11 November 2025
By Charles Maldonado and Bobbi-Jeanne Misick
Contributing Writers
(Veritenews.org) — A federal judge ruled Friday (Nov. 7) that the state of Louisiana will be allowed to file a legal challenge to the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office’s longstanding immigration policy, which prohibits jail staff from honoring federal requests to detain people suspected of being in the country illegally past their release dates.
The jail’s so-called “sanctuary” policy, adopted more than a decade ago, resulted from a settlement in a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by two construction workers Mario Cacho and Antonio Ocampo – who were picked up by New Orleans police on minor charges in 2009 and 2010 and sentenced to jail time.
Last Friday’s order, by federal Magistrate Judge Janis van Meerveld, the state as a named party, which will in turn allow state Attorney General Liz Murrill to pursue a motion to dissolve the settlement.
“It’s clear that the consent judgment in this case should be dissolved on its own terms, among other reasons,” Murrill said in a statement on Friday. “I look forward to ending it and encourage the Sheriff to adopt a policy that does not obstruct ICE or conflict with State and federal law.”
Following the lead of President Donald Trump, Louisiana Republicans, including Murrill and Gov. Jeff Landry, have targeted such sanctuary policies in New Orleans for years. During Trump’s first term, Landry challenged a similar policy adopted by the New Orleans Police Department as part of its long-running federal consent decree, saying the limits it places on officers working with federal immigration authorities compelled the city to “violate federal law.”
The police policy is also likely in jeopardy now that the federal judge overseeing the NOPD consent decree has said she will allow the department to exit federal oversight earlier than expected.
In the 2010 lawsuit that led to the Sheriff’s Office policy, Cacho and Ocampo alleged that they were illegally held by the Sheriff’s Office for months past the completion of their sentences. The two were held on a hold request – also known as an immigration detainer – from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Such requests are only legally valid for 48 hours.
Attorneys for Cacho and Ocampo did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the order.
In 2013, then-Sheriff Marlin Gusman settled by agreeing to adopt a new policy placing restrictions on immigration investigations inside the jail. The resulting policy blocked the agency from investigating immigration violations and from detaining immigrants for ICE without a court order, except in certain cases where they are facing charges for a small number of serious violent crimes.
Murrill filed a challenge to the policy earlier this year, arguing that it conflicts with a new state law – passed in 2024 – that prohibits local law enforcement agencies from prohibiting their employees from fully cooperating with ICE investigations.
Van Meerveld’s Friday order said the state has a right to pursue that challenge because it has demonstrated that the state has an interest in enforcing its laws.
Though the Sheriff’s Office is a political subdivision of the state, Sheriff Susan Hutson, van Meerveld added, has shown that she will not adequately represent the state’s interests in the case. The judge pointed to a provision of the 2013 settlement that allows the policy to be adjusted in the event of a change to state or federal law that applies to immigration detainers.
But despite the new state law, van Meerveld wrote in her opinion, the Sheriff’s office “has undertaken no action to modify or rescind the policy.”
“Here, it has become obvious that the OPSO cannot represent the State’s interest.”
Hutson, who has previously maintained that the Sheriff’s Office has not hindered the work of federal immigration authorities, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday’s order. Sheriff-elect Michelle Woodfork also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This article originally published in the November 10, 2025 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.