FCI Oakdale II: Visiting Hours, Camp, Mail and Programs

By Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., and Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA

FCI Oakdale II at a glance

FCI Oakdale II is a low-security federal prison for men at 2105 East Whatley Road in Oakdale, Louisiana, with a minimum-security satellite camp beside it. It held 1,073 people as of September 2026. One of two prisons in FCC Oakdale, it is the one that used to be the Federal Detention Center, and it is the complex’s Institution Hearing Program site for people who are not United States citizens.

Official name	Federal Correctional Institution II, Oakdale
BOP code	OAD · complex OAX
Security level	Low; men
Population	1,073 (as of September 2026)
Visiting	Saturday, Sunday and federal holidays, 8:15 a.m.–3:00 p.m.; the last Saturday of the month is for the Reintegration Unit only · see visiting hours
Inmate mail	Inmate Name & Register Number · FCI Oakdale II · Federal Correctional Institution · P.O. Box 5010 · Oakdale, LA 71463
Send money	Lockbox · Western Union (code city FBOP, DC) · MoneyGram (receive code 7932)
Phone	318-335-4466 · Fax 318-215-2185
Street address	2105 East Whatley Road, Oakdale, LA 71463 · Allen Parish
Judicial district	Western District of Louisiana
BOP region	South Central
Housing	Two-man cells · the camp has two open-bay dormitories
Special Housing Unit	Yes
Medical care level	Level 2
Mental health care level	Level 2
RDAP	No
UNICOR	See education, work and vocational training
Camp	Yes · adjacent minimum-security satellite camp

The institution sits in Allen Parish, about 35 miles south of Alexandria, and reports to the Bureau’s South Central Region. It is one of the federal prisons in Louisiana, a quarter of a mile from FCI Oakdale I. Of its 1,073 people, 1,011 were inside the institution and 62 at the camp. The Justice Department’s own immigration-court listing still files it under the name “Federal Detention Center-Oakdale 2.” That history explains the Institution Hearing Program, why more than a third of the complex’s population was recorded as limited English proficient in its last audit, and why the litigation that comes out of this address is about immigration status and earned time rather than anything else.

Oakdale I, Oakdale II, the camp and the immigration court

FCI Oakdale II and FCI Oakdale I are separate Bureau prisons on East Whatley Road, on the north side of Oakdale, and the satellite camp belongs to Oakdale II. The same road holds two more federal offices, and three agencies run the four addresses between them. Settle which one you are dealing with before you post a letter or book a flight: the mailing addresses and telephone numbers differ, and mail sent to the wrong one comes back.

Address on East Whatley Road	What it is	Who runs it
2105	FCI Oakdale II and its satellite camp (this page) — 1,073 men	Federal Bureau of Prisons
1507	FCI Oakdale I — 1,164 men, no camp	Federal Bureau of Prisons
1900	Oakdale Immigration Court	Executive Office for Immigration Review, Justice Department
1010	Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, Oakdale	Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security

Together the two Bureau prisons held 2,237 people as of September 2026. The Oakdale Immigration Court’s jurisdiction list also covers Pine Prairie, Allen Parish and the South Louisiana Correctional Center — immigration detention facilities in the same corner of the state, not federal prisons. The Bureau’s inmate locator will not find someone held in one of them. If the person you are looking for is in immigration custody rather than serving a federal sentence, the locator is the wrong tool.

FCI Oakdale II is the institution the Bureau used to call the Federal Detention Center, Oakdale. The complex’s 2014 visiting supplement lists its members as “FCI Oakdale, 1507 East Whatley Rd” and “FDC/FPC Oakdale, 2105 East Whatley Rd,” with telephone numbers “FCI – (318) 335-4070” and “FDC and the Camp – (318) 335-4466” — today’s Oakdale I and Oakdale II exactly. The same attachment directs visitors past the FCI and the camp to “the FDC… the last institution to the left, at the end of the roadway,” and the 2026 handbook, describing the same drive, says “the FCI II is the last institution on the left.” An Inspector General audit from 2008 lists the complex as “Oakdale FCI,” “Oakdale FDC” and “Oakdale FDC-Camp,” which is where the camp came from. The Justice Department’s current immigration-court listing still names a hearing location “Federal Detention Center-Oakdale 2, Oakdale LA.”

No Bureau news release announces the change of name, and no document gives a date for it. The practical consequence is that the camp is attached to Oakdale II, not to Oakdale I. The Bureau’s roster flags a camp for Oakdale II and none for Oakdale I, its population report gives a camp figure only for Oakdale II, and the 2014 supplement pairs the detention center and the camp at one address and one phone number.

In November 1987, after the United States and Cuba announced an agreement to return Cuban nationals, detainees at the Oakdale federal detention center seized the facility and took thirty hostages, and the disturbance spread to the federal penitentiary in Atlanta two days later. No primary source establishes whether the buildings standing at 2105 East Whatley Road today are the ones held in 1987.

What is the security level at FCI Oakdale II?

FCI Oakdale II is a low-security federal correctional institution for men, with an adjacent minimum-security satellite camp; that is how the Bureau’s roster records it. Listings that still call it an administrative-security detention center describe what it used to be.

Its defining physical feature is the one the Inspector General’s 2020 review put in a single sentence: “FCI II is composed entirely of two-man cells.” Oakdale I has six housing units, half of them six-man cubicles; the camp next door is two open-bay dormitories. That is why two men with similar paperwork, sentenced in the same district, can end up living very differently a quarter of a mile apart. Our guides to the intake process and how to prepare for prison cover the first weeks after arrival.

The Bureau’s 2024 care-level charts rate the Oakdale complex as a whole at medical Care Level 2, the level Inspector General Report 08-08 also recorded in February 2008, and rate both this institution and its camp at mental health Care Level 2. Our page on the Bureau’s medical designations and care levels explains what those levels mean for the care someone can get here.

Whether someone lands at the institution or at the camp turns on the security point score and on whether a Public Safety Factor applies. A Public Safety Factor overrides the point total, and the one that matters here is the Alien or Deportable Alien factor: it is applied to people who are not United States citizens, it keeps them out of a camp regardless of how low they score, and at this institution it is the subject of more litigation than anything else.

Does FCI Oakdale II hold immigration hearings?

FCI Oakdale II holds immigration hearings: the Bureau’s roster flags it, and not FCI Oakdale I, as an Institution Hearing Program site, and the Justice Department’s immigration-court listing names it as a hearing location of the Oakdale Immigration Court. If the person you care about is not a United States citizen and has been designated here, that designation was probably not an accident.

What the Institution Hearing Program is

An arrangement among the Bureau, the Executive Office for Immigration Review and Immigration and Customs Enforcement under which removal proceedings are heard inside the prison while the sentence is still running, so that a removal order can be in place on the day the sentence ends rather than the person waiting in immigration detention for one. An immigration judge hears the case, usually by video, with an ICE officer in the room to move the paperwork. The Bureau expanded the program from 12 institutions to 21 and had narrowed it back to 17 by 2021; Oakdale II was one of those added.

What the Inspector General found

That the program was not running here at all. In Review of the Institutional Hearing and Removal Program Expansion for Federal Inmates, Report 21-123 of September 23, 2021, the Inspector General wrote that “one of the post-expansion facilities, the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Oakdale, Louisiana (Oakdale II), had not held any IHRP hearings because, according to BOP, EOIR, and ICE headquarters and field staff, the local ICE field office would not follow two program policy changes developed by the IHRP Working Group.”

The two changes were a target for ICE to file a Notice to Appear with the immigration court between 6 and 60 months before the earliest possible release date, and a requirement that an ICE representative attend the hearing. The report records that “the Oakdale ICE Assistant Field Office Director with responsibility for the Oakdale II facility at the time told us that he disagreed with the timeline for filing NTAs,” and that he also thought sending ICE personnel to hearings “was unnecessary and consumed time that could be used elsewhere.”

The deadlock ended in a local compromise, not in the national policy winning. The Inspector General recorded that “the Oakdale ICE field office and the Oakdale immigration court came to an agreed timeline of filing an NTA within 4 months of the end of an inmate’s sentence at FCI Oakdale II,” and that as of May 2021 the immigration court “was receiving a small number of NTAs from the ICE field office for Oakdale II IHRP inmates.” Four months, not six to sixty.

The compressed timeline has a practical consequence for a family: a removal case filed four months before release has to be prepared, heard and decided in four months. The same report notes a second pressure: an immigration judge’s performance is assessed in part on whether these cases finish before the sentence does, “regardless of when the NTA is filed.” If there is relief from removal to be raised, it needs an immigration lawyer engaged well before that four-month window opens, not after the notice arrives.

What it means for First Step Act credits and release planning

It means the fight at this institution is usually about paperwork status rather than conduct. Four petitions for habeas corpus against the Warden of FCI Oakdale II were screened by the same judge and magistrate judge in the Western District of Louisiana in April 2026 alone, and all four turned on the same ground: the Deportable Alien Public Safety Factor, First Step Act time credits, a finding of “categorical ineligibility” for halfway house on account of citizenship, and whether an immigration detainer — as opposed to a final order of removal — can bar credits toward prerelease custody.

Every one was recommended for dismissal, and not on the merits. Each failed because the petitioner had not finished the Bureau’s four-step administrative remedy process — informal resolution, a BP-9 to the Warden, a BP-10 to the Regional Director, a BP-11 to the Central Office. One man’s BP-11 was rejected as untimely, which counts as a failure to exhaust rather than an attempt. Another said unit staff refused to accept his BP-9; the court’s answer was that the process counts as unavailable only where it is “a simple dead end,” is so opaque it cannot practically be used, or is thwarted by “machination, misrepresentation, or intimidation,” and that a petitioner must name who refused what request, and when. The dismissals do not show that the claims were bad; they show that the petitions were filed before the record that would support them existed.

What it means for a lawyer

Citizenship cannot be established by habeas corpus, and the Fifth Circuit said so in a case out of this institution. In Gonzalez v. Martinez, No. 25-30099 (5th Cir. Dec. 2, 2025), an unpublished decision, a man held at FCI Oakdale II petitioned under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 against the warden, arguing that he was a United States citizen through his mother, that the Bureau had misclassified him as an alien, transferred him to Oakdale and denied him First Step Act programming as a result. The court of appeals held that dismissal under 8 U.S.C. § 1252 was error, because he was not in removal proceedings — and then affirmed anyway on a different ground: a habeas petition is not a viable vehicle for a citizenship claim, so it cannot be used to obtain a declaration of citizenship. The holding is about the vehicle, not about his parentage.

Two details from the Bureau’s own handbook matter to anyone advising a non-citizen here. A person under a final order of deportation, exclusion or removal is exempt from the mandatory literacy program — but the handbook states in terms that inmates “exempt from attending GED class based on a deportation detainer must enroll in GED or ESL in order to receive their good conduct time.” Exemption from the class is not exemption from the requirement. And non-citizens may be eligible for a treaty transfer to serve the remainder of a sentence at home, with the case manager advising at initial classification whether such a treaty exists.

Who are the notable inmates at FCI Oakdale II?

Few notable inmates can be placed at FCI Oakdale II itself. Published rosters of “famous inmates at FCI Oakdale” almost never say which of the two institutions they mean, and several names on them belong to the complex’s detention-center era.

Name	Status	Case
Edwin Edwards	Former. Register 03128-095; Bureau records show an actual release date of July 6, 2011. Local reporting at the time placed him at the detention center in Oakdale, this institution’s predecessor; the locator does not record historical facilities	Four-term Governor of Louisiana, convicted in 2000 of racketeering and fraud over riverboat casino licenses; began a ten-year sentence on October 21, 2002
Elliot Louis Hammond Sterling, Jr.	Escaped from the satellite camp on August 14, 2025. The locator shows no record under his committed name, and no Bureau announcement of a recapture has been published	Serving 132 months for wire fraud and financial aid fraud

Two cautions apply to every list of this kind. Searching the locator for “Edwin Edwards” returns two men, and the second — register 02863-122 — is a different person entirely, held at FMC Rochester in Minnesota with a projected release in 2030. The locator’s records also name places that are not prisons: the records for the two men prosecuted over the 2017 escape attempt list releases in October and December 2025 from the Seattle and New York Residential Reentry Management offices, though the screen shows each of them only as “Not in BOP Custody as of:” and a date. Only the eight-digit register number tells people apart; a name without one does not identify a prisoner.

How do I find someone at FCI Oakdale II?

Use the Bureau’s free public Inmate Locator, and search by the eight-digit register number if you have it. The locator covers everyone in federal custody since 1982: for someone still held it gives the facility and a projected release date, and for someone released it shows “Not in BOP Custody as of” and a date, with no facility. Our guide to how register numbers work explains how the number is built.

Two traps are specific to Oakdale. The first is the Roman numeral. The locator shows the facility’s name and type, and here the two answers differ by a single character: “Oakdale I FCI” is FCI Oakdale I and “Oakdale II FCI” is this prison — two prisons a quarter of a mile apart with different mailing addresses, different phone numbers and different visiting arrangements. The facility code in a person’s record is OAK or OAD; no one is recorded under the complex code, OAX. Read a locator answer of “Oakdale” down to the numeral before you act on it.

The second trap is the line that replaces the facility once someone has left. For register 00453-480, the man found missing from the satellite camp on the night of November 11, 2022, the locator shows “Escaped On:” and that date, with no facility named; a release shows as “Not in BOP Custody as of:” and a date, with nothing about where the person went or why. If a date appears where you expected a facility, call the institution on 318-335-4466 rather than drawing a conclusion.

If the locator finds nothing at all, the usual reasons are that the person is in state custody, in pretrial detention under the U.S. Marshals Service, in immigration detention at one of the non-Bureau facilities the Oakdale immigration court serves, or that the committed name on the judgment differs from the name the family uses.

How do I write to someone at FCI Oakdale II?

Write to a post office box, not to East Whatley Road. The Bureau publishes one inmate mailing address for this institution, and its own facility page prints a separate block for the camp with the address fields empty. Put the committed name and the eight-digit register number on the first line; mail without a register number is returned.

Inmate mail and parcels	Freight and non-USPS parcels
Inmate Name & Register Number FCI Oakdale II Federal Correctional Institution P.O. Box 5010 Oakdale, LA 71463	Staff Name FCI Oakdale II Federal Correctional Institution Attn: Warehouse 2105 East Whatley Road Oakdale, LA 71463

There is no separate published address for the satellite camp. If you are writing to someone there, use the address above and ask the institution whether to add a camp line; guessing at a format is how mail goes astray.

Because this is a low-security institution, outgoing mail is treated more generously than at a medium or high: the handbook states that mail from a sentenced person “in a minimum or low security institution may be sealed by the inmate and is sent out unopened and uninspected.” Incoming first-class mail is handed out Monday to Friday by the evening-watch officer; the Bureau’s incoming publications rules govern books and newspapers. Our guide to writing to someone in federal prison covers what gets rejected, and our page on the Bureau’s correspondence rules covers the national policy.

Legal mail follows an unusual local procedure that lawyers should note. Incoming special mail is opened in front of the addressee and not read, provided the sender is identified and the front is marked “Special Mail — Open only in the presence of the inmate.” Outgoing special mail at Oakdale does not go into a mailbox: the handbook requires that it “be delivered to the Receiving and Discharge (R&D) Department Monday through Friday during the morning meal,” commissary card in hand. Anything of 16 ounces or more needs a Form BP-329 from the unit team. A client who tries to post a filing on a Saturday has missed the window. Our page on attorney-client communication in the Bureau of Prisons covers privilege, and our page on the Bureau’s legal activities rules covers legal mail and law library access.

How do I send money to someone at FCI Oakdale II?

Send money through the Bureau’s national lockbox in Iowa or one of two wire services. Money never goes to the prison’s own address, and funds enclosed in a letter are rejected. All three routes need the committed name and the eight-digit register number.

Route	Where it goes	How fast it posts
Postal money order or cashier’s check	Federal Bureau of Prisons Committed Name Eight-Digit Register Number Post Office Box 474701 Des Moines, Iowa 50947-0001	Non-postal money orders and non-government checks carry an automatic 15-day hold. Personal checks and cash are not accepted
Western Union Quick Collect	Code city FBOP, DC; register number with no spaces or dashes followed immediately by the last name; committed full name on the Attention line	Two to four hours if sent between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. Eastern, seven days a week; otherwise by 7:00 a.m. next morning
MoneyGram Express Payment	Receive code 7932, company name Federal Bureau of Prisons, Washington, DC; committed full name on the Beneficiary line. Up to $300 online	Same posting times as Western Union

Our guide to sending money to a federal prisoner covers the lockbox envelope rules and compares every route and its cost.

Money going out is slower, and only an Associate Warden can approve a withdrawal over $500. Weigh one thing before sending a large sum: refuse status under the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program, which the handbook says cuts the commissary limit to $25 a month. Money in the account does not fix that; a revised financial plan does.

What are the visiting hours at FCI Oakdale II?

Visiting at FCI Oakdale II runs on Saturdays, Sundays and federal holidays, from 8:15 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Central time, but the last Saturday of the month is taken out of the general population schedule and given to the Reintegration Unit. Only Oakdale II has that carve-out, so check which Saturday a visit falls on before you travel.

The schedule below comes from the FCC Oakdale Admission & Orientation Handbook (2026). The Bureau publishes no visiting-day table for this institution on its website.

Where	Saturday	Sunday	Federal holidays
FCI Oakdale II, general population	8:15 a.m. – 3:00 p.m., except the last Saturday of the month	8:15 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.	8:15 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
FCI Oakdale II, Reintegration Unit	8:15 a.m. – 3:00 p.m., last Saturday of the month only	8:15 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.	—
FCI Oakdale I and the satellite camp	8:15 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.	8:15 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.	8:15 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

In the handbook, both Sunday lines carry a parenthetical that refers to Saturday — the general population Sunday line reads “(Except for last Saturday of the Month)” and the Reintegration Unit Sunday line reads “(Last Saturday of the month only).” The document does not say whether the carve-out touches a Sunday at all. Call 318-335-4466 and ask which Saturday and which Sunday before you buy a ticket.

Processing stops one hour before visiting ends, so the practical cut-off for arriving is 2:00 p.m. Central, and no visitor may be on the grounds — parking lot included — before 8:00 a.m. Step out of the visiting room for any reason and that day’s visit is over.

Who can visit, and how many

• The visiting list holds immediate family — mother, father, sister, brother, spouse and children — plus up to ten friends and associates. Only five people may visit at one time, counting adults and children together, unless the Operations Lieutenant authorizes more.
• Everyone on the list is checked through the National Crime Information Center. The prisoner starts the process by sending out form BP-629; only the Warden may refuse immediate family.
• Children under 16 must come with a parent or legal guardian on the approved list, or an approved adult carrying the parent’s written permission; a 16- or 17-year-old may visit alone with a parent’s signature on the visitor information form.
• People in disciplinary segregation or administrative detention visit through the video system rather than in the visiting room.
• Consular visits are arranged through the Executive Assistant and are not withheld even when visiting privileges have been suspended as a disciplinary sanction — a provision that matters at an institution holding as many foreign nationals as this one.

The complex visiting supplement (2014) allots each institution prisoner six points on the first of the month and deducts one per visit, with no deduction for federal holidays and no carry-over. It then says that “the FDC and FPC are exempt from the point system” — and in 2014, when it was signed, the FDC was this institution and the FPC was its camp. No published document says whether the exemption survived the change of name and mission; ask the unit team in writing.

When the room fills, terminations run in order: voluntary first, then by how often the prisoner receives visitors, then visitors who traveled from within a 100-mile radius, and only then first in, first out. Traveling a long way is a protection, so tell the front desk how far you came.

What visitors can wear and bring

Dress for a business setting. Out: sleeveless, see-through and low-cut tops, bare midriffs, shorts, skirts above the knee, spandex, sweat suits, open-toe or slip-on shoes, hats and hoods unless medical or religious, and anything tan, khaki or fatigue-colored, because those are the colors the men inside wear. Watches are barred outright; the 2026 handbook sets that rule on its own line, between asterisks.

You may bring one small clear change purse holding up to $30 in coins for the vending machines, and no paper currency; the machines are for visitors only, and the prisoner may not touch money or carry anything out of the visiting area. Infant items are limited to one clear diaper bag no larger than 12 by 12 by 4 inches, two diapers, wipes, 24 ounces of pre-mixed formula, one jar of baby food and a plastic spoon. Everything else stays in the car.

There is a children’s play area at the FCI at the other end of the complex. The supplement says that “due to space limitations, there is no specific area designated for small children at the FDC or the Camp” — that is, at this institution and at the camp. Plan for six and a half hours in a chair.

Prisoners may carry in one institution-issued religious medal, a plain wedding band, approved religious headgear, and legal materials on a legal visit. Nothing else. Afterward, everyone at the institution is strip-searched; at the camp the searches are random.

Identification and screening

Screening here is heavier than the published rules suggest. Every visitor except a federal law enforcement officer is stamped on the hand in ultraviolet ink; the stamp is rotated randomly, never repeated on consecutive visiting days, and checked under a black light four times between the sallyport and the exit. Refusing a pat search ends the visit, and the handbook adds a less familiar ground: a positive ion scan. See our guides to searches, shakedowns and contraband and federal prison visitation, and our page on the Bureau’s visiting regulations.

Getting there

The complex is on the north side of Oakdale, about a mile east of U.S. Highway 165 on Whatley Road — from Alexandria, Highway 165 south then left onto Whatley Road just inside the city limits; from Lake Charles, Highway 165 north then right. Oakdale I is the first institution on the left, the camp comes next, and FCI Oakdale II is at the end of the road. There is no public transport to the gate and no payphone in the lobby; the front entry officer will call a taxi for a departing visitor. The nearest commercial airport is Alexandria International, about 40 miles north.

How do phone calls and email work at FCI Oakdale II?

Calls from FCI Oakdale II go out, never in: the person inside places the call to a number on their approved list using a nine-digit access code and a registered voiceprint, and you cannot call the institution and ask to be put through.

The complex’s 2026 handbook is already out of date on the allowance. The Bureau’s telephone regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, issued September 3, 2026, allow 510 minutes a calendar month: 300 free to anyone eligible for First Step Act telephone incentives, and 210 more that anyone, eligible or not, may buy after using up the 300. A single call should generally not exceed 15 minutes, with 30 minutes between calls. The program statement also ended the November and December supplement the Oakdale handbook still prints, and it controls. Our guide to federal inmate phone calls explains the costs.

Phones at this complex run from 6:00 a.m. to no later than 10:00 p.m., and access is normally blocked Monday to Friday, holidays excepted, from 7:30 to 10:30 a.m. and again from 12:30 p.m. until after the 4:00 p.m. count clears. That leaves three windows on a weekday: early morning, the lunch hour, and the evening. Expect weekday calls in those windows, not in mid-afternoon.

Email runs on TRULINCS, which families reach through CorrLinks; nothing passes until you accept the system’s invitation, and our page on CorrLinks and TRULINCS covers message limits and charges. The same terminals carry an electronic law library, prescription refills sent straight to the pharmacy, and a “Request to Staff” service whose sexual-abuse reporting mailbox goes directly to the Office of the Inspector General rather than to institution staff.

What can people buy at the FCI Oakdale II commissary?

Someone at FCI Oakdale II can spend up to $460 a month at the commissary. That is the national ceiling set by the Bureau’s trust fund rules, Program Statement 4500.13, issued May 7, 2026, and the complex’s own 2026 handbook states it: “The National Spending Limit is $460.00 but may be further restricted at the local level.”

The complex’s published commissary order form disagrees with its own handbook. That form prints “SPENDING LIMIT = $360.00 PER MONTH” and is marked “Revised 10/2016.” It is the document the Bureau still serves from this facility’s page, and the figure on it is a decade old; listings that give $360 are out of date. Treat $460 as the ceiling and the local limit as a question for the unit team.

Stamps, copy cards and over-the-counter medications do not count against the limit; the form marks them with a caret. Stamps are capped separately at $9.40 a visit, exactly one book of first-class stamps. A copy card costs $6.50 and, in the form’s own words, is “for local use only at FCI Oakdale” — take that as a warning that a card bought here may be worthless after a transfer.

The rules on the form are unforgiving: all sales final, no additions once a list is in, and a list that has been circled or highlighted rather than filled in is rejected outright. Category caps run 24 soups, 24 meat and cheese items, eight each of chips, crackers, cookies and candy, and two sodas.

What is stocked tells you as much as what it costs. Cajun shrimp soup sells for a quarter. There are flour and corn tortillas, Sazon Goya con cilantro and halal beef sausage, and around sixty items carry a kosher or halal mark. The list sells insect repellent and a hooded rain poncho. Typewriter ribbon and correction tape are still stocked, thirty years into the electronic law library. Our page on the federal prison commissary covers the national rules.

What programs are available at FCI Oakdale II?

FCI Oakdale II offers drug abuse education and non-residential drug treatment, literacy and English-as-a-second-language classes, vocational training and a technical certificate track, the Threshold faith-based program, and a Reintegration Unit with its own psychology staff. It has no residential drug abuse program, and the Bureau’s own programs guide contradicts itself on whether UNICOR runs here.

RDAP and drug treatment

There is no Residential Drug Abuse Program at this complex. The Bureau’s own handbook for FCC Oakdale says it in one sentence: “The RDAP is not available here at FCC Oakdale.” A second Bureau document agrees: the First Step Act Approved Programs Guide (2026) carries its own list of RDAP locations, headed “57 RDAPS at 50 Locations,” and neither Oakdale institution is on it. Neither is Pollock (USP Pollock and FCI Pollock). No federal prison in Louisiana appears on that list at all.

For anyone whose sentence turns on the year available under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e), that absence is decisive, and it is a designation problem rather than a programming problem: completing the program means being redesignated to an institution that runs it, and the complex’s own handbook says that “ordinarily” people are interviewed “42-24 months from release depending on the facility’s security level and waiting list for the RDAP.” Ask for the drug abuse program coordinator’s interview early and in writing, and expect a transfer to follow it rather than precede it.

What does run here is the 40-hour Drug Abuse Education course and the non-residential program, both marked for this institution in the Bureau’s approved-programs guide. The education course is not optional for everyone: where the presentence report documents a prolonged history of drug use, evidence that substances contributed to the offense, or a judicial recommendation for treatment, it is required — and refusing it costs performance pay above maintenance level and eligibility for a prison industries job.

Education, work and vocational training

English as a second language is mandatory for anyone testing below an eighth-grade level, and the handbook is explicit that a high school diploma or a college degree does not excuse it — at an institution where the last audit counted 702 people as limited English proficient, that reaches a large share of the population. Literacy is mandatory too: 240 instructional hours or a GED, with good conduct time frozen while someone is coded as making unsatisfactory progress. Our guides to prison education and vocational training explain how these work across the system.

Work is compulsory for anyone medically cleared. On UNICOR, the two halves of the Bureau’s own approved-programs guide contradict each other about this institution. The guide’s narrative entry for Federal Prison Industries names 54 institutions where the program runs; FCI Oakdale I is on that list and FCI Oakdale II is not. The guide’s by-institution grid, in the same August 2026 document, marks Federal Prison Industries for FCI Oakdale II. The same grid marks Vocational Training and a technical certificate track for this institution, while marking Apprenticeship Training for Oakdale I and not for Oakdale II.

The grid marks 44 approved programs for Oakdale II and 53 for Oakdale I, with apprenticeship training, Alcoholics Anonymous and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy among those marked next door and not here. None of it records what is running in any given month, and neither institution publishes a program guide of its own; ask the unit team in writing.

Faith-based and reentry programming

Religious Services runs worship, education, counseling and the religious diet program, which the Bureau calls the Alternative Diet Program. Of its two flagship faith-based reentry programs, the guide marks Threshold for this institution and does not mark Life Connections.

Psychology Services at this complex is staffed for something most low-security institutions do not have. Alongside the chief psychologist, drug abuse program coordinator and two staff psychologists, the handbook lists a Reintegration Unit psychologist, two Reintegration Unit treatment specialists and an advanced care treatment specialist. A 2017 Inspector General review records that the Bureau developed a Reintegration Housing Unit at Oakdale in February 2014 to let vulnerable people step down from long-term restrictive housing; the 2026 handbook places that unit at FCI Oakdale II with its own visiting day. That unit is why the visiting calendar here is split, and it explains why a man in protective custody elsewhere may suddenly be transferred to Oakdale.

Before the first request slip, know where psychology staff sit: the offices are next to the Captain’s office at FCI Oakdale II, and open house is Monday from 11:00 a.m. to noon here and Tuesday from 10:30 to 11:00 a.m. at the camp. The camp’s thirty minutes a week is the whole of its scheduled walk-in access.

What is daily life like at FCI Oakdale II?

Daily life at FCI Oakdale II is structured around five counts and a ten-minute movement window. The table below follows the FCC Oakdale handbook (2026); treat it as the shape of the day rather than a timetable that will hold on any given Tuesday.

	Weekdays	Weekends and holidays
Official counts	12:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m., 5:00 a.m., 4:00 p.m., 10:00 p.m.	The same, plus 10:00 a.m.
Stand-up counts	4:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.	10:00 a.m., 4:00 p.m., 10:00 p.m.
Breakfast	6:00 – 7:00 a.m.	7:00 – 8:00 a.m.
Lunch or brunch	11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Dinner	After the 4:00 p.m. count clears
Uniform required	7:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.	—
Controlled movement	Ten minutes before the hour to the hour, one direction at a time
Compound secured	—	9:30 a.m., for the 10:00 a.m. count
Telephones	6:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m., blocked 7:30 – 10:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. until the 4:00 p.m. count clears	6:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m.
Call-outs posted	After 4:00 p.m. the day before

Counts are literal: “Staff are required to see living, breathing flesh,” the handbook says, so someone fully covered and asleep is woken. Food service closes ten minutes after the last call is announced, so a man held up at a work detail can miss a meal entirely.

Clothing is issued at the laundry during the morning meal the day after arrival, and exchanged on a fixed rotation: khakis and boots on Wednesdays, everything else on Thursdays and Fridays, blankets on the last Wednesday of the month.

The dining room has a dress code of its own: shoes, socks, a buttoned and tucked khaki shirt, no headgear, and a gray sweatshirt only under the khaki. Recreation runs under the Zimmer Amendment restrictions set out in the Bureau’s recreation rules.

Health care is charged for: a $2.00 co-payment applies to each visit the patient requests, on a notice given jointly by the Bureau and FCC Oakdale and in force since 2005. Sick call is a sign-up system recorded on the next day’s call-out sheet; someone who falls ill afterward tells the work supervisor or unit officer, who telephones health services. People in segregation request sick call in writing or at the clinician’s daily rounds. See medical care in federal prison.

What do inspectors say about conditions at FCI Oakdale II?

The DOJ Office of the Inspector General has not conducted an on-site inspection of this facility. What exists instead is a remote review from 2020, a Prison Rape Elimination Act audit from 2024 that treats the whole complex as one facility, an allegation count published by the Government Accountability Office in 2026, and a run of federal prosecutions of staff. On the Inspector General’s own count in its May 2026 report on USP Canaan, it had inspected 14 Bureau institutions since 2023; neither Oakdale institution is among them, and neither is on the list of inspections now under way. The District of Columbia’s Corrections Information Council, which inspects Bureau prisons holding D.C. residents, has never inspected here either. That is a thinner record of oversight than a prison of this size deserves.

The 2020 remote review of FCC Oakdale

In November 2020 the Inspector General published Remote Inspection of Federal Correctional Complexes Oakdale and Pollock, Pandemic Response Report 21-003. Despite the title, no one from the Inspector General’s office came to Oakdale. The work was done by telephone interview, staff survey and document review, with fieldwork between May 7 and June 16, 2020. It is not an inspection of conditions and should not be quoted as one.

It is, however, the most detailed public account of how this institution differs from its neighbor. The outbreak ran through FCI Oakdale I and the satellite camp, whose layouts made distance impossible. Of this institution the report says: “Conversely, FCI II does not have the same physical layout challenges that make social distancing difficult because inmates are housed in two-man cells. We believe that this contributed, in part, to FCI II not experiencing the same level of outbreak as that which occurred at FCI I and the Camp.” When Oakdale tested 52 men from the Special Housing Unit at FCI II in June 2020, all 52 were negative.

Being spared was not the same as being protected. The complex “used a complex-wide roster that allowed staff to work posts at any of the three facilities until April 13,” when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention inspected and told Oakdale to assign staff to a single housing unit, “at [a] minimum between FCI I, FCI II, and the Camp to avoid spread.” Until that date, the Inspector General wrote, an officer “could be assigned to work a shift at FCI I, which had multiple COVID-19 cases, only to be assigned to work another shift at FCI II, which did not have any identified cases.”

The camp, which belongs to this institution, did not escape. Oakdale moved camp residents into a vacant two-man-cell unit at FCI I on April 16, 2020, once mold remediation there was finished, but the Inspector General concluded that “Oakdale took this action too late to prevent the spread of COVID-19 to Camp inmates. Specifically, Oakdale reported to the OIG that as of June 24 Oakdale had tested 98 Camp inmates, 48 of whom (49 percent) tested positive.” A regional health services administrator also told the Inspector General that moving camp residents behind a fence reduced the risk of escape during the pandemic — a second reason that no Bureau news release gives.

Eight men at FCC Oakdale died of COVID-19 between March 30 and November 8, 2020, and 457 Justice Department staff worked at the complex when that year began. The Inspector General did not break the deaths down by institution. Screening of everyone at FCI Oakdale II and the camp for temperature and symptoms did not begin until April 2, 2020, two days after it began at Oakdale I.

The 2024 PREA audit of FCC Oakdale

The complex was audited under the Prison Rape Elimination Act by an independent auditor, Lynni O’Haver, subcontracted by PREA Auditors of America, on site January 23–25, 2024, with the final report dated March 2, 2024. It passed: 41 standards met, none exceeded, none unmet, with four standards audited at agency level.

That result covers the complex, not this institution alone. The document audits “FCC Oakdale” as a single facility, gives Oakdale I’s street address, and never uses the words “Oakdale II,” “camp” or “satellite.” The Bureau serves the same file from both institutions’ pages under different labels. What it does give is the only recent public description of the complex:

Designed capacity	2,235, against an average daily population of 2,067 over the prior year
Over capacity in the prior 12 months	Yes
Inmate housing units	16 across the complex
Population on day one of the audit	1,982
Limited English proficient	702 — more than a third of the population
Transgender or intersex	12
Staff who may have inmate contact	457, with 17 contractors and 13 volunteers

In the twelve months before the audit the complex reported three allegations of sexual abuse and two of sexual harassment, all inmate-on-inmate, none staff-on-inmate; all five closed as unsubstantiated, and the auditor reviewed every file, although auditors are often refused access to open investigations. The audit recorded zero staff-on-inmate allegations in the year to January 2024. Ten months later, on November 20, 2024, a federal grand jury indicted a former correctional officer from this complex on two counts of abusive sexual contact, and he was sentenced in December 2025.

Sexual abuse allegations in the GAO count

The Government Accountability Office’s May 2026 report Federal Prisons: Improvements Needed to Prevent, Detect, and Address Sexual Abuse, GAO-26-107343, gives per-institution counts of sexual abuse allegations for every Bureau facility. Its Table 7, counting allegations against incarcerated people by the year the incident occurred, records for FCI Oakdale II none in 2020, seven in 2021, four in 2022, two in 2023 and three in 2024 — 16 in five years, against eight over the same period for FCI Oakdale I.

Four cautions travel with those numbers. These are reported allegations, not findings: nationally between 2014 and 2022, five percent of allegations against incarcerated people were substantiated, 81 percent unsubstantiated and 14 percent unfounded, and “unsubstantiated” means the evidence was not enough either way, not that the report was false. The office does not adjust for population, so a bigger prison out-counts a smaller one at identical risk and a low count can as easily mean no one reports. Its two tables come from different systems with different cut-off dates and cannot be added together. And its Table 8, on staff-perpetrator allegations, does not number the Oakdale institutions at all — it lists an “Oakdale Federal Correctional Institution” with 13 and an “Oakdale Federal Detention Center” with two, with no way to tell which of today’s institutions that second row belongs to.

Staff prosecutions

The Inspector General’s public case log names this complex seven times since 2023, a high count for a low-security complex. None of the releases says which institution the officer worked in, so all of them belong to the complex rather than to this page alone.

• March 18, 2026 — a former officer was arrested, pleaded guilty and was sentenced on one count of providing contraband in prison.
• December 4, 2025 — Gregory Adam Fournet, a former officer, was sentenced to ten months in prison and five years of supervised release for abusive sexual contact, after an indictment charging two counts.
• November 21, 2024 — a former officer was sentenced to six months in prison and three years of supervised release for false statements.
• 2023 and 2024 — three further prosecutions: Samantha Harp convicted by a Lake Charles jury of false statements (July 2024), an officer sentenced to two years and a $10,000 fine for bribery (April 2024), and Arteria Scott’s guilty plea to providing contraband (August 2023).

FCI Oakdale II in the news

Recent news about FCI Oakdale II centers on three walkaways from its satellite camp since 2022; older items concern deaths in custody, the 2020 pandemic, a 2017 escape attempt and the 1987 uprising.

• August 2025 — camp escape. Elliot Louis Hammond Sterling, Jr., 37, serving 132 months for wire fraud and financial aid fraud, was found missing from the satellite camp at about 10:15 p.m. on August 14 and was still at large five days later. Tips go to the U.S. Marshals Service at 318-934-4300.
• March 2025 — a second walkaway. FCI Oakdale II reported a man missing from the satellite camp early on a Sunday morning.
• November 2022 — a third. Rodolfo Hernandez-Villanueva, 41, serving 157 months out of the Western District of Texas, was found missing at about 10 p.m. on November 11. The Bureau said the camp then held 98 men; it held 62 as of September 2026.
• March 2021 and May 2020 — the Bureau posted two news releases reporting the deaths of people held at FCI Oakdale II and at its satellite camp; the Bureau’s releases are listed on its press release page.
• 2020 — the pandemic. FCC Oakdale had one of the Bureau’s earliest and most serious outbreaks, and eight men at the complex died of COVID-19 between March and November. The Inspector General found the outbreak ran through FCI Oakdale I and the camp; the Wall Street Journal reported in April 2020 that it was “confined to one of the prisons, FCI Oakdale I.”
• June 2018 — escape prosecution. Lucas Gregory Woodard and Nicholas Bickle pleaded guilty to attempted escape after staff found them on October 11, 2017 “ensnared in razor wire on the perimeter fence and ground.” The Justice Department’s announcement does not say which institution held them.
• November 1987 — the uprising. Cuban detainees at the Oakdale federal detention center seized the facility on November 21 and took thirty hostages, two days before a parallel takeover at the federal penitentiary in Atlanta.

No Bureau document addresses the pattern of three camp walkaways in three years. A minimum-security camp has no fence, and a walkaway is not a breakout; it is also a federal felony that ends any prospect of home confinement and adds years, which is why camp placement is scrutinized the way it is.

Frequently asked questions about FCI Oakdale II

Problems at FCI Oakdale II: where we can help

The problems that recur at this institution are not generic, and the record on this page shows what they are. Four habeas petitions against this warden in a single month in 2026 turned on immigration status and earned time, and every one failed at the same point: the administrative remedy record. That is the work.

• The Alien or Deportable Alien Public Safety Factor. It is applied on paperwork, it keeps people out of a camp and out of some programming, and lawful permanent residents with no detainer and no removal order challenge it constantly here. Whether it is correctly applied is arguable — through the administrative remedy process, in time, before a court will hear it.
• First Step Act time credits and prerelease custody for people who are not citizens. The dividing line the courts keep being asked about is between an immigration detainer and a final order of removal, and it decides whether credits can be applied toward halfway house or home confinement. See our federal prison early release practice.
• Removal proceedings inside the prison. With a local target of filing a Notice to Appear four months before release, relief from removal has to be prepared long before the notice arrives — and a claim to citizenship cannot be resolved by habeas corpus, as the Fifth Circuit held here in December 2025.
• RDAP access. There is no residential program at this complex, so the year available under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e) depends on a redesignation, and the complex handbook says interviews ordinarily fall 42 to 24 months out.
• Designation and transfer, including placement more than 500 miles from home — another claim raised repeatedly out of this institution — and movement between Oakdale I, Oakdale II and the camp.
• Disciplinary proceedings that threaten good conduct time, and Special Housing Unit placements that outlast their justification, including protective custody and step-down into the Reintegration Unit.
• Medical care that is not happening, where the route runs through a written request, then the remedy process, then — where negligence has caused harm — a Federal Tort Claims Act claim.
• Compassionate release under the Bureau’s reduction-in-sentence rules, and sentence computation errors measured against the Bureau’s sentence computation manual — but not a request to be released because of conditions, which is not a habeas claim in this district: Livas v. Myers dismissed a class petition for want of jurisdiction and held that where the Bureau houses someone under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(b) is reviewable by no court.
• Challenges to the conviction or sentence itself, through a direct appeal or a § 2255 motion.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. handles federal criminal defense, appeals and post-conviction matters nationwide, and advises families on Bureau of Prisons issues at institutions across the system. Call (843) 620-1100 or contact us to talk through a specific situation.

Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, the firm’s Managing Director, writes and maintains the federal prison policy material on this site. He is not counsel of record; legal representation is provided by Elizabeth Franklin-Best.

Sources and currency

Bureau of Prisons documents

• FCI Oakdale II, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The Bureau’s facility page, with address, contact details, population and the inmate-mail block.
• FCC Oakdale Inmate Admission and Orientation Handbook, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Visiting schedule, mail and telephone rules, the commissary limit, programs, psychology staff and the daily routine for the whole complex.
• FCC Oakdale Commissary Shopping List, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2016. Items, prices, category caps and the spending limit printed on the form.
• Visiting Regulations, Institution Supplement FCC 5267.08F, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCC Oakdale, 2014. Visiting rules, the point system and directions; replaced FCC 5267.08D (2013).
• Visiting Regulations, Institution Supplement FCC 5267.08D (Spanish edition), Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCC Oakdale, 2013. The rescinded edition, still served from this facility’s page.
• Trust Fund/Deposit Fund Manual, Program Statement 4500.13, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Sets the $460 commissary spending limit.
• Inmate Telephone Regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Replaced Program Statement 5264.08 (2008).
• First Step Act Approved Programs Guide, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Reentry Services Division, 2026. Program availability by institution, including the RDAP locations list.
• Institution Care Levels for Medical Assignment and Institutional Mental Health Care Levels, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2024. Released under Freedom of Information Act request 2024-03455 and published by the Washington Lawyers’ Committee.
• Press Releases, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2021. Includes the May 2020 and March 2021 releases reporting deaths at the satellite camp and at FCI Oakdale II.

Audits and inspections

• Federal Prisons: Improvements Needed to Prevent, Detect, and Address Sexual Abuse (GAO-26-107343), U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2026. Tables 7 and 8 give allegation counts by institution.
• Inspection of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ U.S. Penitentiary Canaan (Report 26-055), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2026. Gives the number of Bureau institutions the Inspector General has inspected since 2023.
• PREA Facility Audit Report: FCC Oakdale, PREA Auditors of America, 2024. On-site audit of January 23–25, 2024, by Lynni O’Haver, an independent auditor subcontracted by PREA Auditors of America; audits the complex as one facility.
• Review of the Institutional Hearing and Removal Program Expansion for Federal Inmates (Report 21-123), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2021. The Institution Hearing Program at FCI Oakdale II.
• Remote Inspection of Federal Correctional Complexes Oakdale and Pollock (Pandemic Response Report 21-003), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2020. A remote review, with no site visit, of the complex’s pandemic response.
• Review of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Use of Restrictive Housing for Inmates with Mental Illness (Report 17-05), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2017. Records the Reintegration Housing Unit at Oakdale.
• The Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Efforts to Manage Inmate Health Care (Report 08-08), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2008. Care levels recorded for the Oakdale institutions.

Court records

• Pando Uribe v. Warden, FCI Oakdale II, No. 2:26-cv-00520 (W.D. La.), U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, 2026. Docket.
• Eduardo v. Warden, FCI Oakdale II, No. 2:26-cv-00432 (W.D. La.), U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, 2026. Docket.
• Lunic v. Warden, FCI Oakdale II, No. 2:26-cv-00408 (W.D. La.), U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, 2026. Docket.
• Thompson v. Warden, FCI Oakdale II, No. 2:26-cv-00343 (W.D. La.), U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, 2026. Docket.
• Gonzalez v. Martinez, No. 25-30099 (5th Cir. Dec. 2, 2025), U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, 2025. Unpublished opinion.
• Livas v. Myers, 455 F. Supp. 3d 272 (W.D. La. 2020), U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, 2020. Docket, No. 2:20-cv-00422.
• Former Bureau of Prisons Correctional Officer Arrested, Charged, Pleaded Guilty and Sentenced to Providing Contraband in Prison, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2026. The March 18, 2026, arrest, plea and sentence of a former officer at the complex.
• Former BOP Correctional Officer Sentenced for Abusive Sexual Contact, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2025. Gregory Adam Fournet’s ten-month sentence.
• Former BOP Correctional Officer Arrested for Abusive Sexual Contact, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2024. The arrest of Gregory Fournet after the November 20, 2024, indictment.
• Former BOP Correctional Officer Sentenced for False Statements, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2024. A former officer’s six-month sentence.
• Former Corrections Officer Convicted of Making False Statements to a Federal Agent, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2024. Samantha Harp’s conviction by a Lake Charles jury.
• Former BOP Correctional Officer Sentenced for Bribery of a Public Official, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2024. A former officer’s two-year sentence and $10,000 fine.
• Former BOP Correctional Officer Pleaded Guilty to Providing Contraband in Prison, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2023. Arteria Scott’s guilty plea.
• Oakdale Prisoner Pleads Guilty to Attempting to Escape Correctional Center, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Louisiana, 2018. The guilty pleas of Lucas Gregory Woodard and Nicholas Bickle.

News and other sources

• Immigration Court List – Administrative Control, U.S. Department of Justice, Executive Office for Immigration Review, 2026. Entry for the Oakdale Immigration Court.
• Inmate Escapes From FCI Oakdale II Satellite Prison Camp, KALB, 2025.
• FCI Oakdale II Reports Inmate Walkaway From Satellite Camp, KALB, 2025.
• Authorities Searching for Escaped Oakdale Inmate, KPLC, 2022.
• Coronavirus Puts a Prison Under Siege, The Wall Street Journal, 2020.
• Former LA Gov. Edwin Edwards Released From Prison, WAFB, 2011.
• Statement on the Cuban Inmate Riots in Georgia and Louisiana, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, 1987. Public Papers of the President.
• 8 U.S.C. § 1252, Judicial review of orders of removal, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).
• 18 U.S.C. § 3621(b), (e), Imprisonment of a convicted person, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).
• 28 U.S.C. § 2241, Power to grant writ, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).

Sources reviewed September 2026.

Reviewed for legal accuracy by Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney·September 2026