A new federal immigration detention facility will open on the grounds of a notorious Louisiana prison to hold people apprehended under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, administration officials said Wednesday.
The prison camp, which officials call “Louisiana Lockup,” will be on the grounds of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola. Federal authorities have already sent 51 migrants to the facility.
Authorities project the facility will reach its 400-person capacity in the next few months, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry said.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said at a press conference on the prison grounds that the facility’s notorious reputation, which she called “legendary,” aligns with the administration’s broader campaign to deter non-citizens from violating the law.
“If you come into this country and you victimize someone, if you take away their child forever, if you traffic drugs and kill our next generation of Americans, and if you traffic our children and men and women, absolutely there's consequences,” she said. “You're going to end up here.”
The Trump administration has been working with state and local authorities, and the private prison industry, to create new detention space for people detained pending deportation. More than 60,000 people are now in immigration detention.
Nebraska, Indiana and Florida have opened similar facilities in collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security, usually with alliterative names.
Those efforts have won plaudits from Trump, who praised Landry on Wednesday. The unveiling of a detention facility at Angola follows a court ruling prohibiting the federal government from sending additional detainees to the Florida site in the Everglades, which was dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”
Angola is the largest maximum-security prison in the United States. Flanked by the Mississippi River, it has earned a reputation for being one of the harshest in the country. Inmates work the fields at the prison, which was built on the grounds of an 18,000 acre cotton plantation, for extremely low pay.
The prison has also been accused of discriminating against Black inmates, subjecting inmates under the age of 18 to unconstitutionally cruel treatment and doing little to address extreme heat.
“This facility is designed to hold criminal illegal aliens, the worst of the worst,” Landry said. “If you don't think that they belong in somewhere like this, you got a problem.”
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