Work has started on a 72-hour staging center at a Louisiana airport to help illegal alien families and children get back to their home countries when they decide to self-deport, a local airport official reported July 6.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) started renovating barracks at an old Air Force base in Alexandria—about 125 miles south of Shreveport—to prepare more than 500 beds for the project, according to England Airpark’s Executive Director Ralph Hennessy.
“These are people who have volunteered to self-deport,” Hennessy told The Epoch Times.
The England Airpark entered into a five-year agreement for services with the LaSalle Family Foundation, a private Louisiana-based corrections organization, to run the operation, Hennessy said.
The foundation didn’t respond to a request for comment about the agreement.
The airpark expects the facility to open by the end of August.
Once opened, the families who are moved to the facility will be deported back to their home countries from the Alexandria International Airport inside the airpark.
Workers are converting existing buildings constructed by the military for some of the living space. The rooms will be cleaned and renovated, and ICE also plans to bring in modular buildings for additional space, he said.
England Airpark is a 4,000-acre district undergoing mixed-use redevelopment.
The base closed in 1992 and was turned over to the England Authority next to the city of Alexandria in Rapides Parish, located in the middle of the state.
American, Delta, and United Airlines use the airport for regular flights to Texas and Georgia. Military, charter flights, and cargo aircraft also use the airport that is open 24 hours a day.
The new staging center will add to ICE’s existing deportation operations in Alexandria.
“We’ve got the largest deportation facility here,” Hennessy said. “All they’re doing is adding another element to complement that operation.”
A large staging facility first opened in Alexandria in 2014 during former President Barack Obama’s term after an unprecedented illegal immigrant surge caused a humanitarian crisis at the southern border.
About 68,500 unaccompanied minors and over 50,000 families were apprehended by the Obama administration that year from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
The Alexandria facility has been independently operated by the GEO Group, a government contractor, since it opened. The group was operating the LaSalle ICE Processing Center in Jena, Louisiana, but has since taken on both facilities. The facility is staffed by a combination of GEO employees, ICE staff, and contracted medical staff.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not return requests for comment or confirmation about the new airport center.
