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Guardian: ‘The dungeon’ at Louisiana’s notorious prison reopens as Ice detention center

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Critics condemn reopening of ‘Camp J’ unit at Angola in service of Trump’s nationwide immigration crackdown, noting its history of brutality and violence

There were no hurricanes in the Gulf, as can be typical for Louisiana in late July – but Governor Jeff Landry quietly declared a state of emergency. The Louisiana state penitentiary at Angola – the largest maximum security prison in the country – was out of bed space for “violent offenders” who would be “transferred to its facilities”, he warned in an executive order.

The emergency declaration allowed for the rapid refurbishing of a notorious, shuttered housing unit at Angola formerly known as Camp J – commonly referred to by prisoners as “the dungeon” because it was once used to house men in extended solitary confinement, sometimes for years on end.

For over a month, the Landry administration was tight-lipped regarding the details of their plan for Camp J, and the emergency order wasn’t picked up by the news media for several days.

But the general understanding among Louisiana’s criminal justice observers was that the move was in response to a predictable overcrowding in state prisons due to Landry’s own “tough-on-crime” policies.

Though Louisiana already had the highest incarceration rate in the country before he got into office, Landry has pushed legislation to increase sentences, abolish parole and put 17-year-olds in adult prisons.

Advocates swiftly objected to the reopening of Camp J, noting its history of brutality and violence. Ronald Marshall served 25 years in the Louisiana prison system, including a number of them in solitary confinement at Camp J, and called it the worst place he ever served time.

“It was horrible,” Marshall said.

It turns out, however, that Landry’s emergency order and the renovation of Camp J was not done to accommodate the state’s own growing prison population. It was in service of Donald Trump’s nationwide immigration crackdown.

Earlier in September, Landry was joined by officials in the president’s administration in front of the renovated facility to announce that it would be used to house the “worst of the worst” immigrant detainees picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents.

“The Democrats’ open border policies have allowed for the illegal entry of violent criminals,” Landry said. “Rapists, child-predators, human traffickers, and drug dealers who have left a path of death and destruction throughout America.”

Numerous studies have shown that undocumented immigrants commit serious crimes at lower rates than US citizens – and that increased undocumented immigration does not lead to higher crime rates in specific localities.

The rollout highlights the way the Trump administration and conservative officials are seeking to blur the legally clear distinction between civil immigration detainees and people serving sentences in prison for criminal convictions – this time by utilizing a prison with a long history of violence and brutality, along with a fundamentally racist past.

The Angola facility – which Trump’s White House dubbed the “Louisiana lockup” – follows the opening of other high-profile facilities with alliterative names by states across the country, including in Florida, Nebraska and Indiana. It will have the capacity to house more than 400 detainees, officials said.

Recently, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a list of 51 detainees it said were already being held at the Angola facility and who allegedly have prior criminal convictions for serious charges. But while the Trump administration similarly claimed that the Florida lockup dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” would house only the worst criminal offenders, a report by the Miami Herald found that hundreds of people sent there had no criminal charges at all.

Ice has long utilized former jails and prisons as detention facilities. But there are few prisons in the country with the name recognition of Angola. And the decision to use Angola appears to be as much about trading on the prison’s reputation as it does about security or practicality.

At a 3 September news conference, the DHS secretary, Kristi Noem, called the prison “legendary” and “notorious”.

Once a plantation with enslaved people, the rural prison occupies nearly 30 sq miles of land on the banks of the Mississippi River about an hour’s drive north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s capital. Throughout the 20th century, it gained a reputation as one of the country’s worst prisons – due to the living and working conditions, abuse by guards and endemic violence.

In 1951, dozens of prisoners slashed their achilles tendons to protest against brutality at the facility.

Medical and mental healthcare at the prison has likewise been abysmal. As recently as 2023, a federal judge found that the deficiencies in treatment at the facility amounted to “abhorrent” cruel and unusual punishment, resulting in untold numbers of avoidable complications and preventable deaths.

The prison has also maintained clear visual ties to its plantation past by continuing to operate as a working farm, where mostly Black prisoners pick crops under the watch of primarily white guards. Today, there is ongoing litigation attempting to end the practice of forced agricultural labor at the prison, which is known as the “farm line” and is required of most prisoners at some point during their sentences. Some prisoners can make as little as two cents an hour for their labor, and some are paid nothing at all.

Civil rights attorneys have argued that the farm line serves “no legitimate penological or institutional purpose” and instead is “designed to ‘break’ incarcerated men and ensure their submission”.

Nora Ahmed, legal director at the ACLU of Louisiana, said that the Angola immigration detention facility seemed like a clear attempt by the Trump administration to use the prison’s name recognition to further their goal of associating undocumented immigrants with criminals.

“Angola’s history as a plantation and the abuse and allegations that have surrounded Angola as an institution is meant to strike fear in the American public,” Ahmed said. “It’s the imagery that is deeply problematic.”

The Angola facility is also in some ways the natural result of aligning local, state and national trends and policies related to incarceration, immigrant detention and deportations.

Louisiana has become a nationwide hub for immigrant detention and deportations. Sheriffs across the state have signed contracts with Ice in recent years to let them use their local jails as detention facilities. And Louisiana now has the second largest population of immigrant detainees in the country – after Texas. A small airport in Alexandria, Louisiana, has been the takeoff location for more deportation flights during Trump’s second presidency than anywhere else.

It’s also not the first time the state has utilized Angola for something other than housing state prisoners.

In 2022, Louisiana’s office of juvenile justice moved dozens of juvenile detainees to a renovated former death row facility on the grounds of Angola, a move that was met with litigation and outcry from youth advocates. While state officials made assurances that they would be kept separated from the adult population, youths at the facility reported being abused by guards, denied education and kept in their cells for long stretches of time.

Eventually, a judge ruled that they would need to be moved, calling the conditions “intolerable”.

Louisiana also briefly utilized Camp J in 2020 to house incarcerated pre-trial detainees from local jails around the state who had contracted Covid-19.

Pictures and videos from the new immigration facility during a tour given to reporters show that while the facility may have been renovated, it still looks decidedly prison-like. Cells have single beds with metal toilets and bars in the front. There are also a number of outdoor metal chain-link cages at the facility, resembling kennels. It is unclear what they will be used for.

In an email to the Guardian following the initial publication of this story, DHS’s assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, said that detainees at Angola were not being held in solitary confinement or in the outdoor cages.

“These are just more lies by the media about illegal alien detention centers,” the statement read. The statement also said “smears our contributing to … Ice law enforcement officers” facing an increase in reported assaults against them.

The Louisiana department of corrections did not respond to emailed questions.

The former Camp J is now emblazoned with “Camp 57” – after the fact that Landry is Louisiana’s 57th governor. Photos captured by Louisiana news station WAFB showed the area had been painted with a sign reading “Camp 47” in a nod to Trump, who was sworn into office in January as the 47th US president. But officials evidently changed their minds about that name and then touted it as Camp 57 when it was unveiled.

Marshall, now the chief policy analyst for the advocacy organization Voice of the Experienced, said much of what made Camp J so bad were guards that staffed the facility, who promoted a culture of abuse, violence and desperation. But he said that he had little optimism that the conditions would improve under Ice leadership.

“Camp J has that reputation,” he said. “It has a spirit there – like it possesses those who are in control or have authority.”

Marshall also said that when he was in Camp J there was a sense that prisoners could at least attempt to appeal to the federal government to get relief from the brutal conditions. Now, that’s no longer the case. “You can’t cry out to the federal government for help, because the federal government is actually creating the circumstances,” Marshall said.

The problem with conflating civil immigration detention with prison is not only that it sends a message to the public that undocumented individuals are all criminals, Ahmed said – but also that they are entitled to all the legal rights that people being held in the criminal context are entitled to.

“By attaching criminality to people in immigration detention, the suggestion to the American public is also that those individuals have a [constitutional] right to counsel,” she said. “Which they do not. This is civil detention, and people are not entitled to have an attorney to vindicate their rights.”

There are still unanswered questions about the facility – including who paid for the renovations, whether or not it is being managed by a private prison contractor, or what the conditions are like for detainees. But in these early stages, the Trump administration is already touting the facility as a national model.

“Look behind us, Louisiana,” the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, said at the press conference in front of the new facility. “You’re going to be an example for the rest of this country.”

Guardian: ‘The dungeon’ at Louisiana’s notorious prison reopens as Ice detention center
Critics condemn reopening of ‘Camp J’ unit at Angola in service of Trump’s nationwide immigration crackdown, noting its history of brutality and violence

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/18/louisiana-angola-prison-trump-ice-immigration

Washington Post: Pentagon plan would create military ‘reaction force’ for civil unrest

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Documents reviewed by The Post detail a prospective National Guard mission that, if adopted, would require hundreds of troops to be ready around-the-clock.

The Trump administration is evaluating plans that would establish a “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force” composed of hundreds of National Guard troops tasked with rapidly deploying into American cities facing protests or other unrest, according to internal Pentagon documents reviewed by The Washington Post.

The plan calls for 600 troops to be on standby at all times so they can deploy in as little as one hour, the documents say. They would be split into two groups of 300 and stationed at military bases in Alabama and Arizona, with purview of regions east and west of the Mississippi River, respectively.

Cost projections outlined in the documents indicate that such a mission, if the proposal is adopted, could stretch into the hundreds of millions of dollars should military aircraft and aircrews also be required to be ready around-the-clock. Troop transport via commercial airlines would be less expensive, the documents say.

The proposal, which has not been previously reported, represents another potential expansion of President Donald Trump’s willingness to employ the armed forces on American soil. It relies on a section of the U.S. Code that allows the commander in chief to circumvent limitations on the military’s use within the United States.

The documents, marked “predecisional,” are comprehensive and contain extensive discussion about the potential societal implications of establishing such a program. They were compiled by National Guard officials and bear time stamps as recent as late July and early August. Fiscal 2027 is the earliest this program could be created and funded through the Pentagon’s traditional budgetary process, the documents say, leaving unclear whether the initiative could begin sooner through an alternative funding source.

It is also unclear whether the proposal has been shared with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“The Department of Defense is a planning organization and routinely reviews how the department would respond to a variety of contingencies across the globe,” Kingsley Wilson, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said in a statement. “We will not discuss these plans through leaked documents, pre-decisional or otherwise.”

The National Guard Bureau did not respond to a request for comment.

While most National Guard commands have fast-response teams for use within their home states, the proposal under evaluation by the Trump administration would entail moving troops from one state to another.

The National Guard tested the concept ahead of the 2020 election, putting 600 troops on alert in Arizona and Alabama as the country braced for possible political violence. The test followed months of unrest in cities across the country, prompted by the police murder of George Floyd, that spurred National Guard deployments in numerous locations. Trump, then nearing the end of his first term, sought to employ active-duty combat troops while Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and other Pentagon officials urged him to rely instead on the Guard, which is trained to address civil disturbances.

Trump has summoned the military for domestic purposes like few of his predecessors have. He did so most recently Monday, authorizing the mobilization of 800 D.C. National Guard troops to bolster enhanced law enforcement activity in Washington that he said is necessary to address violent crime. Data maintained by the D.C. police shows such incidents are in decline; the city’s mayor called the move “unsettling and unprecedented.”

Earlier this year, over the objections of California’s governor and other Democrats, Trump dispatched more than 5,000 National Guard members and active-duty Marines to the Los Angeles area under a rarely used authority permitting the military’s use for quelling insurrection. Administration officials said the mission was necessary to protect federal personnel and property amid protests denouncing Trump’s immigration policies. His critics called the deployment unnecessary and a gross overreach. Before long, many of the troops involved were doing unrelated support work, including a raid on a marijuana farm more than 100 miles away.

The Trump administration also has dispatched thousands of troops to the southern border in a dramatic show of force meant to discourage illegal migration.

National Guard troops can be mobilized for federal missions inside the United States under two main authorities. The first, Title 10, puts troops under the president’s direction, where they can support law enforcement activity but not perform arrests or investigations.

The other, Title 32, is a federal-state status where troops are controlled by their state governor but federally funded. It allows more latitude to participate in law enforcement missions. National Guard troops from other states arrived in D.C. under such circumstances during racial justice protests in 2020.

The proposal being evaluated now would allow the president to mobilize troops and put them on Title 32 orders in a state experiencing unrest. The documents detailing the plan acknowledge the potential for political friction should that state’s governor refuse to work with the Pentagon.

Some legal scholars expressed apprehension about the proposal.

The Trump administration is relying on a shaky legal theory that the president can act broadly to protect federal property and functions, said Joseph Nunn, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice who specializes in legal issues germane to the U.S. military’s domestic activities.

“You don’t want to normalize routine military participation in law enforcement,” he said. “You don’t want to normalize routine domestic deployment.”

The strategy is further complicated by the fact that National Guard members from one state cannot operate in another state without permission, Nunn said. He also warned that any quick-reaction force established for civil-unrest missions risks lowering the threshold for deploying National Guard troops into American cities.

“When you have this tool waiting at your fingertips, you’re going to want to use it,” Nunn said. “It actually makes it more likely that you’re going to see domestic deployments — because why else have a task force?”

The proposal represents a major departure in how the National Guard traditionally has been used, said Lindsay P. Cohn, an associate professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. While it is not unusual for National Guard units to be deployed for domestic emergencies within their states, including for civil disturbances, this “is really strange because essentially nothing is happening,” she said.

“Crime is going down. We don’t have major protests or civil disturbances. There is no significant resistance from states” to federal immigration policies, she said. “There is very little evidence anything big is likely to happen soon,” said Cohn, who stressed she was speaking in her personal capacity and not reflecting her employer’s views.

Moreover, Cohn said, the proposal risks diverting National Guard resources that may be needed to respond to natural disasters or other emergencies.

The proposal envisions a rotation of service members from Army and Air Force National Guard units based in multiple states. Those include Alabama, Arizona, California, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Tennessee, the documents say.

Carter Elliott, a spokesperson for Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D), said governors and National Guard leaders are best suited to decide how to support law enforcement during emergencies. “There is a well-established procedure that exists to request additional assistance during times of need,” Elliott said, “and the Trump administration is blatantly and dangerously ignoring that precedent.”

One action memo contained in the documents, dated July 22, recommends that Army military police and Air Force security forces receive additional training for the mission. The document indicates it was prepared for Hegseth by Elbridge Colby, the Defense Department’s undersecretary for policy.

The 300 troops in each of the two headquarters locations would be outfitted with weapons and riot gear, the documents say. The first 100 would be ready to move within an hour, with the second and third waves ready within two and 12 hours’ notice, the documents note, or all immediately deployed when placed on high alert.

The quick-reaction teams would be on task for 90 days, the documents said, “to limit burnout.”

The documents also show robust internal discussions that, with unusual candor, detail the possible negative repercussions if the plan were enacted. For instance, such short-notice missions could “significantly impact volunteerism,” the documents say, which would adversely affect the military’s ability to retain personnel. Guard members, families and civilian employers “feel the significant impacts of short notice activations,” the documents said.

The documents highlight several other concerns, including:

• Reduced Availability for Other Missions: State-Level Readiness: States may have fewer Guard members available for local emergencies (e.g., wildfires, hurricanes).

• Strain on Personnel and Equipment: Frequent domestic deployments can lead to personnel fatigue (stress, burnout, employer conflicts) and accelerated wear and tear on equipment, particularly systems not designed for prolonged civil support missions.

• Training Disruptions: Erosion of Core Capabilities: Extensive domestic deployments can disrupt scheduled training, hinder skill maintenance and divert units from their primary military mission sets, ultimately impacting overall combat readiness.

• Budgetary and Logistical Strains: Sustained operations can stretch budgets, requiring emergency funding or impacting other planned activities.

• Public and Political Impact: National Guard support for DHS raises potential political sensitivities, questions regarding the appropriate civil-military balance and legal considerations related to their role as a nonpartisan force.

National Guard planning documents reviewed by The Post

Officials also have expressed some worry that deploying troops too quickly could make for a haphazard situation as state and local governments scramble to coordinate their arrival, the documents show.

One individual cited in the documents rejected the notion that military aviation should be the primary mode of transportation, emphasizing the significant burden of daily aircraft inspections and placing aircrews on constant standby. The solution, this official proposed, was to contract with Southwest Airlines or American Airlines through their Phoenix and Atlanta operations, the documents say.

“The support (hotels, meals, etc.) required will fall onto the general economy in large and thriving cities of the United States,” this official argued. Moreover, bypassing military aircraft would allow for deploying personnel to travel “in a more subdued status” that might avoid adding to tensions in their “destination city.”

Pentagon plan would create military ‘reaction force’ for civil unrest
Documents reviewed by The Post detail a prospective National Guard mission that, if adopted, would require hundreds of troops to be ready around-the-clock.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/08/12/national-guard-civil-unrest