Democrat Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson looks eager to prove that if you’re going down, you might as well do it clinging to your beliefs, as erroneous and contrafactual as they may be.
Hutson’s tenure has been little short of disastrous—primarily in her management of Orleans Parish Prison and oversight of inmates when they are offsite. She first rose to public attention for monitoring the New Orleans Police Department for irregularities, as established by referendum. Her track record reflects a consistently soft-on-crime approach, even though the sheriff’s office does not directly engage in frontline law enforcement.
A surprise winner over the long-time Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office incumbent in 2021 elections, since then she has embroiled herself in controversy after controversy. These include opposing a jail expansion that the courts ultimately ordered her to undertake, paying lavishly during Carnival festivities for senior staff and in a manner which violated state and federal law (which she called “misogynistic”), proposing a ballot measure raising taxes hugely only to see it gain support of fewer than 10 percent of voters, suffering a mass jailbreak that appeared a consequence of lax procedures (which she blamed on lack of funds even though the OPSO is sitting on $14 million in reserves), and, perhaps most poetically, gigged by federal jail monitors for deteriorating conditions. Most recently, she was held in contempt of court for failing to provide deputies as required to oversee prisoner courtroom activities on Saturdays.
But perhaps her most high-profile conflict has come over her insistence that a consent decree about a dozen years ago entered into by her predecessor prevents the department from honoring Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer requests in most instances without a court order, as well as preventing the department from initiating immigration investigations or offering ICE information about inmate release dates or addresses.
That now runs counter to Act 314 of 2024. This prohibits any law enforcement policy that limits honoring ICE detainers or providing ICE with inmate information. Hutson during her tenure has brayed long and loudly about how, in essence, she must run the jail as a sanctuary for illegal aliens because of this consent decree, as a cover for her views on lax immigration enforcement.
The problem is the consent decree language itself sabotages that argument. As previously noted, it says a material change in state law – which Act 314 certainly is – or federal law applicable to detainers voids the decree’s provisions along those lines. With no apparent change in sheriff’s office policy, the state has asked the federal court overseeing the decree to become a party to it, with the intent of dissolving that portion of it. As well, the federal government has filed a similar motion supporting the view that Act 314 negates passages dealing with detainers.
Hutson is trying to stave off the inevitable charge of violating state law by claiming the state has no proof her office hasn’t lived up to requested detainers – despite one ICE official alleging she hadn’t – and by teasing it wants to revise the decree, presumably to fit the new law. However, the law in unequivocable; OPSO must honor detainer and information requests. Anything less than that is a nonstarter, and it’s red herring that the decree must prohibit that as clearly procedures can be worked out to ensure overstaying a sentence can be worked out instead of taking the drastic, and now illegal, step of noncooperation.
Fortunately, Hutson looks likely to become a non sequitur within the year. The electorate views her dimly for reelection this fall, a campaign she restarted after suspending it in wake of the jailbreak. Hopefully, her successor will do what a law enforcement officer should do and obey the law through greater cooperation with ICE.