President Donald Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency is planning a detention facility for children and their families in one of the most Pfas-contaminated locations in the country, which will also serve as the center of the president’s deportation program.
England Air Force Base, now called England Airpark, is a vast former military facility in Louisiana, where Pfas levels in the groundwater have been found to be at least 41 million parts per trillion (ppt).
Federal drinking water limits for some Pfas compounds range from 4 to 10 ppt, which means levels are at least 575,000 times higher than the limit. Military bases are often contaminated with high amounts of Pfas, but England’s groundwater is showing the highest levels ever recorded, making it one of the most Pfas-contaminated places in the United States.
England is also contaminated with other highly toxic chemicals such as TCE and various volatile organic compounds, and authorities have raised concerns about asbestos in barracks. Public health advocates say the base likely draws its drinking water from elsewhere, but the chemicals are also present in the soil and air.
Jared Hayes, a senior policy analyst at the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, which tracks military pollution across the country, added that that increases health risks for children and families staying at the site.
“There shouldn’t be any housing on a contaminated base,” Hayes said. “If they’re going to put people in harm’s way, they need to get rid of it sooner.”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a statement: “There are no new detention centers to announce at this time.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and ICE did not respond to requests for comment. Project officials told the Guardian in March that the site had been leased and could be operational within 60 to 90 days.
PFA is a group of at least 16,000 compounds commonly used to make common products that are resistant to water, stains, and heat. They are called “eternal chemicals” because they accumulate without being broken down naturally and are linked to cancer, kidney and liver disease, immune disorders, birth defects, and other serious health problems.
PFA is a common ingredient in firefighting foam used at airports and military bases, but the Department of Defense is in the process of phasing it out because the highly toxic substance has caused widespread contamination of water and the environment around more than 770 bases across the country.
ICE is proposing the child detention center as a “first of its kind” short-term facility, which officials said would be housed next to the runway used by immigrant families and unaccompanied children flying out of the United States. The larger England Airpark complex is home to the private Geo Group detention center, which the Guardian previously investigated for various abuses.
The facility will confine family groups and children to converted barracks for three to five days, and will only house those who voluntarily choose to leave, according to the project’s developers. Immigrant rights groups argue that claims of “voluntary deportation” are misleading and that most are participating in the program involuntarily. Advocates say they are also likely to spend much longer than five days at the center.
Firefighting foam was used during drills around the base. Reaching groundwater through the soil means the ground is contaminated with chemicals. The base also had burn pits used by the military to incinerate munitions, garbage, human waste, toxic waste, plastics, and various items and chemicals. Jet fuel is typically used as an accelerant, and the pits are notorious for contaminating nearby areas with a variety of substances, including Pfas.
Chemicals are highly mobile and volatile and easily move through the environment, from the ground to the air. Because of their small size, children are especially at risk of adverse health effects from chemicals. The health effects of exposure to all the chemicals used on the base at once remain unknown.
“The risk to people living at the site is in the dust and the air, but we don’t know what the dust levels are or if children are playing outside. Those could be areas of concern,” Hayes said, adding that the military has since not tested the soil or air at the site.
Francis Kelly of the Louisiana Detained Immigrant Advocacy Group said water is piped in from the nearby city of Alexandria. But the city also draws water from groundwater, so it’s unclear, at least publicly, where the end of the Pfas plume is. Records from nearby Pineville show elevated levels of three Pfas compounds, although they are not the primary compounds at England Airport.
Mr Kelly questioned why the property was being used as a residence, as the title deeds show the land is reserved for industrial use. Residential sites require more intensive purification than industrial sites.
A spokesperson for the airport said there was no Pfas contamination on the barracks grounds, but did not immediately respond to questions about whether air and soil testing had been conducted.
Hayes said federal records do not show a Pfas sweep has begun and the military is still in the remedial investigation phase. It includes mapping the Pfas plume.
“It doesn’t look like they’re doing any cleanup construction, which means they’re doing some testing and mapping, so the plume at the site is going to be even bigger,” Hayes said.
Although levels of Pfas in groundwater have decreased in recent years, they remain astronomically high. Because the military is not actively cleaning up the plume, lower levels simply mean that the plume is spreading into the aquifer, so Pfas is not as concentrated around the source of the contamination.
It is unclear whether legal action will be taken, but supporters continue to try to block the plan.
“There’s always a way to get it back,” Kelly said.
