FCI Oakdale I, part of the larger Oakdale federal complex in Allen Parish, Louisiana, opened in March 1986 as a low-security prison for male inmates on former farmland, built to ease overcrowding across the federal system. Its early years were rocky: in 1987, just a year after opening, a riot broke out and inmates set fire to much of the institution, largely destroying it. The facility was rebuilt and reopened in 1989 and has operated continuously since. In its first years it was known for housing a substantial population of Cuban nationals tied to the 1980 Mariel boatlift, a detail that shaped its early identity within the federal system. Oakdale I is also remembered for a difficult chapter in the spring of 2020, when it became one of the sites of the Bureau of Prisons' deadliest COVID-19 outbreaks, with several inmate deaths and hundreds of documented infections among inmates and staff, prompting lawsuits and public scrutiny over how testing and isolation were handled. Today it continues to operate as a standard low-security institution.