he Alexandria International Airport, which is part of England Airpark in central Louisiana, is currently known as the busiest ICE Air Operations hub for deportations in the United States. Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s Alexandria Staging Facility, a terminus for people being removed from the U.S., is reviled the world over by abused and deported refugees from Cameroon to Haiti. Even as the town’s tourism office works in overdrive to entice visitors to the area’s natural and cultural attractions — the scenic Red River, lush butterfly gardens, and historic homes such as the one where venerated Harlem Renaissance poet Arna Bontemps lived from birth to three years old — violence against immigrants keeps coming.

Last year, Alexandria was mentioned in a lawsuit regarding a child with Stage 4 kidney cancer who was deported along with two siblings in April 2025. Now, the same polarizing federal agency that has killed people on the streets and in its custody is planning to expand its operations in Alexandria. ICE has grabbed another chunk of the England Airpark, which is situated on a former U.S. Air Force base that shuttered in 1992 due to groundwater contaminated with catastrophic levels of PFAS, a class of persistent “forever chemicals” linked to cancer, reproductive harms, and other serious health problems.

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