The Trump administration is preparing to launch a 528-bed holding site for migrant families and unaccompanied children beside an airport hub, a move intended to make deportations faster and more logistically efficient.
The planned facility in Alexandria, Louisiana, is designed to address a recurring problem for immigration authorities: moving children from foster homes and shelters scattered across the country while trying to coordinate last-minute deportation flights. Those difficulties were on display last year, when Guatemalan children were awakened during the night and given little time to reach Harlingen, Texas, where they then spent hours waiting on an airport tarmac.
A federal judge ultimately blocked that deportation effort, but the incident underscored a gap in the government’s current system: officials lack a dedicated place near an airport to hold families and children during final travel preparations. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has described the Alexandria site as a “staging area” rather than a detention center, saying migrants would remain there only for a few days at most.
Immigration advocates, however, are raising alarms. They worry that children could end up staying at the facility for weeks or even months, as has happened at other federal immigration holding sites. They also question what oversight will be in place and argue that the plan marks a significant shift in how the government handles unaccompanied minors.
“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.”
ICE has tapped a private prison company to run the deportation facility
Under current law, unaccompanied children who arrive in the United States without parents or close relatives are not supposed to be placed in ICE-run facilities. They are instead required to be transferred promptly to state-licensed shelters and foster care programs.
Those programs fall under the Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. But according to a spokesperson for the airfield where the Alexandria site is being built, that agency is not involved in operating the new facility.
Instead, Ralph Hennessy, executive director of the England Airpark Authority, said the site would be managed by a nonprofit arm of LaSalle Corrections, a private prison contractor. He said the facility could be ready to open as soon 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.
Officials have said the facility is for ‘self-deporting’ families
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.
The private prison company runs other ICE detention centers
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.
Copyright © 2026 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
