The Trump administration is preparing to open a new detention facility in Louisiana specifically designed to hold migrant families and unaccompanied children, positioning the facility to accelerate deportations by eliminating logistical bottlenecks. The 528-bed holding center, scheduled to open as early as August, will be located near Alexandria International Airport, which has become the nation’s busiest deportation hub.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials signed a contract in late June 2026 to build the facility at a former military base roughly 175 miles northwest of New Orleans. The agency calls it a “staging area” rather than a detention center, stating that occupants would remain there only a few days at most. However, the facility is designed to operate as a 72-hour holding center for migrants awaiting deportation.
The location represents a strategic advantage for the administration. Alexandria International Airport processed more than 4,400 immigration enforcement flights in 2025, making it ICE’s primary hub for deportation operations. By positioning a facility near the airport, the administration aims to eliminate the logistical challenges that have slowed deportations, particularly for unaccompanied children currently scattered across the country in foster homes and shelters.
Those challenges were illustrated last year when Guatemalan children were awakened at night with minimal notice and transported to Harlingen, Texas, where they waited on an airport tarmac for hours. A federal judge halted that deportation, but the incident exposed what ICE identified as a critical gap: nowhere to hold families and children near the airport during final preparations for flights.
The facility will be operated by the nonprofit arm of LaSalle Corrections, a Louisiana-based private prison company that runs a range of detention centers throughout the South. LaSalle Corrections itself will be involved in managing daily operations. The company’s track record has raised concerns among advocates. Two detainee deaths have been reported since April at a LaSalle-run ICE facility in Louisiana, and the Winn Correctional Center was found in June to have violated standards governing environmental health and safety, food service, use-of-force, and medical care.
A Texas-based nonprofit, Compass Connections, was originally tapped to help operate the facility and presented plans during a public meeting in February. However, the organization withdrew from the project in recent weeks without elaboration.
Immigration advocates have expressed significant concerns about the new facility. According to planning documents obtained by media outlets, ICE states 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 instructed contractors that families cannot be referred to as prisoners, detainees, or inmates, and has ordered that they not use bars or cages when transporting families and children. The facility will not require regular headcounts, and families will be allowed to wear their own clothes.
Despite these instructions, advocates worry that the facility’s proximity to the airport and its design as a deportation hub will create pressure to expedite removals. Leecia Welch, chief legal counsel at the nonprofit Children’s Rights, said the facility represents “an expansion of the deportation system in ways we haven’t seen before,” and warned that “there’s just so much that could go wrong with this facility.”
Advocates also point to historical precedent. While ICE claims residents would remain for short periods, children have been held for weeks or months at other federal immigration holding sites. Immigration advocates note that families sometimes choose to “self-deport” under pressure from detention conditions rather than fight their cases.
The detention facility expansion comes as part of the Trump administration’s broader acceleration of immigration enforcement. Since taking office, the administration has dramatically expanded ICE detention capacity, with daily detention populations reaching record levels. The administration has allocated $45 billion in unprecedented funding for detention and enforcement and is implementing what it calls a “detention reengineering initiative” involving the construction of massive warehouse-based detention centers across the country.
The Alexandria facility fits into this larger infrastructure push designed to support mass deportations. An ICE director described the goal as operating the system like “Amazon Prime, but with human beings,” highlighting the administration’s focus on efficiency and speed.
The facility’s creation raises questions about family unity and due process, issues that have been at the heart of ongoing legal challenges to family detention practices. Medical professionals, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, have spoken out against family detention under any circumstances, arguing that it causes psychological trauma to children.
Under the Biden administration, family detention had largely been phased out, with the government allowing most families to remain in the community while their immigration cases proceeded. The practice is now being revived as the Trump administration prioritizes detention as a tool to encourage deportation.
Human rights advocates, immigration attorneys, and civil liberties organizations have warned that the new facility could become a bottleneck for forced removals, separating families and denying them adequate time to arrange childcare, secure legal representation, or prepare psychologically for deportation. The speed with which the government aims to move families through the Alexandria facility—described in planning documents as a transfer point rather than a housing facility—means minimal opportunity for intervention.
The facility is expected to begin operations within weeks, adding another component to what has become, by some measures, one of the most expansive immigration detention systems in U.S. history.