Too dark for Trump? US president can’t stomach his name on America’s most notorious jail, once dubbed ‘in his honor’

US President Donald Trump seems to have quietly backed away from having his name tied to one among America’s most notorious prisons.From Camp 47 to Camp 57At Louisiana’s Angola State Penitentiary, a newly reopened jail unit briefly carried the signal Camp 47, a nod to Trump because the forty seventh US president. Photos captured by native station WAFB confirmed the name already painted on the constructing. But when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem minimize the ribbon on Wednesday, the positioning had been rebranded Camp 57, an obvious tribute to Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, the state’s 57th governor.The sudden change comes because the jail’s disturbing historical past resurfaces. Long referred to as Camp J, the disciplinary unit was shut down in 2018 after a wave of suicides, mass employees resignations, and experiences of malfunctioning locks that generally popped open by themselves. Mercedes Montagnes of the Promise of Justice Initiative once described the unit as “more akin to a dungeon.”A grim previous revivedPrison Legal News documented the distress inside earlier than its closure: in a single 12 months alone, 85 officers resigned, retired, or had been fired. In April 2016, two males took their very own lives within the unit on the exact same day.Despite that legacy, the Department of Homeland Security is now reopening the positioning as a part of a hard-line detention growth. Branded by DHS because the Louisiana Lockup, the unit joins different alliterative amenities corresponding to Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz,” Indiana’s “Speedway Slammer,” and Nebraska’s “Cornhusker Clink.”ICE strikes inOn day one, officers mentioned 51 ICE detainees had already been transferred into the jail, with capability anticipated to rise to 416. Noem mentioned the notorious jail—constructed on a former slave plantation and lengthy affected by abuse allegations, was chosen to encourage “self-deportation.”Gov. Landry leaned into Angola’s fame whereas giving reporters a tour: “With 18,000 acres bordered by the Mississippi River, swamps filled with alligators, and forests filled with bears, nobody really wants to leave the place.”Officials insist the unit has been repaired and walled off from the remainder of the jail after emergency upgrades this summer time. Attorney General Pam Bondi hailed the opening as a “historic agreement” with Louisiana.Whether the brand new name will erase its grim previous, or Trump’s brush with affiliation, stays an open query.