Faith & Reflection: Voices from the Black Church and Beyond
- 528-bed facility, adjacent to Alexandria airport, expected to open imminently, becoming the second family detention center under President Donald Trump.
- ICE insists the site is a temporary holding facility where families await deportation flights or transfers, not a detention center.
- Advocates say the facility would be the first to detain and deport unaccompanied minors, per Detention Watch Network.
- Community concerns include environmental contamination reports and potential psychological trauma for detained children and families.
- Faith leaders nationwide, including Rev. Liz Theoharis and Rev. Gabriel Salguero, condemn detention and call for compassion and legal protections.
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ALEXANDRIA, La. (RNS and Verite News) — Local community activists and faith leaders from Louisiana and beyond marched and prayed Thursday (Oct. 1) at the fenced-off barracks and trailers at England Airpark, where federal immigration officials are preparing to open a privately-run facility to hold immigrant families and unaccompanied children awaiting deportation.
The 528-bed facility — which sits next to Alexandria International Airport and is expected to open imminently — will be the second detention facility designated for children and families under President Donald Trump.
“We lament the childhood moments that detention will interrupt: a familiar bedtime, a classroom full of friends, a meal around a family table, the freedom to play without fear, graduation, a birthday,” said the Rev. Robin Tanner, president of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association, who flew in from New Jersey to attend the event and led a prayer in front of the facility. About 40 people attended the vigil.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) maintains it will be a temporary holding facility where families will stay while awaiting deportation flights or transfers to other detention centers. Those attending the vigil Thursday, many of whom have spent months opposing family and child detention in Louisiana, see the detention center as an alarming acceleration of the administration’s mass deportation campaign.
The facility would be the “first and only” ICE facility dedicated to detaining and deporting unaccompanied minors, said Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at Detention Watch Network, a coalition advocating for the abolishment of the immigration detention system.
According to ICE’s website, the agency only holds unaccompanied children in rare instances. They are usually handled by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. But ORR is not involved in the Alexandria facility.
ICE did not respond to questions about whether the facility is the first of its kind, when it would open or concerns regarding the facility’s impact on children. Instead, the spokesperson said the facility is not a detention center, but a temporary holding facility where families will stay while awaiting their deportation flight or transfer to another detention facility.
Pastor Leigh Rachal, the executive director of the Louisiana Interchurch Conference — a multi-denominational, social justice-oriented nonprofit — has been organizing faith leaders to oppose the expansion of detention and deportation infrastructure in Louisiana. Rachal said she put out a call nationally to other faith leaders to join Thursday’s event.
“This really is, I think, the human struggle to do better, to lift our hearts together (and) to seek the well-being of every neighbor,” Rachal said.
We lament the childhood moments that detention will interrupt: a familiar bedtime, a classroom full of friends, a meal around a family table, the freedom to play without fear, graduation, a birthday.
The Rev. Robin Tanner
Part of the Trump administration’s efforts to expedite deportations, the new facility is situated beside an airport that has become known as the country’s busiest hub for deportation flights. According to the most recent ICE Flight Monitor report, Alexandria saw roughly 340 flights in August alone, including domestic transfer and deportation flights.
In February, the England Authority Board of Commissioners, the governing body of the former Air Force base known as England Airpark, voted to authorize the executive director of the airpark to sign contracts with the federal government to build the detention center. The executive director also said he signed a contract with the LaSalle Family Foundation to operate and manage the facility on behalf of the airpark. That foundation is the charitable arm of LaSalle Corrections, the private prison company that operates five immigration detention centers in Louisiana.
Since news of the agreement broke, community members also have been concerned about reports of environmental contamination and the potential trauma associated with detaining children. They have been organizing and speaking out against the facility.
Ralph Hennessy, executive director of England Airpark, did not respond to a request for comment, but he has previously downplayed the carceral aspects of the facility.
“This is not something where people are kept in shackles and jail cells. The facilities are set up like a traditional dorm room with beds, refrigerators and microwaves,” Hennessy told Verite News in August.
He has also insisted that the contract with the facility is finalized and has said the facility will open soon, without disclosing a date.
The Rev. Liz Theoharis, the executive director of Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice based in New York City and a Presbyterian pastor, said she felt called to join the vigil and engage in the fight to shut the facility down.
At the vigil, she led a prayer for the immigrant families who face family separation and whose family members are in detention facilities.
“From Genesis to Revelation, there’s this constant story of God freeing people, of God raising up faith leaders who put children first, who protect kids and families,” she said in an interview after the vigil.
Tanner said she learned about the vigil from the Free Families coalition, a group of grassroots organizations working to end family detention in the country.
Tanner refers to immigrant detention centers as “jails” and says, for her, they meet the definition of “concentration camps” — people are separated from their families, concentrated in one place and locked up in facilities such as Delaney Hall in New Jersey and the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas. Until now, Dilley is the only immigrant detention center for families and children. A report by Human Rights First and RAICES alleged “widespread due process violations, inhumane conditions, and lasting physical and psychological harm inflicted on families” at Dilley.
“There is every reason to believe the same thing will occur here,” Tanner said.
Walking back from the vigil, Diane Mobley, a Pineville resident who has attended multiple board meetings over the past few months and spoke out against the airpark facility, said that it’s hard not to feel hopeless when thinking about the children who will be detained at the facility.
“They don’t deserve it. They’re innocent,” she said.
Mobley, who said she grew up as a Southern Baptist but stopped attending church as she got older, said she appreciates the involvement of the faith leaders who showed up. But she was critical of the religious leaders in and around Alexandria who have remained silent on immigrant children being detained.
“I’m really disappointed in the faith leaders who are not here. I think there are a lot of them in our community that should be speaking out and they’re not, and that part kind of goes to one reason I left (the church),” she said.
Overall, the administration’s mass deportation efforts have drawn criticism and protests from faith leaders across the country. Earlier this week, Latino faith leaders were among those who signed a letter calling on the Trump administration and Congress to provide legal protection for long-term undocumented immigrants. The Rev. Gabriel Salguero, the president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, said that pastors have seen the trauma that detention can inflict on children and families.
“Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me,’” Salguero, who didn’t attend Thursday’s vigil, wrote in an email. “That is not merely a political position. For us, it is a pastoral convocation and a Gospel imperative.” He said he prays that American leadership will strike a balance between security and compassion.
Like many at Thursday’s vigil, Mobley said she was also thinking about the long battle ahead and how she can help immigrant families and children who are detained in the Alexandria facility when it opens.
“I feel determined,” she said. “If we can’t stop (the facility,) we’re going to try to help these people as much as we can.”
Robert Stewart is a news and feature writer for Verite News, focusing on criminal justice and immigration issues. This article was produced as a collaboration between Verite News and Religion News Service, as part of the Atlas of American Belonging, a project supported by the Luce Foundation.
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