICE itself, with its approximately $30 billion budget and responsibility for detainees’ cross-country shipment? They step out of the picture.

This “solution” is not fair. Please let’s contact our legislators to make ICE accountable.

Lia Nigro, Columbia

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