DHS opened 'Camp 57' ICE detention unit inside Angola prison's former solitary-confinement wing for civil immigration detainees

On September 3, 2025, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the opening of "Camp 57," an ICE civil immigration detention facility inside Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola) — an 18,000-acre former slave plantation and the state's largest maximum-security prison. The facility occupies what Angola staff previously called "Camp J" or the "Dungeon," a solitary-confinement wing shuttered roughly seven years earlier after cell locks malfunctioned, dozens of weapons were discovered among staff and inmates, and more than 80 employees resigned, retired, or were fired for misconduct. Fifty-one civil immigration detainees were transferred there on opening day, with the facility claiming a capacity of 416. Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry attended the announcement alongside the federal officials.

The people detained at Camp 57 are held on civil immigration violations — administrative, not criminal, charges — meaning they have not been convicted of any crime. Nonetheless, the administration publicly described them as "the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens," characterizing civil detainees in criminal terms. Angola has a documented history of extreme heat, inmate violence, and abuse conditions that previously led federal courts to impose oversight. Placing civil detainees in a maximum-security state penitentiary — rather than a civil detention facility — subjects them to punitive conditions that exceed what civil detention standards permit.

By February 2026, courts had ordered four men released from Camp 57 based on their conditions of confinement. Prism Reports documented detainees complaining of inadequate medical care, poor food, and conditions in the facility's former isolation wing. The decision to use Angola — specifically its most notorious shuttered section — for civil immigration detainees was publicly defended by DHS and the Louisiana governor as a crime-reduction measure, though immigration detention is legally and administratively separate from criminal incarceration.