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The ranking personnel connected nan US Senate’s influential finance committee has demanded transparency complete a projected “first-of-its-kind” ICE family and kid detention halfway successful Alexandria, Louisiana, citing reporting by nan Guardian that first revealed nan Trump administration’s plans successful March.
Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, has written to nan project’s contractors and to nan Department of Health and Human Services [HHS] expressing concerns complete conflicts of interest, environmental contamination, and “the absence of a nationalist process” successful nan center’s planning.
“A national installation designed to clasp children and families successful national custody cannot beryllium stood up successful secrecy,” nan missive states.
The move comes arsenic documents obtained by nan Guardian, including layout designs, draught contracts and email communications, supply further specifications of nan projected facility’s operations, arsenic nan Department of Homeland Security continues to garbage to remark connected nan project.
A spokesperson for England Airpark, nan section authority responsible for leasing nan land, confirmed that nary statement had yet been signed.
According to nan documents, released nether a nationalist records request, nan planned facility, partially based successful an aged subject barracks, will person abstraction for 528 beds and is expected to clasp families and unaccompanied minors for astir 72 hours earlier they are deported from a location airdrome astatine nan aforesaid site.
The Alexandria airdrome is simply a cardinal node successful nan Trump administration’s wide deportation schedule and already houses a abstracted detention halfway for men, which is tally by nan backstage corrections institution Geo Group. An investigation by nan Guardian successful 2025 revealed an array of owed process violations, aesculapian issues, maltreatment and crowded conditions.
The planned family installation is group to beryllium tally by a Texas-based kid use non-profit named Compass Connections alongside nan charitable limb of a backstage situation group, LaSalle Corrections. Senator Wyden has written straight to Compass Connections expressing concerns that nan non-profit’s existing activity pinch nan Office of Refugee Resettlement [ORR], which is mandated to beforehand nan wellness and well-being of refugees and unaccompanied migrant children and not to behaviour migration enforcement activities, is grounds of a conflict of interest. The ORR is an agency wrong nan HHS.
The missive states that Compass Connections “has agelong been 1 of nan nation’s largest providers of attraction to children successful nan Unaccompanied Children Program” receiving much than $1.6bn successful national backing for specified services successful nan past 3 years.
“Compass Connections’s simultaneous domiciled astatine nan Alexandria installation raises questions astir really nan statement is reconciling its anti-trafficking and child-welfare missions pinch operational engagement successful a national deportation pipeline,” it adds, requesting answers to 14 elaborate questions related to nan non-profit’s projected activity successful Alexandria, its governance building and operations astatine different sites.
Compass Connections did not respond to aggregate requests for comment.
The non-profit’s president Sonya Thompson told a nationalist gathering successful February that nan Alexandria tract would supply “wrap-around services” to migrants earlier they are deported and would location only those who person chosen to voluntarily “self-deport”. Officials described nan task arsenic a “humanitarian effort” distancing themselves from images of a detention center.
The claims were dismissed by migrant authorities groups, and recently released records item that nan projected center, named successful immoderate documents arsenic nan “Alexandria Family Repatriation Center”, is referred to arsenic delivering “detention services” successful galore emails and statement documents.
In a connection to nan Guardian, Wyden said: “At each opportunity, Trump and his friends person abandoned their ineligible obligations to protect children from abuse, neglect, and quality trafficking, and I person sedate concerns that this installation will accelerate those efforts.
“A detention authorities that punishes unaccompanied children for being successful nan United States and terrorizes their families from coming guardant to sponsor them is not a humanitarian effort.”
The documents besides item that nan tract has been nether information for imaginable usage since astatine slightest May 2025, erstwhile an biology appraisal was prepared for Compass Connections.
Writing to nan Administration for Children and Families [ACF], nan limb wrong nan national authorities overseeing ORR, Senator Wyden expressed further concerns astir nan projected site. “I do not judge that nan design, implementation, and cognition of this Alexandria installation will decently service nan champion interests of children successful ORR’s care,” nan missive states.
It cites further reporting by nan Guardian, which revealed that nan planned facility, connected a erstwhile subject base, is situated 1 of nan astir PFAS contaminated locations successful nan US, which raises “serious questions astir nan biology and wellness suitability of specified a tract for children. ACF has nan authority and nan work to garbage to spot children successful conditions that contravene nan agency’s ain child-welfare standards.”
Wyden added successful a connection that nan agency is “required by rule to look aft unaccompanied minors and guarantee they are protected by anti-trafficking laws and supply for their basal welfare. That request is being formed speech by Trump and Republicans’ crusade to demonize and free nan state of immigrants.”
A spokesperson for ACF said nan agency “carefully reviews each legislature requests and responds straight to nan requestor, arsenic appropriate”.
Documents released nether nationalist records show a number of architectural layout plans, which show nan installation is planned to see a sprawl of impermanent modular lodging structures adjacent to nan converted barracks. The projected tract would beryllium enclosed down a ample fence.
