ALEXANDRIA, Louisiana — The Trump administration is moving ahead with plans to establish a 528-bed facility to hold migrant families and unaccompanied children near a major airport, a move designed to make deportations faster and more efficient.
The site in Alexandria, Louisiana, is intended to solve a longstanding logistical problem: rounding up children from foster homes and shelters scattered across the country and having no nearby location to house them in the final hours before a deportation flight. That problem came into sharp focus last year when Guatemalan children were roused from sleep in the middle of the night and given almost no time to travel to Harlingen, Texas, where they then sat waiting on an airport tarmac for hours.
A federal judge stepped in to halt those deportations, but the disorganized episode exposed just how unprepared authorities were without a dedicated holding space near the airport. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is describing the new Alexandria site as a “staging area” rather than a detention center, noting that people would remain there for only a few days at most.
Despite that characterization, immigration advocates are voicing serious concerns. Several worry that children could end up being held at the facility for weeks or even months — a pattern that has emerged at other federal immigration sites. They are also raising questions about oversight and say this facility marks a significant shift in how the government handles migrant 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.”
Under current law, unaccompanied children — those who arrive in the U.S. without a parent or close relative — are not placed in ICE-run facilities. They are required to be quickly transferred to state-licensed shelters and foster care programs, which fall under the Office of Refugee Resettlement within the Department of Health and Human Services. However, a spokesperson at the airfield where the new facility is being constructed confirmed that agency will have no role in operating it.
Instead, the facility will be managed by a nonprofit arm of LaSalle Corrections, a private prison company, according to Ralph Hennessy, executive director of the England Airpark Authority. He said the facility could open as early as August.
ICE officials signed a contract late last month to build the facility at a former military base near Alexandria International Airport, located roughly 175 miles northwest of New Orleans, Hennessy said. Records obtained by The Associated Press show it is intended to function as a 72-hour holding center for migrants awaiting deportation flights.
A Texas-based nonprofit called Compass Connections, which operates shelters for unaccompanied immigrant children, had originally been selected to help run the facility and presented plans publicly in February. However, the company’s president, Sonya Thompson, told the AP last week that the organization is no longer part of the project. She did not provide further details.
During public board meetings, airpark officials referred to the facility as a “humanitarian effort” for families choosing to “self-deport.” Immigration advocates counter that families and unaccompanied children sometimes make that choice under duress or without fully understanding their legal 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 will sit adjacent to the country’s busiest deportation hub. According to data from the ICE Flight Monitor, an initiative of Human Rights First, more than 4,400 immigration enforcement flights passed through Alexandria International Airport in 2025. ICE planning 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 directed contractors not to refer to those held there as prisoners, detainees, or inmates. Contractors have also been told not to use bars or cages when transporting families and children. The facility will not be required to conduct headcounts, and families will be permitted to wear their own clothing, according to agency guidelines.
LaSalle Corrections, based in Louisiana, operates a number of private prisons and federal immigration detention centers across the South, including a facility known as the “Louisiana Lockup” inside the state’s maximum-security prison in Angola. The official contractor for the new ICE holding site will be the company’s nonprofit arm, the LaSalle Family Foundation, which according to its tax filings provides chaplain services and educational programming inside correctional facilities.
LaSalle Corrections itself will also be involved in operating the facility and ensuring it meets compliance standards, according to an email from the company’s chief financial officer, Tim Kurpiewski, reviewed by the AP. A LaSalle spokesperson declined to comment.
The company’s track record has drawn scrutiny. Two detainees have died since April at a separate LaSalle-run ICE facility in Louisiana. Additionally, a facility called Winn Correctional Center was found in June to have violated standards related to environmental health and safety, food service, use of force, medical care, and other areas, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General.
