Long a hub of the federal government's system, a central Louisiana airport is now the nation's leader in dispatching controversial "third-country" deportation flights, which the Trump administration uses to haul immigrants to countries where they often have no ties.
Of 110 third-country flights since President Donald Trump retook office early last year, 39 departed from the — about 35% of the total. That’s more than any other airport in the country, according to data compiled by , a watchdog project of Human Rights First, and analyzed by The Times-Picayune | Ĵý.
Deportation flights bound for third countries ramped up dramatically in recent months, despite a legal challenge that has landed before the . Just between June and September, the number of third-country flights across all U.S. airports was more than double the entire total from 2025. The small Alexandria airport formed the backbone of that surge, dispatching nearly half those flights.
So far this year, 34 third-country flights left Alexandria — a nearly sevenfold increase from 2025, based on data through the end of last month.
The data shows the extent to which Alexandria has grown into the epicenter of the Trump administration’s . The number of flights is likely an undercount because the administration sometimes uses untraceable deportations via commercial planes, and there are difficulties confirming flights to some countries.
The England Authority, a quasi-governmental body that oversees the airport and its surrounding territory, has faced protests since approving a second U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement earlier this year, which officials say will hold undocumented women and children who have chosen to be deported. It’s expected to open within days.
"These third-country removals are sinister in every respect," said Stephanie Alvarez-Jones, a southeast regional attorney for the National Immigration Project, who represents people marked for removal to third countries. “Alexandria is a cornerstone in this sinister project.”
Alvarez-Jones described the airport as being almost impossible to get communications into or out of, despite being a hub for removals and transfers.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security defended the program as a key public safety measure in a statement by an unnamed spokesperson.
“Third-country removals are an essential public safety tool that remove the most dangerous criminal illegal aliens from our streets,” the spokesperson said.
Third-country deportations were rare under past administrations. But during Trump’s second term, a surge in flights and land transports have led to more than 25,000 deportees arriving in nations they’ve mostly never visited, based on potentially conservative estimates from and , two nonpartisan human rights advocacy groups.
Federal data suggest a far smaller number of deportees, about 16,000, have arrived in third countries under the current administration. Watchdog groups who rely on foreign government records and other sources have disputed that tally.
Alexandria International Airport, which is the site of frequent deportation flights, pictured on Thursday, September 24, 2026. Staff photos by Javier Gallegos
Javier Gallegos
Trump’s State Department has struck agreements with nearly three-dozen countries’ governments to receive third country nationals. The terms vary, but the payment from the U.S. in exchange for holding deportees. Some agreements say the country on the receiving end will hold third-country deportees in prisons, while others allow deportees to apply for asylum.
In the worst cases, deportees have reported enduring . In an Equatorial Guinea hotel, deportees they were hooded, bound, beaten and pushed down a stairway for telling the outside world about a lack of food and water. In other countries, deportees are held in maximum-security prisons or forced to sleep on .
England Authority Executive Director Ralph Hennessy has defended the agency’s work with ICE, noting that its contracts have spanned presidential administrations of both political parties.
“The majority of these protesters are trying to be very vocal about something that they don’t have the full picture of, or if they do, they just don’t like it,” he said in a recent interview.
The scale of Alexandria’s role in third-country deportations appears comparable only to the airport in , which has dispatched about 30% of third-country flights from the U.S. since Trump retook office. Most flights from Harlingen have landed in Costa Rica.
Alexandria, in contrast, has sent third-country flights to 22 nations across five continents.
DHS declined to respond to specific questions about the program. The U.S. State Department, which negotiates the deals with third-country governments to accept deportees, did not respond to multiple inquiries.
“Illegal aliens being sent to a third country receive notice and assurances prior to their removal, and the Department of State is given diplomatic assurances from destination countries that the illegal aliens being removed there will be safe,” the unnamed DHS spokesperson said.
Flights mostly to Africa
Watched by federal agents, six immigrants shuffled across a dark stretch of tarmac before dawn on Aug. 31. A plane waited for them at the Alexandria airport. They didn’t know their destination.
“I asked the officer, ‘Where am I going?’” said a woman who was in the group of six after being held for weeks inside in north Louisiana. “He said, ‘You’re going to the beach.’”
With the shackled detainees aboard, the ICE-chartered Bombardier CRJ-200 took off at 6:29 a.m. from Alexandria, records show. It landed two hours later in Miami to refuel, then again in Puerto Rico. In an interview, the woman, whom The Times-Picayune | Ĵý is not naming because she fears retaliation by officials in her home country, said she probed for answers about where they were headed while in the air.
“I asked, 'What’s the process after this?” said the woman, whom U.S. officials marked for third-country removal because her ethnicity and religion put her at risk of torture in her home country. “(An ICE agent) said, ‘We’re just going to hand you over to the St. Lucia government.’”
Ice agents patrol Louis Armstrong International Airport in Kenner, La. Monday, March 23, 2026. (Staff photo by David Grunfeld, The Times-Picayune)
STAFF PHOTO BY DAVID GRUNFELD
The jet landed at 6:44 p.m. local time in St. Lucia, a tiny Caribbean nation with an agreement to accept third-country nationals from the Trump administration. The woman said she had never been to the island long favored by beach vacationers. An ICE spokesperson declined to respond to specific questions about the St. Lucia flight.
The flight to St. Lucia is the only one of its kind to date, according to the ICE Flight Monitor data. More frequent destinations of the third-country flights include Equatorial Guinea, which has received five planes carrying third-country nationals from Alexandria since the start of the administration. and have each received four, according to ICE Flight Monitor.
In August of this year, 16 ICE-chartered flights dispatched immigrants to third countries. Most took off from Alexandria.
The surge in flights since April comes as the legality of Trump’s third-country deportations remains undecided. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on the issue in December, after a federal appeals court in Boston found that the practice . Twice, the high court has granted stays to prevent the lower court’s ruling from going into effect, at least temporarily allowing the Trump administration to continue the flights.
Deportees to third countries generally come from nations whose strained diplomatic ties to the U.S. pose challenges in organizing deportation flights, such as Cuba.
A jet lands in Alexandria International Airport, which is the site of frequent deportation flights, on Thursday, September 24, 2026. Staff photos by Javier Gallegos
Javier Gallegos
Others, the U.S. government acknowledges, could be tortured if they return to their home nations.
In those cases, attorneys for some ICE detainees have argued that third-country removals could still result in their clients being re-deported to home countries where they face grave risks. Attorneys made that argument in Louisiana federal courts on behalf of , a 43-year-old Ethiopian man whom ICE tried deporting this spring to Eswatini, and later to .
A member of the Amhara ethnic minority, Mohammed, who is represented by the National Immigration Project, testified in federal court in Baton Rouge that he feared being deported to a third country lest its governments return him to Ethiopia.
Vernon Liggins, the senior ICE official who ordered Mohammed’s arrest, would not answer a judge’s questions about whether the government agreements with Eswatini and Equatorial Guinea would prevent Mohammed from being returned to Ethiopia. A federal judge later in the case, finding agents under his supervision repeatedly violated Mohammed’s due-process rights.
Of 22 countries to receive third-country nationals from Alexandria, 18 have elevated travel advisory levels assigned by the State Department — warnings to U.S. citizens to exercise caution while traveling to a country or, in some cases, not to travel there at all.
Among them: Central African Republic, the Congo and Uganda, each of whom have each accepted a single third-country flight from Alexandria. The State Department has issued Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisories for those countries citing threats including terrorism, kidnapping and potential exposure to Ebola.
Saint Lucia's Prime Minister Philip Pierre speaks during the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly at United Nations headquarters, Friday, Sept. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
AP PHOTO BY SETH WENIG
Unknown destination
The woman deported to St. Lucia, a bartender who had also worked for the local government in Los Angeles County, said ICE agents arrested her in July at New Orleans’ Louis Armstrong International Airport when she arrived for the Tales of the Cocktail conference. (Conference organizers did not respond to an inquiry about the case.)
As she battled illness in ICE detention, the woman retained New Orleans immigration attorney Jeremy Jong to try to help secure her release. She was deported before Jong could accomplish that. In an interview, Jong said the case highlighted how the threat of immigration enforcement has eroded New Orleans’ reputation for hospitality.
“People getting arrested by ICE when they’re on their way to New Orleans to go to a conference should trigger alarm bells for every elected leader here,” Jong said. “If they want to keep New Orleans a good place to visit, they are going to have to make sure that ICE is out of our airports and don’t have access to any of our other infrastructure.”
At St. Lucia’s Hewanarra International Airport, the country’s government officials greeted the six deportees and debriefed them. Jong’s client said they were given a meal of mac and cheese, vegetables and rice. They visited a doctor.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building photographed in St. Rose, La., Thursday, Oct. 15, 2026. STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
Sophia Germer
DHS officials have cast third-country deportations as a punishment reserved for criminals. But Saint Lucian officials have issued public statements that third-country deportees are closely vetted before the island agrees to take them, including for potential criminal histories. The woman aboard the St. Lucia flight told the Times-Picayune | Ĵý that she has no criminal record. Public records show she has not been cited or accused of a crime in the United States.
She said she and the other deportees have encountered far better conditions than those reported by other third-country deportees.
They are housed in apartments and go grocery shopping together, she said. She is set to receive a work permit from the Saint Lucian government in the coming weeks. Still, her future is uncertain.
“They’re treating her well now,” said Jong, her attorney. “What I worry about is when whatever money the U.S. is giving St. Lucia runs out — what happens then? Do they send her back to her country of birth, where she runs a significant risk of being killed?”