ANGOLA, La. — Federal authorities purposefully chose a notorious Louisiana prison to hold immigration detainees as a way to encourage people living illegally in the U.S. to self-deport, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Wednesday.
A complex inside the Louisiana State Penitentiary, an immense rural prison better known as Angola, will be used for some of the “worst of the worst” ICE detainees, Noem told reporters, standing behind a lectern with a sign that read, “Louisiana Lockup.”
Many of Angola’s 6,300 inmates still work fields in long rows, picking vegetables by hand, watched by armed guards on horseback.
The notoriety of the 18,000-acre (7,300-hectare) prison stretches back well over a century. Described in the 1960s and 1970s as “the bloodiest prison in America,” it saw violence, mass riots, escapes, brutality, inhumane conditions and executions.
“This facility will hold the most dangerous of criminals,” Noem said, adding it had “absolutely” been chosen for its reputation.
Officials proudly noted that the nearby lake had alligators, a few of which could be seen swimming along the surface, and that bears also lived in the area. The facility is ringed by a fence with five rows of stacked barbed wire. A guard could be seen pacing in a tower.
The Trump administration has crafted its immigration messaging to reinforce a tough-on-crime image and create a sense of fear among people in the U.S. illegally, most pointedly with the detention center dubbed “ Alligator Alcatraz ” that it built in the Florida Everglades.
The Everglades facility may soon be completely empty as a judge upheld her decision ordering operations there to wind down indefinitely.
Racing to to expand the infrastructure necessary for increasing deportations, the federal government and state allies have announced a series of new immigration detention facilities, including the “Speedway Slammer” in Indiana and the “Cornhusker Clink” in Nebraska.
The Angola immigration facility will be able to hold only about 400 people, a tiny percentage of the more than 100,000 detainees that ICE expects to have under a $45 billion expansion for immigration detention centers that Trump signed into law in July. Officials said it currently holds about 50 immigration detainees.
The prison traces its history back to a series of wealthy slave traders and cotton planters who built an operation known as Angola Plantation. An 1850s news report said it had 700 slaves, who historians say were forced to work from dawn to dark in Louisiana’s brutal summer heat.
The plantation became the state prison after the Civil War, with a former Confederate officer awarded a lease that gave him control over the property and its convicts.
“The majority of black inmates were subleased to land owners to replace slaves while others continued levee, railroad, and road construction,” the museum’s website says. White inmates at the time worked as clerks or craftsmen.
Inmate leasing ended in the late 1800s amid a public outcry, and the state took direct control of the prison in 1901.
Difficult conditions, though, remained a part of Angola’s history, with cycles of scandal and reform going on for decades, with reports of brutality, crowded conditions and tuberculosis outbreaks.
Officials say reforms have led to improvements, but lawsuits are still regularly filed alleging violence and cruel treatment.