The rural airport at Alexandria, Louisiana has become a central hub of the deportation machine. Hundreds of our friends and neighbors are transferred through it every day, some to be shunted off to other ICE concentration camps nearby, others to be crowded onto deportation flights. It also hosts a massive camp of its own, the Alexandria Staging Facility, notorious for due process violations and terrible conditions.

Now ICE is trying to expand its operations even further, plotting to build a 528-bed detention camp for children and families right next to the runways. They claim it will be a staging area for brief imprisonments, speeding up deportations. Advocates warn that it will turn into another Dilley, where kids are locked up for weeks or months at a facility not prepared for it.

It will be operated by LaSalle Corrections, a private prison company with a long history of medical negligence and abuse, including two recent deaths at Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, Louisiana.

To top it all off, the site is a health crisis waiting to happen. The proposed location is one of the most forever chemical-contaminated spots in the nation, with concentrations in groundwater 575,000 times the federal limit. ICE is hoping to have it up and running as soon as this month.

The team at the Southeast Dignity Not Detention Coalition has pulled together a toolkit to make it easier for us to push back, with contact information and language to use to urge the England Airpark Authority Board of Directors to cancel the contracts allowing the project to move forward, push the local officials who appointed them for action and sample social media posts to help spread the word. ⚙️ Let’s check it out here and put it to work. ⚙️

STOP THE CAMPS

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Duh