Detained for 23 hours per day in a dirty prison cell. Held without access to medical care or necessary prescription medications. Locked up, far from home, with limited ability to communicate with lawyers or family members. These are the stories shared by men currently detained at Camp J, a unit that was closed in 2018 due to safety and security concerns, in the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary (commonly known as Angola). This is what it looks like when mass incarceration expands.

These men are not being held because of a conviction history. They are being detained under a new partnership between Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry and the Trump administration to use the prison wing for immigration detention—a visceral illustration of this administration’s vitriol for and criminalization of immigrants. Last month, the administration launched “Operation Catahoula Crunch” with the goal of arresting 5,000 people in the greater New Orleans area, a move that mirrors the use of indiscriminate enforcement raids in Charlotte, North Carolina; Chicago, Illinois; and Los Angeles, California.

The Expansion of Mass Incarceration: A Brutal History

Angola’s name comes from the plantation that previously occupied the land on which the prison now sits. Enslaved Africans were forced to labor on this land, and after emancipation, Louisiana quickly replaced slavery with convict leasing and prison labor, ensuring that Black labor could still be extracted through the criminal legal system. Today, it remains the largest maximum-security prison in the United States, housing more than 5,000 people—nearly all of them Black men and many of whom labor in the prison’s fields under harsh conditions that echo its plantation past. Human rights observers, journalists, and federal courts have long condemned Angola for its brutality, rampant medical neglect, and reliance on forced labor, yet the prison remains a central pillar of Louisiana’s punishment infrastructure.

This is not incidental as mass incarceration expands. Louisiana has maintained one of the highest incarceration rates in the United States for decades, with a criminal legal system that has been geared toward controlling, confining, and exploiting Black communities. Angola stands as the most visible embodiment of that design: a modern-day plantation sustained by policies that criminalize poverty, racialize punishment, and normalize extreme confinement as governance.

Read the full article about immigrants being held in solitary confinement by Ashley Crawford and Elizabeth (Liz) Kenney at Vera Institute of Justice.