The England Authority is advancing new rules that would require permits for protests and other "expressive assemblies" on its property — land that includes England Airpark and Alexandria International Airport (AEX), home to the nation's busiest hub for federal deportation flights.
The proposal grew out of a request from the sheriff's office to clarify some of the Authority's existing ordinances — not from any protest or disturbance, Executive Director Ralph Hennessy told The Kingfish Project in a written response Monday afternoon. "There haven't been any issues here that prompted the need," he wrote.
The Rapides Parish Sheriff's Office provides security at England Airpark under contract with the Authority. Hennessy did not say what the office asked to have clarified or which ordinances were involved.
The Kingfish Project has requested comment from Sheriff Mark Wood's office and will update this story with any response.
Demonstrations connected to airpark property have already occurred. Last August, a group gathered outside AEX to protest the ICE staging facility at the airport, KALB reported, and the Rapides Parish Journal, which first reported the proposal, cited immigration enforcement and data center development as examples of activities that draw crowds.
Hennessy said the full text will be attached to the board's meeting agenda, which the Authority will post Wednesday. The ordinance will be introduced at the board's Thursday, July 23, session and voted on at the August board meeting, he said.
The Admin/Legal Committee reviewed a draft of the ordinance at a noon meeting on July 16. Hennessy said the committee took no vote and made recommendations that will be incorporated before the proposal reaches the board. According to the Journal, the draft provides for content-neutral regulation of demonstrations, protests, rallies, vigils, picketing, and other expressive assemblies on Authority property, sets permit procedures for certain planned demonstrations, and addresses spontaneous ones.
The committee consists of Myron Lawson Jr., chair; Charlie Weems, vice chair; and Steve Mansour. Authority Chairman Oday Lavergne serves as an executive official member. The Kingfish Project put its four questions to the three members and Lavergne as well; Hennessy answered for the Authority within the hour, and the others did not respond individually.
On Monday, The Kingfish Project also filed two public records requests with the Authority by email. The first seeks every draft of the proposed ordinance — including the original electronic files, whose properties and revision histories identify who wrote and edited them — along with communications about the proposal among Authority officials and with outside parties, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the data center developer Applied Digital, and other public bodies, a category that covers any written request from the sheriff's office.
The second seeks the Authority's security incident logs and reports from July 1, 2023, to the present, including every report involving a protest, demonstration, or other assembly — records that would test Hennessy's statement that no incidents prompted the rule. The Kingfish Project will publish both requests in full.
Louisiana's Public Records Law requires a custodian to produce available records immediately, and in all cases to provide a written determination or a time estimate within five business days — silence past that point is a legal denial (La. R.S. 44:32(D), 44:35(A)). For requests filed Monday, that window closes July 27, four days after the board's July 23 session. Wednesday's agenda posting will make the current text public, but it does not address the drafts, communications, or incident records the requests seek.
The England Authority is a political subdivision of the state, and its property is public property. Courts have long allowed governments to impose content-neutral rules on the time, place, and manner of assemblies on public land. They have struck down permit systems that give officials discretion over who may gather, including in Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham (1969) and Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement (1992). Whether the England proposal contains such discretion can be judged once the text posts with Wednesday's agenda.
The proposal arrives amid heightened national attention to Authority property. The Alexandria Staging Facility, a 400-bed ICE detention site operated on the airport tarmac by GEO Group since 2014, has become the country's top hub for deportation flights, and Human Rights First's ICE Flight Monitor counted more than 4,400 immigration enforcement flights in and out of AEX in 2025, the Associated Press reported. In late June, ICE signed a contract for a new 528-bed holding facility for families and children at the former air base, according to the AP; Hennessy confirmed the contract in that reporting. ICE describes the new site as a staging area rather than a detention center.
The board's monthly session is scheduled for Thursday, July 23, with the proposed ordinance due to appear on the agenda that the Authority posts on Wednesday. The Kingfish Project will publish the text and any records produced in response to its requests.