Angola, Louisiana
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The Trump administration is opening a new detention camp inside a notorious state prison in Louisiana to home undocumented migrants accused of committing crimes, officers introduced Wednesday.
The new detention heart, referred to as “Camp 57,” will likely be at the nation’s largest maximum-security prison, the Louisiana State Penitentiary, generally often called Angola, an 18,000-acre facility positioned an hour north of Baton Rouge. It could have the capability to home over 400 males, Louisiana Republican Gov. Jeff Landry mentioned at a press convention Wednesday, half of whom will likely be despatched there by the tip of September.
Administration officers mentioned Camp 57 is designed to maintain the “worst of the worst” and pointed to it as an indication of success amid their ongoing campaigns in opposition to each unlawful immigration and violent crime — each of that are key to Trump’s agenda.
The facility’s title is a nod to Landry, the state’s 57th governor, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security advised NCS. It is being repurposed from an present facility that was not in use, Landry mentioned.
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 mentioned Wednesday. “Instead, this facility will hold the most dangerous of criminals that have been out there harming individuals in this country.”
US Attorney General Pam Bondi mentioned, “Louisiana, you’re going to be an example for the rest of this country.”
Though Camp 57 will likely be remoted from the prison’s regular prison inhabitants, Louisiana’s prison system has been accused of forcing incarcerated people at Angola to work in harmful circumstances for little to no pay — together with accusations that inmates have been made to decide greens by hand in temperatures over 100 levels at what was as soon as a slave plantation.
In 2021, a decide discovered that Angola was offering inadequate medical care to its incarcerated inhabitants.
Noem mentioned Wednesday that the prison’s notorious fame was “absolutely” a motive officers selected it as the situation for Camp 57.
“This is a facility that’s notorious,” Noem mentioned.
“But that’s a message that these individuals that are going to be here, that are illegal criminals, need to understand,” she continued. “If you come into this country and you victimize someone … there’s consequences. You’re going to end up here.”
The Trump administration’s plan to open the detention ICE facility in Louisiana comes it has sought to open a number of immigration detention facilities in different Republican-led states.
The administration tried to convert a distant coaching airport in Florida to a detention heart dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” however a US district decide upheld her determination final week ordering operations to wind down indefinitely. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis additionally introduced a facility referred to as “Deportation Depot,” which will likely be positioned in a briefly closed state prison about 45 miles west of Jacksonville.
Last month, Nebraska introduced plans for an immigration detention heart within the distant southwest nook of the state to be dubbed the “Cornhusker Clink.”