BATON ROUGE, LA – ICE officials reported an unprecedented surge in voluntary self-deportation requests this week after discovering dozens of immigrants who have been trapped in College Drive traffic since late 2023. According to agents, many of the individuals believed they had merely taken “a quick detour to avoid I-10,” unaware they were entering a gridlock of epic proportions commonly mistaken for a roadway.
Federal authorities said several motorists were found in a state of disbelief, surrounded by empty fast-food bags, expired inspection stickers, and the haunting realization that they had spent two holiday seasons in the same bottleneck.
When ICE informed the group they weren’t actually in custody and were free to leave, many reportedly begged to be taken anyway, citing deportation as “the first glimmer of hope” they’d seen since merging onto College Drive from I-10 several years earlier. Officials admitted they’d never processed self-deportation requests based on solely on traffic but promised to “review the paperwork once we find the people who can still remember where they were originally driving.”
City officials promised to study the issue thoroughly, meaning a report should be ready by the late 2040s if funding, staffing, and public interest all hold steady. Previous traffic studies have taken decades to complete, largely because researchers themselves became stuck somewhere between the interstate and the Lee High School.
