Former Military Barracks in Alexandria, Louisiana Is Adjacent to Deportation Flights, Not Prepared to Fulfill Child Welfare Mission, Has Significant Health and Environmental Dangers
Health Department’s Legal Obligation to Put Care for Minors First Has Been Sidelined by Trump Administration’s Anti-Immigrant Crusade
Text of the Letter to Administration for Children and Families / Text of the Letter to Compass Connections
Washington, D.C. – Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., today sought more answers about the Trump administration’s effort to accelerate deportations, specifically about reported plans to set up a former military base in Alexandria, Louisiana as a detention facility that would expose unaccompanied children to environmental hazards and house them next to an airstrip for deportation flights.
The letters extend Wyden’s documentation of the Trump administration’s systematic conversion of the federal child welfare agency responsible for unaccompanied children, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), into an immigration enforcement arm and operational feeder to removal operations. In letters to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Administration for Children and Families (ACF) head Alex Adams, and the CEO of Compass Connections, which is expected to operate the planned detention facility, Wyden pressed for details on how HHS and ORR has been involved in the planned operation of the facility, among other details about services to be provided and how it will be operated, especially as it relates to ORR’s statutory obligations to children.
“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 to Assistant Secretary for Family Support Alex Adams. “Former military airfields are among the most PFAS-contaminated sites in the country, raising serious questions about the environmental and health suitability of such a site for children. ACF has the authority and the responsibility to refuse to place children in conditions that contravene the agency’s own child-welfare standards.”
The letter to the Trump administration highlights how the average length of care and custody across the program has climbed from 37 days in January 2025 to 205 days in April 2026, a more than five-fold increase. During these delays, ORR is sharing case information with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and sponsors who put themselves forward to take their children home are then picked up by DHS at traffic stops, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, and even during post-release welfare checks – federal contacts that exist for the express purpose of supporting children, but are being used to detain and deport children and the sponsors caring for them.
“Reports indicate that the DHS and ORR are preparing to use a former military barracks at the Alexandria International Airport as a short-term federal holding facility for families and unaccompanied children,” Wyden wrote to Sonya Thompson, CEO of Compass Connections. “These reports are at odds with your mission to meet the needs of vulnerable children and their caregivers: an operational role in a short-term holding facility tied to mass deportation, and an apparent inability to facilitate the release of a child whose sponsor paperwork was complete. The Committee has a responsibility to understand the framework under which ORR-funded providers entrusted with the day-to-day care and custody of children operate, and how that framework is functioning in practice.”
In the letter to Compass Connections, Wyden asked the company to detail its role in the planned operation of the Alexandria facility, what safeguards are being put in place to ensure anti-trafficking protections are enforced, as well as access to legal counsel. The letter also seeks details about operations at other Compass Connections shelters, and how cases have been handled differently since the start of the current administration.
Wyden has conducted vigorous oversight to shine a light on the Trump administration’s failure to meet its statutory obligations to care for unaccompanied minors in HHS custody.
The letter to ACF is here. The letter to Compass Connections is here.
A web version of this release is here.
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