A wing of the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary, better known as Angola prison, has a new purpose amid President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The prison will host a new detention center named “Camp 57” after Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, the state’s 57th governor. It’s the latest attempt to repurpose U.S. prison facilities to accommodate mass arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The facility will house people who federal officials are calling “the worst of the worst.” Examples given at a press conference introducing the facility on Wednesday included murder, rape or drug dealing.
Gov. Landry, who was joined by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi at the prison, indicated that ICE will be looking for people they define as such to send to Louisiana.
“ We will take whatever ICE sends us as they go through their roster of some of the worst of the worst criminal, illegal aliens,” Landry said.
The facility was formerly used at the prison as Camp J, also known as the “Dungeon,” because it consisted mostly of solitary confinement cells. Landry said more than 200 men will be held there by mid-September, and it can hold more than 400 men. When asked where women would be held, Landry joked that he was going to talk to federal government representatives about it after the press conference.
Noem said the choice of the venue was deliberate. Angola is a sprawling complex covering 18,000 acres of land in rural Louisiana. It’s surrounded by vast forests, and it’s just off the Mississippi River. Landry said that the river is full of alligators and the forests are full of bears.
The facility is also known for its history of violence and use of inmate labor.
“This is a facility that is notorious,” Noem said. "Angola prison is legendary. But that’s a message that these individuals that are going to be here — that are illegal criminals — need to understand.”
She said that the most effective means of getting people to self-deport was by showing them the consequences the federal government would impose on them.
The Louisiana Illuminator reports that Gov. Landry declared an emergency in July to remodel the camp. The funding for the remodel came from funds set aside for ICE in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed in July.
Landry said the White House instructed him to make sure the facility ran “in the black,” meaning the facility would not cost the state money.
Madison Sheahan, deputy director of ICE, said the facility would meet the organization’s standards, which include having legal libraries and hearing rooms for people held there to meet with an attorney.
The ACLU of Louisiana condemned the opening of the facility in a statement on Wednesday evening.
“This is state-sanctioned cruelty,” Alanah Odoms, Executive Director of the ACLU of Louisiana, said in the statement. “Using prison as a punishment for civil detainees is a horrendous abuse of executive power.”
The organization also pushed back against officials’ “worst of the worst” claim, calling it “misleading and inflammatory,” and pointing to data that shows more than 70% of people in immigration detention in Louisiana have never been convicted of a crime.
