Louisiana Lockup ICE facility endures after year one | Courts

Camp 57, the controversial ICE detention center that Gov. Jeff Landry set up inside the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, is nearing its first anniversary flush with federal funding and showing little sign its population is waning.

If anything, immigration advocates see occupancy rising at the privately run detention center, also dubbed “Louisiana Lockup.” The feds pay a $275 daily rate for a minimum of 208 ICE detainees, state records show. Louisiana reports paying $116 daily for a typical state prisoner at Angola, where about 4,000 are held.

“We were up there a couple weeks ago. They were moving the guys into the other dorms” at Camp 57, said Tania Wolf, southeast advocacy manager for the National Immigration Project. “We were just told they were renovating.”

State corrections officials did not respond to questions about Camp 57, its funding or its future. Landry’s office declined to comment.

Official figures placed the average daily population of the detention camp at 176 as of July 9, slightly lower than the 182 reported in April, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

There’s room to grow. Officials have placed the capacity of Camp 57 at 416 detainees.

The former ‘Camp J’

The center occupies a former compound of solitary confinement buildings called “Camp J” that was shuttered almost a decade ago at one end of the 18,000-acre prison grounds in West Feliciana Parish.

The unusual ICE lockup added capacity in a state that houses the most immigration detainees outside of Texas. The July figures show about 7,700 ICE detainees in Louisiana, including Camp 57, which took its name from Landry’s turn as governor — he’s Louisiana’s 57th.

Louisiana Lockup opened after Florida’s much larger “Alligator Alcatraz” as an alliterative response by states to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Indiana was another, launching “Speedway Slammer.”

Officials touted Alligator Alcatraz as a powerful cudgel due to its inhospitable natural environment for escapees. Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem boasted similarly of Camp 57, playing up the notorious history of the maximum-security prison at Angola, a former slave plantation.

Feds pay big for ICE beds

Built from scratch on a remote airstrip, Florida’s operation cost $1.2 billion, or about $3,500 per detainee per day in all, according to an analysis by CBS Miami. Reports of inhumane treatment and abuse surfaced, along with lawsuits. It closed in June, with DeSantis saying it had “served its purpose for the time.”

Meanwhile, the scores of immigrants being held at Angola are among the most expensive in Louisiana. The $275 bed rate the feds pay is more than previously known and equates to $100,000 a year for each ICE detainee.

It’s more than four times the cost to house state prisoners in parish jails. It’s also well above the $150 per day that the state agreed to pay the private operator of Camp 57 as a base fee in a contract obtained by The Times-Picayune and The Advocate.

The feds also reimburse the operator for outside medical care and transportation for those detainees. They also paid $10 million to repurpose the complex, records show.

All told, the feds spent at least $27.7 million to bankroll Camp 57 over its first nine months, according to records produced by the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security.

The figures come from monthly invoices, detainee counts, a spreadsheet of money transfers and other records provided by GOHSEP, which distributes funds from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act for the detention camp.

The records also show several hundred dollars invoiced monthly at $1 per day under a “voluntary work program.” The state did not respond to questions about the work.

Uncertain in the figures is just how Louisiana comes out in the bargain.

While incomplete, the records offer the clearest view to date of the direct cost to taxpayers. Even so, the GOHSEP figures may undercount the money spent on Camp 57.

The state Legislative Fiscal Office has reported that GOHSEP funneled $34 million from ICE last fiscal year for the detention camp. That figure has swelled to $46.3 million budgeted for the current fiscal year. At the minimum of 208 detainees, that would equate to more than $600 per detainee per day in all.

Advocates for immigrants and other critics argue that it’s wrong to play up the punitive nature of the camp and that there shouldn’t be so much hidden about how the facility is run and paid for.

“It’s part of this administration trying to feed into that narrative of this criminality of the immigrant community,” Wolf said. “There’s a massive amount of funding, and now Gov. Landry and this state is trying to get into the money pot…Where is it going? It’s murky. Things like this shouldn’t be murky.”

In response to detailed questions, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a statement arguing that ICE funding is being used to protect U.S. citizens.

” Every day, DHS is conducting law enforcement activities across the country to keep Americans safe. It should not come as news that ICE will be making arrests in states across the U.S. and ensuring we have resources to carry out President Trump’s mission,” it read.

“ICE is targeting criminal illegal aliens including murderers, rapists, criminals, gang members and more. Thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill, ICE has new funding to expand detention space to keep these criminals off American streets before they are removed for good from our communities.”

The agency attached mugshots and criminal histories of five men it described as “some of the public safety threats arrested by ICE in Louisiana.” None appear to be held currently at Camp 57.

GOHSEP general counsel Clayton Revere referred questions to the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections. That agency’s press secretary, Falon Brown, directed questions to the governor’s office, which did not respond to emailed questions.

Deep roots for private operator

The contract for the facility was signed in August 2025 by state corrections Undersecretary Bobby Lee Jr. and William K. McConnell, founder of LaSalle Corrections, LLC., which operates several private lockups for ICE detainees in Louisiana, along with private prisons in other states.

It lists the operator of Camp 57 as Ice 47 Processing Center, LLC, based on an earlier naming idea. Previous signage called it “Camp 47,” presumably for Trump’s second term.

State business records show the company was formed a year ago this week and shares a Ruston address with LaSalle Corrections, as well as top executives.

LaSalle Corrections officials Ryan Horvath and Wesley McConnell are listed as its managers, online records show. Neither could be reached. William McConnell did not respond to e-mail interview requests.

Related companies operate other ICE detention facilities in the state. At one, Richwood Correctional Center, the day rate for detainees was recently $101, records show.

Hidden costs, conditions questioned

Andrea Armstrong, a law professor at Loyola University in New Orleans, called the setup in Louisiana with Camp 57 “completely unique,” as a privately run ICE detention center within a state prison.

Armstrong said it leaves questions about possible hidden costs to the state — for perimeter security, food, mail service and medical care, for instance.

“It’s unclear to me whether LaSalle is essentially using those services free or reimbursing DOC for those services, or what,” Armstrong said.

An immigration detention center might have “slightly different costs” from prisons, to include more language services for example, she said. But they also may not require the same vocational services.

Advocates acknowledge some benefits for ICE detainees held at Camp 57 compared to several more remote detention centers across western and northern Louisiana.

Readier access to lawyers is one. And Camp 57 resides in the federal Middle District of Louisiana, where judges have been more receptive to pleas for relief from ICE detainees, and where the backlog of habeas corpus petitions isn’t as severe as in the Western District of Louisiana.

According to TRAC, the Western District had the third highest rate of habeas corpus filings in the U.S. per capita from October to March – four times the national rate.

It’s a system set up for detainees to give up, said Nora Ahmed, legal director of the ACLU of Louisiana.

“You have an administration that’s abusing the legal process knowing the courts are going to be drowning in habeas corpus petitions and people will not be able to be released timely,” Ahmed said. “By the time you hit three months, people lose their marbles.”

Camp 57 “more than other facilities, they do have people with prior criminal records,” she said, but often years have gone by since their releases. A majority have lived in the U.S. for decades, said Ahmed, who argued that the facility “exists as a form of punishment, which is illegal on its face.”

A report released in January by the ACLU of Louisiana described a troubled start to Camp 57, with a lack of medical support, adequate hygiene, or dedicated recreational space.

“Water at the facility contained metal shavings, which meant that the only potable water available to them was limited amounts of bottled water,” the report said.

Advocates reported a hunger strike by some detainees in the first month, but officials said it never happened.

Ahmed said judges in multiple states have opined that what’s going on at Angola has crossed a line. She said ongoing concerns include family visitations, with prison security running ID and warrant checks for entry.

“Why is that a problem? Because this is civil detention,” she said.

Court fights ongoing

Some federal judges in Louisiana have sided with detained immigrants, to Landry’s chagrin. The Republican governor recently requested federal legislation to move West Feliciana Parish into the Western District, while criticizing “liberal judges” in Baton Rouge.

U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow filed a bill in March for the move. A Letlow spokesman, Matt Smith, acknowledged “it may be tough to get it across the finish line” this year.

“Congresswoman Letlow continues to support the Camp 57’s mission of housing criminal illegal immigrants, and is pleased to see Governor Landry and President Trump working to enforce our immigration laws and protect public safety,” Smith said.

In the meantime, court fights over people detained there endure.

In February, U.S. District Judge John deGravelles ordered four of its detainees released after finding they’d been held unconstitutionally too long. Each were detained past a six-month federal limit, he found.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a statement calling deGravelles an “activist judge” and describing the decision in all caps as a “LAWLESS ABOMINATION.”

The government has continued to try to remove one of those detainees, Ibrahim Mohammed, through a third-country removal process despite orders from deGravelles.

The judge, who was nominated to the federal bench by former President Barack Obama, held a contempt of court hearing last week against federal authorities. He has yet to rule.