ALEXANDRIA, LA – Sam Zeidan pulled onto the grassy shoulder at the airport, hoping to see his brother among the shackled men boarding a deportation flight.
A jet roared on the sweaty tarmac. The site, known as the Alexandria Staging Facility in rural Louisiana, is the nation’s only ICE jail-combo-airport and is the top hub for the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation flights climbed to a five-year high in June, and Alexandria ranked first among the nation’s five busiest deportation hubs, according analyst Tom Cartwright, who tracks ICE flights for the nonprofit Witness at the Border.
The record pace has continued in July, with the Trump administration leaning heavily on the Louisiana ICE detention centers that feed Alexandria.
The Alexandria Staging Facility sits on the tarmac of a small regional airport between a golf course and gated neighborhood. Zeidan squinted through the chain-link fence.
A Palestinian immigrant with U.S. citizenship, Zeidan told USA TODAY he believed his older brother was going to be deported that day from Alexandria.
“He’s been making a lot of trouble here,” Zeidan said on a Wednesday in mid-June, lacing his fingers through the fence. “Yesterday, they sent him over here but the flight was canceled.”
More: Trump approval rating drops in new poll; more Americans oppose immigration policies
‘Cornerstone of ICE deportation flights’
Louisiana’s nine dedicated ICE facilities have been holding more than 7,000 detainees each day, on average, in recent months. The state dramatically expanded ICE detention during the first Trump administration, growing its network from four detention centers and about 2,000 detainees.
Alexandria’s holding facility is one of the oldest, dating to 2014.
It has 400 detention beds, receives buses from the ICE jails in rural communities around the state and is run by one of the nation’s largest private prison contractors, GEO Group Inc.
“Historically, it’s a facility that people will go to in the couple of days before their removal flight, because it’s attached to the airport and ICE Air,” said Deb Fleischaker, a former ICE official who served under the Biden and first Trump administrations. “It’s designed as a short-term detention facility.”
On that mid-June morning, guards could be seen moving men and women off a white prison bus into the humid air, already nearing 90 degrees.
Chained at the wrists, waist and ankles in five-point restraints, they climbed a stairway into a plane with “Eastern” painted on the body, blue on white.
“If you had to pick one ICE facility that is the cornerstone of the ICE deportation flights, Alexandria is it,” Cartwright said. “There are a lot of detention centers that feed into it.”
Deportation flights on the rise
Nationwide, the number of deportation flights rose to 209 in June, according to Cartwright – the highest level since the Biden administration conducted more than 193 flights during a mass deportation of Haitian asylum-seekers in September 2021.
That’s up 46% from 143 deportation flights in June 2024, he said.
The number of deportation flights has increased 12% since President Donald Trump‘s inauguration, according to Cartwright’s analysis. But because the administration doesn’t release details of who is on the planes, it’s unclear whether the total number of people deported has risen at the same pace.
Some deportation flights depart with seats full, 80 to 120 people, to Mexico or Central America, Cartwright said. Others – like the charter carrying eight criminal deportees to South Sudan – leave to faraway destinations with fewer passengers on board.
ICE reported removing 271,48 immigrants in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2024. ICE removed 228,282 people from Oct. 1 through mid-July, according to ICE data.
The agency didn’t respond to USA TODAY’s request for information on the number of deportations during the Trump administration so far.
Congress recently approved a cash infusion to boost ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division: $29.9 billion. The lump sum can be used, among other things, for “for fleet modernization” to support deportations.
Alexandria may not hold the top spot for long: The U.S. Army plans to host a 5,000-bed temporary detention center on Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, with access to the airport on base.
More: White House touts nearly 140,000 deportations, but data says roughly half actually deported
‘It’s Trump season’
Zeidan and his family run a grocery store in Alexandria, and he drives Uber on the side, he said. But his brother got into trouble over drugs and was picked up by ICE after being released from a six-year state prison sentence.
“He’s been in Jena nine months,” Zeidan said, referring to the ICE Central Louisiana Processing Center in Jena, Louisiana. His brother’s wife is a citizen, Zeidan said, and the couple have five children.
He wasn’t sure why ICE held his brother for nine months. Or why, his family would later learn, he was held on the tarmac that day for more than four hours before being bused to Texas, then back to a detention center in Louisiana, where he is still being held.
He shrugged: “It’s Trump season, you know.”
Lauren Villagran can be reached at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: This rural airport has become Trump’s top deportation hub
The post This rural airport (with a jail on the tarmac) is Trump’s deportation hub appeared first on USA TODAY.
