The Trump administration is opening a new camp within a notorious state prison in Louisiana to house undocumented migrants accused of committing crimes, officials announced today.
The new detention center, called “Camp 57,” will be at the country’s largest maximum-security prison, the Louisiana State Penitentiary, commonly known as Angola, an 18,000-acre facility located an hour north of Baton Rouge. It will have the capacity to house over 400 men, Louisiana Republican Gov. Jeff Landry said today at a news conference, half of whom will be sent there by the end of September.
Administration officials said Camp 57 is designed to hold the “worst of the worst” and pointed to it as a sign of success amid their ongoing campaigns against both illegal immigration and violent crime — both of which are key to Trump’s agenda.
The facility’s name is a nod to Landry, the state’s 57th governor, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told CNN. It is being repurposed from an existing facility that was not in use, Landry said.
Camp 57 is “not just a typical ICE detention facility that you may see in another state, somewhere else in this country,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said. “Instead, this facility will hold the most dangerous of criminals that have been out there harming individuals in this country.”
Though Camp 57 will be isolated from the prison’s normal criminal population, Louisiana’s prison system has been accused of forcing incarcerated individuals at Angola to work in dangerous conditions for little to no pay — including accusations that inmates were made to pick vegetables by hand in temperatures over 100 degrees at what was once a slave plantation.
Noem said the prison’s infamous reputation was “absolutely” a reason officials chose it as the location for Camp 57.