Trump plans migrant child holding center near Louisiana deportation hub

The Trump administration plans to open a 528-bed holding center for migrant families and unaccompanied children next to England Airpark in Alexandria, Louisiana, tightening the pipeline between detention and deportation at a site already used as a removal staging base. Placing the facility beside Alexandria International Airport could cut the logistics now involved in moving children from foster homes and shelters around the country before flight departures.

It is a temporary holding or staging facility, and local airpark officials expect it to be running as early as August 2026. The airport complex has become the nation’s largest hub of deportation flights, giving immigration officials a place where families and children can be gathered close to aircraft instead of being transported across state lines at the last minute.

A 2025 removal effort involving Guatemalan children left them awakened at night, given little time to travel to Harlingen, Texas, and then waiting for hours on an airport tarmac. Supporters of the Louisiana facility argue that a permanent staging point near the runway would avoid those delays. Critics see a faster deportation machine that leaves less time for lawyers, family contact, medical screening, and review of whether a child should be removed at all.

Immigration advocates fear some children could be held there for weeks or months, not merely overnight before a flight. Leecia Welch of Children’s Rights warned, “It’s an expansion of the deportation system in ways we haven’t seen before.”

The site has also drawn protest in Alexandria, where demonstrators have raised alarms over detention expansion, environmental contamination on the property, and the treatment of women and children in federal custody. Ron Wyden pressed the administration in a June 4, 2026 letter over a secretive facility being prepared for unaccompanied children in Alexandria.