Federal authorities targeted a notorious Louisiana prison to hold immigration prisoners as a way of encouraging people in the United States illegally for self-boundary, the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Christi Noem said Wednesday.
A complex inside Louisiana State Penitentiary, a huge rural prison better known as Angola, will be used for some of the “worst of the worst” ice trapping, Noem told journalists as she stood because of the plant near a new sign, “Louisiana Lockup.”
Officials said 51 prisoners were already housed in Angola. But Government Manager Jeff Landry said he expects the building to be filled to capacity and expect over 400 people to come in subsequent months as President Donald Trump continues his big attempt to remove millions of people suspected of entering the country illegally.
“Louisiana Lockup”
At the prison entrance, a sign sounds: “You go into the new beginning.”
The Dirt Road to the new ice cream facility meanders past tall oaks, green fields and other buildings – including a white church and a structure with a sign that said, “Angola Shake Down Team”.
The facility is surrounded by a fence with five rows with stacked barbed wire. Overlooking the outdoor area is a tower where a guard went back and forth.
Across the road is a lake with cypress trees where a few alligators could be seen swimming. In addition to the “great alligators”, officials “promised” forests full of bears “nearby.
Associated Press joined the officials for a short tour of the plant and saw some of the cells where prisoners would be held. The cells, built of three ash block walls and steel bars on the front, were a single coating – a bed, toilet and washing in each.
Outside, enclosed encapsulations of chain fence were high enough for more people to stand in.
“If you don’t think they belong somewhere like this,” Landry said of the imprisoned during Wednesday’s news conference, “You have a problem.”
An active prison with maximum security
The building that holds IS imprisoned is not new, but rather renovated after sitting unemployed for years. The rest of Angola, which consists of many buildings, has remained active. Many of Angola’s 6,300 inmates still work in the fields and choose long rows with vegetables by hand as armed guards patrol on horseback.
In addition, the prison is home to more than 50 deaths inmates. The latest execution was in March using nitrogen gas to deprive the inmate’s oxygen and cause death. The state’s electric chair, called “Cruel Gertie”, still appears in the prison museum.
The notority of the 18,000 target large (7,300 hectare) prison extends well over a century. Described in the 1960s and 1970s as “the bloodiest prison in America”, so that violence, mass revolt, escaping, brutality, inhuman conditions and executions.
“This facility wants the most dangerous of criminals,” said Noem, adding that it had “absolutely” been chosen for its reputation.
The Trump administration has prepared its immigration message to reinforce a hard-on-crime picture and create a sense of fear among people in the United States illegally, mostly pointed with the detention center called “Alligator Alcatraz”, as it built in Florida Everglades.
The Everglades plant may soon be completely empty as the judge maintained her decision arrangement there to settle indefinitely.
Racing To expand the infrastructure needed to increase deportations, the federal government and state allies have announced a number of new immigration withholding facilities, including “speedway slams” in Indiana and “Cornhusker Clink” in Nebraska.
The approximate 400 people that the Angola immigration facility will be able to hold are just a small percentage of the more than 100,000 people seeking ICE to detain during an extension of $ 45 billion to immigration retention centers that Trump signed in July.
A notorious story
The prison traces his story back to a number of wealthy slave traders and cotton plants who built an operation known as Angola Plantation. A 1850s news report said it had 700 slaves, as historians say they were forced to work from dawn to dark in Louisiana’s brutal summer heat.
The plantation was the state prison after the Civil War, with a former Confederate Officer awarded a lease that gave him control of the property and its criminal sentence.
“The majority of black inmates were sublet to land owners to replace slaves, while others continued to live, rail and road construction,” says the museum’s website. White inmates worked at the time as officials or craftsmen.
The inmate leasing ended in the late 1800s in the middle of a public scream, and the state took direct control of the prison in 1901.
However, difficult conditions remained part of Angola’s history of bicycles with scandal and reform that took place for decades, with reports of brutality, crowded conditions and tuberculosis outbreaks.
Officials say reforms have led to improvement, but litigation is still filed regularly due to violence and cruel treatment.