The Trump administration is opening a new 528-bed migrant holding facility in Alexandria, Louisiana — positioned directly next to the nation’s busiest deportation flight hub.
The facility at England Airpark sits beside Alexandria International Airport, where more than 4,400 immigration enforcement flights landed or departed last year alone, according to data from ICE Flight Monitor.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is calling the Louisiana site a “staging area” rather than a detention center, saying migrants would be held there for a maximum of 72 hours while awaiting deportation flights.
“England Airpark is a staging facility for deportations. A staging facility is where illegal aliens await their deportation flight to their destination country or transfer to a detention facility.”
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed the facility’s purpose in a statement to Fox News Digital.
Airpark officials described the project as a “humanitarian effort” for families who are “self-deporting.” Ralph Hennessy, executive director of the England Airpark Authority, said the facility could be operational as early as next month.
“These are people that are volunteering to go back home, and they’re going back home as a family unit,” Hennessy told The Associated Press.
ICE signed the contract late last month to build the facility at the former military base. The proximity to the airport allows federal immigration officials to streamline the deportation process by housing illegal immigrants and unaccompanied children during final flight preparations.
The facility will be run by the LaSalle Family Foundation, the nonprofit arm of LaSalle Corrections, a private prison contractor. The company operates several immigration detention centers throughout the South.
ICE documents state that families and children at the facility “are in the legal custody of ICE and can only be released at the direction of ICE.”
The agency has instructed contractors not to refer to families at the facility as prisoners, detainees, or inmates. Contractors were also told not to use bars or cages when transporting families and unaccompanied children. The facility will not require headcounts and will allow families to wear their own clothes.
Unaccompanied children are typically placed in the care of state-licensed shelters and foster care programs run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Department of Health and Human Services. But that agency is not involved in the new facility’s operation, according to airpark officials.
Border czar Tom Homan recently disputed claims of inhumane conditions at a New Jersey ICE facility, saying “Democratic politicians were lying” about alleged hunger strikes and mistreatment after personally inspecting medical, recreation, and housing units.
LaSalle Corrections runs several private prisons and federal immigration detention centers throughout the South, including facilities inside Louisiana’s maximum-security prison in Angola. Since April, two detainee deaths have been reported at a LaSalle-run ICE facility in the state.
Winn Correctional Center was found last month to have violated standards regarding environmental health and safety, food service, use of force, medical care, and other concerns, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General.
