Sen. Ron Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, has sent letters demanding transparency over a proposed “first-of-its-kind” family and child detention center in Alexandria, Louisiana. In a letter to the facility’s contractors and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Wyden cited conflicts of interest, environmental contamination, and “the absence of a public process” in the project’s planning.
“A federal facility designed to hold children and families in federal custody cannot be stood up in secrecy,” the letter states.
The move comes as newly obtained documents – including architectural plans, draft contracts, and email communications – provide further details about the proposed facility’s operations. The Department of Homeland Security has continued to decline comment on the project. A spokesperson for England Airpark, the local authority responsible for leasing the land, said no contract has yet been signed.
According to the documents, released under a public records request, the planned facility would be partly housed in a former military barracks and is designed to hold up to 528 beds. It is expected to hold families and unaccompanied minors for around 72 hours before they are deported from a regional airport at the same site. MSI previously reported that ICE plans a $38.3 billion detention expansion to reach about 92,000 beds by November ….
The Alexandria airport already functions as a central hub in the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts, housing a separate detention center for men run by the private corrections company Geo Group. A 2025 investigation by The Guardian documented due process violations, medical issues, abuse, and overcrowded conditions at that facility.
The proposed family center would be operated by Compass Connections, a Texas-based child welfare nonprofit, alongside the charitable arm of LaSalle Corrections, a private prison operator. Wyden wrote directly to Compass Connections, raising concerns that the nonprofit’s work with the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) – an agency within HHS that is mandated to promote the health and welfare of refugees and unaccompanied immigrant children – creates a conflict of interest if it also participates in immigration enforcement.
The letter notes that Compass Connections “has long been one of the nation’s largest providers of care to children in the Unaccompanied Children Program,” receiving more than $1.6 billion in federal funding for those services in the last three years. Wyden’s letter adds that “Compass Connections’s simultaneous role at the Alexandria facility raises questions about how the organization is reconciling its anti-trafficking and child-welfare missions with operational involvement in a federal deportation pipeline.”
Compass Connections did not respond to multiple requests for comment. At a public meeting in February, the nonprofit’s president, Sonya Thompson, said the Alexandria site would provide “wrap-around services” to immigrants before they are deported and would house only those who have voluntarily chosen to “self-deport.” Officials described the project as a “humanitarian effort,” distancing themselves from the detention center label.
Immigrant rights groups dismissed those claims. Newly released records show that the proposed center, referred to in some documents as the “Alexandria Family Repatriation Center,” is described as delivering “detention services” in emails and contract documents.
In a statement, Wyden said, “At every opportunity, Trump and his allies have abandoned their legal obligations to protect children from abuse, neglect, and human trafficking, and I have grave concerns that this facility will accelerate those efforts. A detention regime that punishes unaccompanied children for being in the United States and terrorizes their families from coming forward to sponsor them is not a humanitarian effort.”
The documents also indicate the site has been under consideration since at least May 2025, when an environmental assessment was prepared for Compass Connections. Wyden, in a separate letter to the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), the federal agency overseeing ORR, expressed concerns about the proposed site’s suitability, noting that it is situated on a former military base that is one of the most PFAS-contaminated locations in the United States.
“I do not believe that the design, implementation, and operation of this Alexandria facility will properly serve the best interests of children in ORR’s care,” Wyden wrote. He added that ACF “has the authority and the responsibility to refuse to place children in conditions that contravene the agency’s own child-welfare standards.”
A spokesperson for ACF said the agency “carefully reviews all congressional requests and responds directly to the requestor, as appropriate.”
Architectural plans released under the public records request show the proposed facility includes a sprawl of temporary modular housing structures next to the converted barracks, all enclosed behind a large fence.