The ACLU of Louisiana says federal, and state officials are breaking the law by housing ICE detainees at the State Penitentiary at Angola. ACLU Louisiana legal director Nora Ahmed says immigration detention is a civil process to ensure court appearances, not punishment for criminal behavior “There is a decision to confuse the American people and the people of Louisiana that the immigrants in detention are there to serve some form of criminal punishment when they know, at law, that is not how civil immigration detention is allowed to be used.”
But, as the Louisiana Radio Network reports, there was a decidedly different perspective at Angola Prison, Wednesday, September 3, 2025, as Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem arrived for a news conference to usher in the reopening of a notorious wing of an equally notorious state prison. As Noem explained, Angola’s history of violence and inmate labor should send a strong message to the quote, "worst of the worst" ICE detainees because of its reputation. “You’re going to end up here because we’re going to throw the book at you and everything else that we have until you’re out of this country. And you no longer have the right to be free and no longer have the right to be in the United States of America.”
Ahmed announced that her organization had already filed public records requests, back on August 11, with the Department of Corrections of the Governor’s Office demanding transparency on:
- Which private or public entities stand to profit from reopening Camp J;
- Contracts or agreements authorizing its use for immigrant detention; and
- Any communications records tied to the Governor’s Executive Order.
There are already 51 ICE detainees housed at Angola with plans to hold 200 by mid-September and room enough for a total of 400 detainees. The Louisiana Illuminator reports that Gov. Jeff 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.
But in a recent statement, ACLU of Louisiana Executive Director Alanah Odoms said, “This is state-sanctioned cruelty.” Odoms added that, “Using prison as a punishment for civil detainees is a horrendous abuse of executive power.”
As for Secretary Noem’s remarks claiming detainees to be housed at Angola are allegedly the “worst of the worst,” Odoms condemned that kind of characterization as “misleading and inflammatory,” pointing instead to data that shows more than 70% of people in immigration detention in Louisiana have never been convicted of a crime.
The reopening of Camp J served a renaming ceremony of sorts, for what will now be known as Camp 57 in honor of Governor Landry, who serves as Louisiana’s 57th governor. Yet this reopening becomes a stark reminder of why the unit was shuttered. Camp J, a.k.a. “The Dungeon,” contained mostly solitary confinement cells, in a state once infamous as the world’s incarceration capital. A 2019 report, by nonprofit watchdog organization Solitary Watch even dubbed Louisiana the solitary confinement capital of the world.
Camp J was eventually closed down in 2018, primarily due to security and safety concerns from malfunctioning cell locks, and the facility’s deteriorating conditions.
