The staging facility in Alexandria has detention centers in Tarmac, making it a major hub for President Donald Trump’s deportation flights.
Big businesses behind Louisiana’s ice detention
Many rural Louisiana communities rely on prison economies, including immigration detention centers, to maintain their livelihoods.
Alexandria, Louisiana – Sam Zidan pulled onto the shoulder of the airport’s lawn and wanted to see his brother in a bondage man riding a deportation flight.
A jet roamed down the sweaty runway. Known as the Alexandria staging facility in rural Louisiana, the site is the only ice prison stadium in the country and the top hub of the Trump administration’s deportation campaign.
According to analyst Tom Cartwright, U.S. immigration customs deportation flights rose to five-year highs in June, and Alexandria was the first to rank among the country’s busiest deportation hubs, according to Tom Cartwright, who tracks ice flights for nonprofit witnesses at the border.
The record pace continues in July, with the Trump administration leaning heavily towards Louisiana’s ice detention centers that feed Alexandria.
The staging facility in Alexandria is located on the runway at a small regional airport between the golf course and the gated district. Zeidan witnessed the chain link fence.
Zeidan is a Palestinian immigrant with US citizenship and told USA Today that he believes his brother will be deported from Alexandria that day.
“He’s causing a lot of trouble here,” Zeydan said he knitted his fingers into the fence on Wednesday, mid-June. “They sent him here yesterday, but the flight was cancelled.”
“The cornerstone of the ice deportation flight”
Louisiana’s nine dedicated ice facilities have, on average, more than 7,000 detainees daily in recent months. The state dramatically expanded ice detention during the first Trump administration, expanding its network from four detention centers and around 2,000 detainees.
Alexandria’s holdings are one of the oldest facilities of 2014.
It has 400 detention beds, and receives buses from ice prisons in rural communities across the state and is run by Geo Group Inc., one of the nation’s largest private prison contractors.
“Historically, it’s a facility that people go to just days before the removal flight because it’s attached to the airport and ice air,” said Deb Flyshaker, a former ICE official who served under Biden and the first Trump administration. “It is designed as a short-term detention facility.”
That mid-June morning, we were able to see security guards moving men and women from white prison buses into humid air.
Chained with five-point restraints on my wrists, hips and ankles, I climbed the stairs and onto an airplane with a “eastern” painted on my body.
“If you had to choose one ice facility, the cornerstone of an ice deportation flight, then Alexandria is that,” Cartwright said. “There are many detention centres that are supplied to it.”
Deportation is on the rise
According to Cartwright, the number of deported flights rose to 209 in June. This is the highest level since the Biden administration conducted more than 193 flights during the massive deportation of Haitian asylum seekers in September 2021.
This is a 46% increase from 143 deportation flights in June 2024, he said.
Cartwright analysis shows that since President Donald Trump took office, the number of deportation flights has risen by 12%. However, the administration has not released details of those on the plane, so it is unclear whether the total number of deported people has risen at the same pace.
Some deportation flights will depart from 80 to 120 people to Mexico or Central America, Cartwright said. Others leave to far-reaching destinations with fewer passengers, such as the charter carrying eight criminals to South Sudan.
ICE reported that it had removed 271,48 immigrants for the fiscal year ending September 30th, 2024. ICE data shows that ICE deleted 228,282 people from October 1st to mid-July to mid-July.
The agency did not respond to USA Today’s request for information on the number of deportations during the Trump administration so far.
Congress recently approved a cash injection to boost ICE’s enforcement and removal operations division: $29.9 billion. Lumps can be used to support deportation, especially for “modernizing the fleet.”
Alexandria may not hold its highest position in a long time. The U.S. Army is set to hold a 5,000-bed temporary detention center at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, with access to the base airport.
“It’s Trump season.”
Zeidan and his family run a grocery store in Alexandria, and he says he drives an Uber aside. However, his brother was plagued by drugs and was greeted by ice after being released from a six-year state prison sentence.
“He was in Jena for nine months,” Zeidan said. His brother’s wife is a citizen and the couple has five children, Zeidan said.
He didn’t know why Ice had been holding his brother for nine months. Or, for some reason his family learns later, he was held by a tarmac for more than four hours that day before taking a bus to Texas, and then returned to the Louisiana detention center where he is still in custody.
He shrugged: “It’s Trump season, isn’t it?”
Lauren Villagran can be accessed at lvillagran@usatoday.com.
