Alexandria Staging Facility

The Alexandria Staging Facility in Alexandria, Louisiana is a short-stay holding site next to the airport tarmac, used for ICE Air charter removal flights (an ICE news release of September 10, 2026 describes a removal flown out of it): a site for adult men who are scheduled for deportation, run for ICE by the private company The GEO Group. ICE’s fiscal year 2026 detention statistics list it as holding ICE detainees, but ICE has no facility page for it on ice.gov (both likely addresses returned “page not found” when checked on September 26, 2026, and the main one did again on October 3, 2026), so the details below come from GEO, an ICE news release, and ICE’s published inspection and audit reports.

Facility quick reference

How to find someone held here

Start with the ICE Online Detainee Locator System at locator.ice.gov. You can search with the person’s A-number (Alien Registration Number) and country of birth, or with their full name, country of birth and date of birth. Because people pass through this facility quickly, the location the locator shows can change quickly.

As of September 26, 2026, GEO publishes no inmate roster, no online inmate search and no detainee-information phone line for this facility — only the facility’s main number, (318) 483-1600. ICE publishes no facility page for it either. For ICE contact channels in this area, see the New Orleans Field Office hub, which carries the field-office directory contact.

Visiting

GEO says the support services it provides for ICE here include in-person and virtual legal and family visitation. That is the full extent of what the operator publishes: as of September 26, 2026, GEO does not publish visiting days, hours, how to schedule, the video-visit vendor, ID requirements or a dress code for this facility. Anyone planning a trip has to confirm those details with the facility first.

The June 2025 PREA audit adds that at intake each person receives the ICE National Detainee Handbook in their preferred language and a local ASF Detainee Handbook in English or Spanish. We found no online copy of that local handbook on GEO’s or ICE’s websites (checked September 26, 2026).

Money, phone calls and mail

As of September 26, 2026, neither GEO nor ICE publishes a commissary or trust-account deposit method, a money-transfer vendor, a mailing-address format or mail rules for this facility. ICE’s general rules for detainee accounts are summarized on our page on how to send money to someone in ICE detention.

On phone calls, the June 2025 PREA audit is the only published source. It reports that:

• at intake, detainees are told how to use the telephones and about their one free call;
• “due to the mission of the facility, no PINs are issued to detainees for using the telephone” — the dialing instructions include a generic PIN that any detainee can use;
• calls to the outside numbers displayed on signage throughout the facility (such as the sexual-abuse reporting lines) are free, unmonitored and unrecorded. This describes those posted resource numbers, not calls to family.

The audit refers to Talton as “the phone service provider” when describing a test call to the facility’s sexual-abuse hotline. Neither GEO nor ICE publishes how families can set up calls with someone held here or what calls cost.

Lawyers and immigration court

GEO lists in-person and virtual legal visitation and general and legal library access among its services here. As of September 26, 2026, no attorney-visit hours or procedures are published for this facility.

The Justice Department’s immigration court system (EOIR) does not say which immigration court hears the cases of people held here, and the court depends on the case. The June 2025 PREA audit describes the people held here as already scheduled for deportation. In ICE’s September 10, 2026 announcement, for example, the man described had been arrested in Pennsylvania in May 2026, held at an ICE processing center there, granted voluntary departure by an immigration judge on June 23, transferred to Louisiana on June 28, and flown to Guatemala on July 8 on a charter flight out of this facility. For court locations and procedures in the state, see immigration courts in Louisiana; for nonprofit legal help, see BIA-recognized legal-aid organizations in Louisiana.

Oversight and inspections

• ICE Office of Detention Oversight (ODO) special review, August 27–29, 2024 (report). ODO reviewed 10 standards under ICE’s Performance-Based National Detention Standards 2011 (revised 2016) and found the facility compliant with 9 of them. The deficiencies were in Use of Force and Restraints: in one of five use-of-force files, officers completed their incident reports one to two days after the incident, and in one video recording of a calculated use of force the team lead did not state the facility name, time or date, medical staff were not introduced, three of five team members did not state their titles, and all five kept their helmets on during the introductions. ODO wrote that compliance had “trended upward” since its September 2023 review, which found 4 deficient standards and 7 deficiencies, and noted it had not received a completed corrective action plan from that earlier inspection. ODO interviewed 20 detainees; none alleged discrimination, mistreatment or abuse, and all 20 reported satisfaction with facility services.
• ODO special review, February 25–27, 2025 (Special Review 2025-003-086, report). ODO reviewed 10 standards under PBNDS 2011 (Revised 2016) and found the facility compliant with all 10, with no deficiencies, and rated it Superior — the same rating as the August 2024 review, which had found 1 deficient standard with 2 deficiencies. ODO says the facility completed its corrective action plan for that August 2024 review, which likely resolved the earlier deficiencies. ODO interviewed 13 detainees; none alleged discrimination, mistreatment or abuse, and all 13 reported satisfaction with facility services. The report also says the facility opened in 2014, that ICE began housing detainees there in August 2014, that GEO provides food service and ICE Health Service Corps provides medical care, and, in a footnote, that the facility holds male detainees of low, medium-low, medium-high and high security classification for periods of less than 72 hours. (Most pages of this PDF are scanned images; we read them with text recognition and checked the results table against the page image.) As of October 3, 2026, this is the most recent report for the facility on ICE’s ODO facility inspections page.
• DHS Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) audit, June 24–26, 2025 (report). This was a re-audit requested by GEO after the facility remained out of compliance at the end of the corrective-action period following its October 31–November 2, 2023 audit. The auditor found 35 standards met, 2 exceeded, 2 not applicable and 2 not met — detainee education (§115.33) and assessment for risk of victimization and abusiveness (§115.41). On December 3, 2025, the auditor found both corrected, ending the corrective-action period early.
• Accreditation: GEO’s facility page states, “The facility is not accredited at this time.”

As of September 26, 2026, we found no ICE detainee death report naming this facility and no DHS Office of Inspector General report naming it.

ICE’s detention-contracts library lists the facility’s agreement as IGSA DROIGSA-07-0015 (modifications P00050–P00051; ICE’s listing page was updated December 20, 2024), titled “Alexandria Staging Facility IGSA – Jena, LA.” The modification pages in that PDF are scanned images, so the parties and dates inside could not be read. The June 2025 PREA audit describes the facility as a dedicated intergovernmental service agreement facility privately operated by GEO under contract with ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations.

Earlier special review — September 25-29, 2023. The ODO report records:

• In 60 out of 60 fire-drill reports reviewed, designated staff did not draw emergency keys or use them to unlock one set of emergency exit doors not in daily use.
• The hold-room detention log did not record detainees’ names, sex, age, non-citizen numbers, nationality or reasons for placement in the hold room.
• The facility had not posted an evacuation map for the hold rooms. ODO also recorded corrective action: on September 27, 2023, it observed an updated posted map that included the hold-room evacuation routes.

The same September 25-29, 2023 ODO report also records:

• In one of four calculated use-of-force incidents, the facility did not obtain an audiovisual camera to record the incident.
• Medical staff did not state their medical-evaluation findings after all four incidents, and the shift supervisor did not conduct debriefings.
• In one of four incidents, the facility did not report the details and findings to ERO New Orleans within 2 workdays.
• No committee had been appointed to review the local supplement annually and recommend changes.

A deportation-flight hub with very short stays

GEO describes the site as including office space for 30 offices, space for additional Air Operations personnel, and space adjacent to the tarmac to give direct access to the aircraft. ICE’s September 10, 2026 news release on its 100,000th removal of fiscal year 2026 in Louisiana said ICE Air conducted that removal “from the Alexandria Staging Facility,” and its hub table listed Alexandria, Louisiana at 99,796 removals as of July 7, 2026 — a 30% increase from fiscal year 2025 by ICE’s count, and the largest of the four ICE Air hubs in the table (ICE notes the figures exclude interior transfers).

What that means for the people held here, according to the June 2025 PREA audit:

• the facility temporarily houses adult men scheduled for deportation — no juveniles, no families;
• design capacity is 400 (GEO’s facility page also lists a capacity of 400), and the average daily population over the 12 months before the audit was 265;
• 33,964 people were booked in over those 12 months, and the average stay was seven days;
• the top three nationalities were Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala.

ICE’s fiscal year 2026 detention statistics show an average stay of only a few days, and ODO’s February 2025 report describes the facility as holding detainees for periods of less than 72 hours. GEO’s own description calls the site a “transfer center” that “provides efficiency of the ICE removal process.”

Related resources

• Know your rights — what to do if ICE detains you
• How to send money to someone in ICE detention
• Immigration courts in Louisiana
• BIA-recognized legal-aid organizations in Louisiana
• Other ICE detention facilities in Louisiana
• All facilities under the New Orleans Field Office
• ICE detention movement data
• All ICE detention facilities

Information current as of September 26, 2026 (GEO’s facility page, ICE’s missing facility page and ICE’s inspections index re-checked October 3, 2026), based on The GEO Group’s facility page, ICE’s published inspection and audit reports, an ICE news release, and ICE’s fiscal year 2026 detention statistics. Facility rules and operations can change without notice; confirm details with the facility or ICE before acting. This page is general information, not legal advice.