ICE Is Incarcerating Immigrants at Angola, Louisiana’s Max Security Prison

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is incarcerating immigrants at Louisiana State Penitentiary, better known as Angola, Gov. Jeff Landry (R) and Trump administration officials announced Wednesday.

Fifty-one immigrants are currently incarcerated at Angola, in a solitary confinement unit once dubbed the “Dungeon.” Officials closed the unit in 2018, but over the summer, Landry ordered repairs so it could reopen as an ICE lockup.

The unit has been named Camp 57 for Landry, the 57th governor of Louisiana. Officials also refer to it as Louisiana Lockup.

“This facility is fulfilling the President’s promise of making America safe again by giving ICE a facility to consolidate the most violent offenders into a single deportation and holding facility,” Landry said at a press conference, with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem, ICE Deputy Director Madison Sheahan, and Attorney General Pam Bondi standing behind him.

Landry continued: “This camp was originally built here at Angola to house the most disruptive of prisoners. It was called Camp J. Over the years, it was neglected and fell into disrepair. We decided to repair it and put it back into service to help fulfill the mission of removing criminal illegal aliens that have been causing havoc in our communities.”

Landry said that the unit will be able to hold more than 400 people within the next few months.

“If you are in America illegally, you could find yourself in CECOT, Cornhusker Clink, Speedway Slammer, or Louisiana Lockup,” Noem wrote in one of several social media posts about Angola. “Avoid arrest and self deport NOW using the CBP Home App.”

Officials made similar threats this summer when they opened “Alligator Alcatraz,” the ICE jail hastily constructed in Florida’s alligator-infested swamplands.

“You never have to go to Alligator Alcatraz as an illegal alien,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said at a news conference in July. “If you can take that plane ticket and you can go, and DHS is picking up the cost of that,” he added, referring to DHS’s self-deportation campaign.

Last month, a federal judge ordered the administration to close the Florida facility, but yesterday a Trump-dominated appeals court blocked the lower court’s ruling, allowing it to stay open.

Angola has long been synonymous with brutal, inhumane, and dangerous conditions.

In 2023, a district court found that “rather than receiving medical ‘care,’ the inmates [at Angola] are instead subjected to cruel and unusual punishment by medical mistreatment.”

“The human cost of these 26 YEARS is unspeakable,” the judge continued. “In the following pages, the Court will make detailed and extensive findings of the callous and wanton disregard for the medical care of inmates at Angola. The finding is that the ‘care’ is not care at all, but abhorrent cruel and unusual punishment that violates the United States Constitution.”

In another case, incarcerated workers at Angola sued prison officials, alleging that they were forced to work in the fields performing “grueling, but pointless, manual agricultural labor,” for, at most, two cents an hour. They say they were forced to work in extreme heat with little if any access to clean, cold drinking water. If they were unable to work, they were placed in solitary confinement, according to their motion.

Amy Fischer, Amnesty International USA’s director for refugee and migrant rights, said in a statement that detaining immigrants at Angola “is just the latest move in President Trump’s shameful attack on immigrants.”

“Angola prison, a notorious facility built on a former plantation used to enslave people, is steeped in a legacy of racism and brutal conditions,” she continued. “Detaining people in places like Angola and ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ is not about safety; it is cruelty by design. And it must stop.”