The Trump administration is about to add families with children to the country’s busiest deportation hub. A 528-bed facility for immigrant families, unaccompanied minors and single adult women is nearly finished at England Airpark in Alexandria, Louisiana, and could begin receiving people within a week or two, according to ABC News. The stated goal is to move families from custody to a deportation flight in under 48 hours. Immigrant-rights groups say it is a detention center for children by another name.
Alexandria is already the single largest departure point for ICE removal flights. The New York Times reports that roughly 30 percent of all U.S. deportation flights leave from the airport, with 579 flights departing between January and August 2026. Until now, the site has held only adults. The new facility, built inside renovated Air Force barracks a short walk from the runway, is the first the second Trump administration has opened to hold unaccompanied children, who are normally kept in Health and Human Services shelters rather than ICE custody.
How the Facility Will Work
The airpark’s board of commissioners approved the project in February over objections from local residents. The contract went to the LaSalle Family Foundation, the nonprofit arm of LaSalle Corrections, a private prison company that already runs several ICE detention centers. Day-to-day operations will be handled by a contractor called Anovaeon, which describes itself as a humanitarian response company. The operators are calling it the Alexandria Family Staging Center.
The pitch from officials is logistics. Families and children who are being removed currently sit in shelters, foster placements or detention centers scattered across the country, and ICE has had nowhere to hold them near the airport while it assembles a flight. The new center puts them beside the runway so the time between a removal order and departure shrinks to a day or two. Airpark director Ralph Hennessy has said the facility will let families leave together instead of being split up, and that it will bring about 200 jobs and more than 500,000 dollars a year in rent to the airpark.
DHS and ICE insist this is not a detention center. An ICE spokesperson called it a staging facility where people wait for their flight or for transfer. Operators told the board last week the building was 95 percent complete and promised medical and mental health care, meals, soccer fields and free international phone calls. Pamphlets handed out at board meetings describe the setting as non-detained.
Why Advocates Are Alarmed
The non-detained label fell apart under questioning. Asked what happens if a family tries to walk out, Anovaeon’s operations director told the board that staff would open the gate but immediately notify ICE, whose office sits steps away. The draft agreement between DHS and the airpark, obtained by the National Immigration Project, describes the purpose as providing ICE alien detention in a secure environment. As the group’s Southeast regional attorney put it, people are not free to leave, so it is a detention center.
Officials have also described the residents as families who are voluntarily self-deporting. Advocates question how voluntary a departure is when it begins in a locked facility next to a runway. The bigger worry is speed. A turnaround of under 48 hours leaves almost no window to reach a lawyer, gather documents or raise an asylum claim, and the facility will hold unaccompanied children, who have the least ability to do any of that on their own. Child welfare groups add that even short periods of confinement are known to harm children, and that the atmosphere of a deportation hub is not a place for them.
There is a precedent that makes people nervous. Florida’s Alligator Alcatraz was also sold as a temporary facility before reports of people held in cramped cages led to its closure. And England Airpark is a former Air Force base; advocates say parts of the property carry PFAS contamination from its military days. DHS, the airpark and Anovaeon did not respond to questions about contamination or about whether people would be restrained during their stay or removal. Faith leaders held an interfaith vigil outside the fenced barracks on October 1, and earlier board meetings grew heated enough that police removed opponents.
What This Means for Immigrants
For families without status, especially recent arrivals and anyone with a pending asylum case, this raises the stakes. The administration’s aim is to clear the backlog of people waiting inside the country for a decision, and a 48-hour pipeline next to the nation’s busiest deportation runway is built to do exactly that. Once a family is moved to Alexandria, there may be no time left to act.
The practical response is to prepare before that happens. Anyone at risk of removal should have a lawyer identified now, not after a transfer, and should keep copies of identity documents, court notices and any evidence supporting a fear of return somewhere a trusted person can reach them. Parents should make sure a relative or attorney knows where their children are and has written authorization to act for them. If you or someone you know is detained, get legal help immediately: a qualified attorney or a Department of Justice accredited representative can file to stop a removal, but only if they are reached in time. Free legal services for people in ICE custody are listed by the Executive Office for Immigration Review.