FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Friday, August 28, 2026
CONTACT:
Jesse Vad, ACLU of Louisiana: 415-686-4078; media@laaclu.org
Alexandria, LA - Communities across Louisiana strongly oppose the opening of a family and child ICE detention facility at the England Airpark adjacent to the Alexandria International Airport, which is already notorious as ICE’s busiest mass deportation hub. Despite overwhelming community resistance, numerous testimony, and an open letter to the board members at the company’s board meeting in July, the England Authority continues to silence community opposition to the facility, which is expected to open at the end of September. The Authority is refusing to allow public comment or provide responses to questions regarding environmental and public health risks at the site, as well as concerns about length of stay of children and families at this detention center.
For decades unaccompanied immigrant children in government custody have been held under the Office of Refugee Resettlement within the Department of Health and Human Services, an agency better equipped to address the special needs and vulnerabilities of kids. Now in a marked shift, the Trump Administration is ending this practice to instead detain kids in the very same deadly, cruel and unaccountable ICE detention system as immigrant adults.
The proposed detention center in Alexandria sits on one of the country’s most Pfas-contaminated sites with ‘forever chemicals’ levels “at least 575,000 times higher” than the federal drinking water limit, posing an immense health and safety risk for the families, and especially the children, detained there. It will be run by LaSalle Family Foundation - a group with direct ties to LaSalle Corrections, a private prison company notorious for abuse, retaliation, and neglect in its ICE facilities, including conducting invasive, nonconsensual gynecological procedures.
Yesterday, Central Louisiana community members joined local residents, faith leaders, and immigrant justice advocates at the England Authority Board of Commissioners meeting to oppose the England Airpark’s agreement with ICE for a family detention center and an accompanying ordinance that will restrict the right to protest in the area. In addition to raising serious concerns about the Alexandria Child Detention Center, community members pushed back against the ordinance, which will implement a permitting process for any protests at the Airpark.
Despite the importance and relevance of these concerns, the Chair of the Board of Commissioners repeatedly interrupted community members during public comment, limiting their ability to be heard. Still, residents continued to demand transparency, accountability, and meaningful public input on decisions that will have lasting impacts on communities across the state and the country.
Additionally, several board members announced a signed letter to schedule a special meeting to specifically address the Alexandria Child Detention Center. This meeting, set to take place on September 8th, 4PM CT, represents an important opportunity for the board to listen to the serious concerns and devastating consequences should the child detention center open.
While all immigrant detention is inhumane and unnecessary, it is particularly traumatizing for children, with lasting harms that persist long after release, including developmental delays, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicidal ideation.
Advocates are sounding the alarm and putting pressure on the England Authority to cancel the contracts for a new detention facility, and instead prioritize investments that strengthen and support the people who call Central Louisiana home.
National and local advocates and community members from Central Louisiana issued the following statements:
Tania Wolf, Southeast Advocacy Manager, National Immigration Project, said: “We'd be fighting this facility even if the land were uncontaminated. Children and families don't belong in detention, period. The England Authority has not answered one question about the health risks that potential exposure to poison in that ground would have on children, families, and future workers at this facility. The Board has publicly stated their ‘fiduciary responsibility’ as justification for the decision they made that allows this detention center to exist. The reality is they have breached that responsibility by making an uninformed decision without due diligence. And now, the community will suffer for it. Every week that commissioners stay silent is a week closer to children living next door to some of the most chemically contaminated ground in the country. Whatever happens inside that facility, these commissioners chose it. By allowing this contract to proceed, the Board is now party to the cruel practice of family separation.”
Trudy Taylor Smith, Senior Administrator of Policy and Advocacy, Children’s Defense Fund-Texas, said: “Since last January, the Trump administration has systematically dismantled basic protections for children in government custody and cut off access to lawyers for immigrant children and families. Now, the planned opening of this private prison for parents and children on a contaminated site demonstrates even more clearly the naked cruelty of an administration willing to poison children and families with harmful chemicals, imprison them under inhumane conditions, and send children to dangerous places where they face risks of serious harm, including trafficking and abuse. Our elected leaders have a responsibility to protect children by preventing this dangerous detention camp from opening, restoring access to independent legal counsel for every unaccompanied child, and ending cruel policies such as family detention that place immigrant children and their families in harm's way.”
Kristin Kumpf, National Coordinator for Free Families: The National Coalition to End Family and Child Detention, said: “The Trump administration’s plans to open this new prison in Louisiana to detain families and children is a cruel escalation of its mass detention and deportation agenda. Families and children should not be detained in ICE facilities for any length of time. ICE has always been an inherently violent agency jeopardizing families and community safety. Families and children should be able to navigate their cases in community with support services provided and facilitated by local community based groups – never ICE, an agency that is plagued by a culture of violence and secrecy and a track record of detaining people in egregiously poor conditions.”
Nery Lopez, Organizing Manager at Detention Watch Network, said: “As the outcry over ICE abuse and violence grows, we continue to demand an end to child and family detention. Childhood is a fleeting period of time that has a tremendous impact on the foundation for a person’s lifelong well-being – it must be protected. Jailing kids and stripping parents of their fundamental right to keep them safe is unconscionable. No one is safe in ICE custody, especially children. We must continue to unite across the country to demand no more money for ICE, no more abuse and death at the hands of ICE, no more child and family detention.”
Diego De La Torre, Refugee and Migrant Rights Fellow, Amnesty International USA, said: "The England Authority still has time to change course. Approving this ICE detention center that will be used to detain families and children who have been ripped away from their families would make the Commissioners active participants in the lasting trauma of children and the Trump administration’s cruel attacks on our immigrant friends, families, and neighbors. This unprecedented move by ICE to detain unaccompanied children is an expansion of an inhumane system that needlessly incarcerates children, separates families, and violates human rights. The board should reject this facility, cancel the contracts, and choose compassion, community, family unity, and dignity over detention and deportation.”
Sarah Whittington, Advocacy Director, ACLU of Louisiana said: “Louisianans have made it clear they do not want this. Instead of investing in the community and building something to uplift Alexandria, officials chose a prison for children in our backyard. ICE and the board members can dress this up however they want, but it is clear this is a detention center that will be run by one of the most infamous, dangerous private prison companies in the country. But there is still time for the board to make this right and change course. Instead of cementing Alexandria as a hub for the systematic imprisonment of children, the board can cancel this agreement and work with the community instead.”
Martha Alguera, Southeast Dignity not Detention Coalition Organizer and Matriz y Mar, Co-Director, said: “This is what moral bankruptcy looks like in practice. The fact that in Alexandria, Louisiana, the government is preparing to cage mothers and babies on land poisoned by 'forever chemicals'-PFAS, TCE, asbestos is abhorrent. These are toxins that would make any responsible parent flee their own backyard. Meanwhile, it is well-documented that children at Dilley are suffering from rotting food, freezing temperatures, and medical neglect so severe a federal judge appointed an independent monitor. Yet the England Airpark board pushes forward with this Dilley-like plan anyway, ignoring the local community saying 'no!’ When did we decide it's acceptable to warehouse children in toxic facilities to enrich private contractors? This isn't immigration enforcement, it's profiteering from trauma. A government that detains children on contaminated ground to line the pockets of wealthy, unscrupulous private businesses has no moral compass. This isn't policy, it's cruelty with a budget sheet and we as Louisianans standing with concerned citizens of Alexandria are saying NO!”
Erin Tracy of Cenla Activism said: “As community awareness grows for the family and child detention center approved by the England Authority board, the board passed an ordinance in an attempt to silence the growing opposition. If the board refuses to research and acknowledge the implications of locking up children on an industrial-zoned former-military site, we will do it for them and continue to share that to the public. Coercion is heavily involved in this sinister plot to send children and families with stability in the U.S. to countries where they may be alone with no resources. The timing with the Trump administration ending contracts for legal aid for over 25,000 unaccompanied minors is no coincidence. Central Louisiana rejects this racist, inhumane, dangerous expansion of ICE operations that will affect our most vulnerable populations."