NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Trump administration plans to open a 528-bed holding facility for migrant families and unaccompanied children next to an airport hub, positioning itself to speed up deportations.
The location in Alexandria, Louisiana, would remove logistical headaches caused by wrangling children from foster homes and shelters across the country and not having anywhere to put them during final preparations for flight. Those obstacles were apparent last year when Guatemalan children were awoken at night and given almost no time to get to Harlingen, Texas, where they waited on an airport tarmac for hours.
A federal judge prevented their deportation, but the chaotic episode illustrated the challenges authorities face because they don't have anywhere to put families and children near the airport. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is calling the Alexandria facility a “staging area,” not a detention center, and says people would only be there a few days at most.
However, several immigration advocates expressed concern that children could be held at the new facility for weeks or months, which happened at other federal immigration holding sites. These advocates are also concerned about oversight, and say the facility represents a departure from how the government manages those children.
“It’s an expansion of the deportation system in ways we haven’t seen before,” said Leecia Welch, chief legal counsel at the nonprofit Children’s Rights. “There’s just so much that could go wrong with this facility.”
Unaccompanied children who are in the U.S. without parents or close relatives are not taken to facilities overseen by ICE. Instead, the law says they must be swiftly placed in the care of state-licensed shelters and foster care programs.
Those are run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Department of Health and Human Services. However, that agency isn't involved in the Alexandria facility’s operation, according to a spokesperson at the airfield where it's being built.
Instead, the facility would be run by a nonprofit arm of LaSalle Corrections, a private prison contractor, according to Ralph Hennessy, executive director of the England Airpark Authority. He said it could be operational as early as August.
ICE officials signed a contract late last month to build the facility at the former military base near Alexandria International Airport, roughly 175 miles (280 kilometers) northwest of New Orleans, Hennessy said.
It would operate as a 72-hour holding center for migrants awaiting deportation, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.
Compass Connections, a Texas-based nonprofit that runs shelters for unaccompanied immigrant children, had originally been tapped to help operate the facility and laid out plans during a public presentation in February.
But the company’s president, Sonya Thompson, told the AP last week that it was no longer involved. She did not elaborate.
In public board meetings, airpark officials said the facility is a “humanitarian effort” for families that are “self-deporting.” Immigration advocates say families and unaccompanied children sometimes make that decision under pressure or because they don't understand their options.
“These are people that are volunteering to go back home and they’re going back home as a family unit,” Hennessy told the AP.
The facility would sit next to the nation's largest hub for deportations. More than 4,400 immigration enforcement flights came into and out of the Alexandria International Airport in 2025, according to data from the ICE Flight Monitor, an initiative of Human Rights First. ICE planning documents say 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 that families at the facility cannot be referred to as prisoners, detainees or inmates, records show. The agency ordered contractors to not use bars or cages when transporting families and unaccompanied children. The facility will not be required to engage in headcounts and should allow families to “wear their own clothes,” the agency added.
Louisiana-based LaSalle Corrections runs a range of private prisons and federal immigration detention centers throughout the South, including the “Louisiana Lockup” inside the state’s maximum-security prison in Angola.
The official contractor for the new ICE holding facility will be the company's nonprofit arm, the LaSalle Family Foundation. According to its tax records, the nonprofit provides chaplain services and educational programming in correctional facilities.
However, LaSalle Corrections itself will be involved in operating the holding facility and ensuring compliance, the company’s chief financial officer, Tim Kurpiewski, wrote in an email reviewed by the AP.
LaSalle spokesperson Scott Sutterfield declined to comment.
The deaths of two detainees have been reported since April at a LaSalle-run ICE facility in the state.
Winn Correctional Center was also found in June to have violated standards governing environmental health and safety, food service, use-of-force, medical care and other subjects, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General.
FILE - Immigrants play soccer at a new U.S. government holding center for migrant children, in Carrizo Springs, Texas, July 9, 2019. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
