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The Trump administration plans to open a 528-bed detention center in Alexandria, Louisiana, intended for migrant families and unaccompanied children awaiting deportation, according to an investigation by the AP agency.
The facility will be built on an old military base next to Alexandria International Airport, which is already operating as the country's largest deportation flight center, with over 4,400 registered immigration application flights in 2025.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) signed the contract to build the center at the end of June, and it could be operational as soon as August, according to Ralph Hennessy, executive director of the England Airpark Authority.
ICE refers to the facility as a "preparation area," not a detention center, and argues that migrants would stay there for a maximum of 72 hours before their deportation flights.
However, the agency's own planning documents contradict that softened language: the families and children housed there "are under the legal custody of ICE and can only be released by order of ICE."
Hennessy described the project as a "humanitarian effort" for families who are "voluntarily self-deporting," stating: "These are people who decide to return home of their own accord and do so as a family unit."
The logic behind the center is to eliminate the logistical hurdles that ICE has faced in attempting to deport children scattered in foster homes and shelters across the country.
These problems came to light during the Labor Day weekend of 2025, when dozens of Guatemalan children were taken from their shelters in the early morning and transported to airports in Texas, where they waited for hours on the tarmac. A federal judge blocked those deportations.
The facility would be operated by the LaSalle Family Foundation, the nonprofit arm of LaSalle Corrections, a private prison company based in Louisiana that already manages other ICE detention centers in the southern part of the country, including the so-called "Louisiana Lockup" within the maximum-security prison of Angola.
The involvement of LaSalle raises additional alarms: two detainees died at its Winn Correctional Center between April and June of this year, and that same facility was found in June to be in violation of health, nutrition, use of force, and medical care standards by the Office of Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security.
The company originally selected to operate the center, Compass Connections, withdrew from the project without providing explanations, as confirmed by its president, Sonya Thompson, to the AP.
Immigrant advocates warn that the new center represents a break from federal law, which requires placing unaccompanied children under the supervision of the Office of Refugee Resettlement within the Department of Health and Human Services, an agency that has no role in the Alexandria facility.
ICE instructed contractors that they must not refer to families as prisoners, detainees, or inmates, and that it is prohibited to use bars or cages in their transport.
The center will also not be required to conduct headcounts and will allow migrants to wear their own clothing.
For the groups advocating for the rights of migrant children, these cosmetic measures do not conceal the nature of the project.
"It is an expansion of the deportation system like we have never seen before," stated Leecia Welch, legal director of the organization Children's Rights. "There are too many things that could go wrong with this facility."
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