Louisiana Residents Are Resisting Plans to Build ICE Jail on Contaminated SiteLouisiana Residents Are Resisting Plans to Build ICE Jail on Contaminated Site
Organizers are hard at work to convince officials to roll back an agreement with a private prison operator.
By Frances Madeson TRUTHOUT September 12, 2026
The Alexandria International Airport, which is part of England Airpark in central Louisiana, is currently known as the busiest ICE Air Operations hub for deportations in the United States. Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s Alexandria Staging Facility, a terminus for people being removed from the U.S., is reviled the world over by abused and deported refugees from Cameroon to Haiti. Even as the town’s tourism office works in overdrive to entice visitors to the area’s natural and cultural attractions — the scenic Red River, lush butterfly gardens, and historic homes such as the one where venerated Harlem Renaissance poet Arna Bontemps lived from birth to three years old — violence against immigrants keeps coming.
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If ICE has its way, as soon as the end of September, it aims to place immigrant women (including those who are pregnant), infants, and children, on top of this toxic site in a 528-bed facility, to be housed in a former military barracks. To further sully the atmosphere, ICE has contracted with the LaSalle Family Foundation, an affiliate of the private prison operator LaSalle Corrections, which runs the Irwin Detention Center in Georgia. A congressional investigation found ample evidence of rampant medical abuse at the facility, including medically unnecessary gynecological procedures performed on migrant women.
… For the entire article, see https://truthout.org/articles/louisiana-residents-are-resisting-plans-to-build-ice-jail-on-contaminated-site/
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Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)
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