ICE Plans 528-Bed Staging Facility in Louisiana to Accelerate Deportations of Migrant Families and Children

The Facility

ICE signed a contract late last month to build the facility at England Airpark, a former military base adjacent to Alexandria International Airport, roughly 175 miles northwest of New Orleans, according to Ralph Hennessy, executive director of the England Airpark Authority. Hennessy said it could be operational as early as August.

The facility is rated for 528 beds. Per records obtained by the Associated Press, it is designed to function as a 72-hour holding center for migrants awaiting deportation flights. ICE is formally classifying it as a "staging area" rather than a detention center.

It will be operated by a nonprofit arm of LaSalle Corrections, a private prison contractor. The Office of Refugee Resettlement at the Department of Health and Human Services, which normally oversees unaccompanied children, has no role in running the Alexandria site, according to a spokesperson at the airfield.

Why the Government Wants This

The administration's stated case is straightforward: the current system is logistically broken for deportations involving children.

Last year, Guatemalan children were woken in the middle of the night, given almost no preparation time, and transported to Harlingen, Texas, where they then sat on an airport tarmac for hours. A federal judge stopped that deportation. The episode was chaotic precisely because there was no nearby holding location for families and children during the final stage before a flight.

The Alexandria facility is designed to solve that problem. Consolidating children and families near an airport hub eliminates the scramble of pulling kids from foster homes and shelters scattered across multiple states on short notice.

Compass Connections, a Texas-based nonprofit that runs shelters for unaccompanied children, was originally tapped to help operate the site and presented plans publicly in February. But company president Sonya Thompson told the AP last week that Compass Connections is no longer involved. She gave no reason.

The facility would sit next to what sources describe as the nation's largest hub for deportations. More than 4,400 immigration enforcement flights came into and out of Alexandria International Airport in 2025, according to data from the ICE Flight Monitor, an initiative of Human Rights First.

The Concern Worth Taking Seriously

ICE calls it a 72-hour staging area. Multiple immigration advocates point to a clear pattern: similar federal immigration holding sites that were described as short-term have ended up holding children for weeks or months.

Leecia Welch, chief legal counsel at the nonprofit Children's Rights, told the AP: "There's just so much that could go wrong with this facility."

Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants' Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, has represented more than 70 families in detention. She told the Marshall Project that holding families for weeks or months "remains a national crisis" even as the raw numbers have recently dipped.

Advocates also flag an oversight gap: because HHS and its Office of Refugee Resettlement are not involved, the standard legal framework for unaccompanied children does not apply. Federal law requires that unaccompanied minors be placed in state-licensed shelters and foster care programs, NOT ICE-run facilities. Whether Alexandria crosses that legal line remains a live question.

The Numbers Behind the Story

ICE detained more than 6,200 children during Trump's second term, according to data analyzed by the Marshall Project. That figure comes from ICE records obtained by the Deportation Data Project, a coalition of academics and lawyers who collect federal immigration data through public records requests.

Under President Biden, by the final year of his presidency, ICE held a daily average of 24 children in custody. Biden had ended family detention in 2021. After Trump revived the policy, that daily average climbed tenfold, to 226 children on an average day. The number peaked at more than 550 in January, then dropped sharply to fewer than 90 in mid-March. Data beyond mid-March has not yet been made public.

The administration's budget request to Congress asked for funding for "up to 30,000 family unit beds," per the Marshall Project. Congress controls whether that funding gets approved.

Legal and Oversight Questions

The legal terrain is already contested. The government's own classification of the site as a "staging area" is doing a lot of work. If children end up staying beyond 72 hours, as advocates argue is likely based on precedent, the legal and regulatory status of those detentions becomes a live question.

The involvement of a private prison contractor's nonprofit arm, rather than a federally licensed child-welfare provider, adds another layer. Whether that structure satisfies statutory requirements for the care of unaccompanied minors has not been adjudicated.

If a court finds the Alexandria facility holds unaccompanied children in violation of the legal requirement for state-licensed placement, the same judicial disruption that derailed the Harlingen deportation flight could repeat itself, only with a permanent facility already built and contracted.