For Immediate Release
Friday, September 26, 2025
Press Contact
Arianna Rosales, media@nipnlg.org
Angola, Louisiana — Today marks the tenth day of an ongoing hunger strike led by four individuals detained at the new Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Camp J at the Louisiana State Penitentiary (“Angola”). The individuals have continued their protest in light of the deplorable conditions and lack of access to medical care.
The hunger strike began on Wednesday, September 17, 2025. Nineteen brave individuals abstained from food for several days to heighten awareness of the deplorable conditions at Camp J. The hunger strikers have consistently demanded:
- Medical care, mental health care, and necessary prescription medications;
- Basic necessities such as toilet paper, sufficient hygiene products, and ample clean water;
- Visitation from ICE officers to address and remedy their grievances about the facility and prison conditions.
Medical conditions reported by individuals detained at Camp J are emergent and severe. In one case, a man was recommended for hernia surgery two months ago at another immigration detention center, but now at Angola, is receiving no treatment. His hernia is visible through his clothes. “We are treated like dirt, like trash,” said an individual detained at Camp J.
Now, on its tenth day, the hunger strikers are also seeking urgent medical attention for one of the men detained at Camp J, Mr. X. Despite requiring an emergency transfer to the hospital last weekend, when Mr. X was sent back to Camp J, he was immediately sent to a solitary confinement cell with no running water. Although he was returned with a walker, the walker was confiscated, and he also has not been provided with his necessary medications. Mr. X is now unable to walk and forced to rely on other detained individuals to help him stand, go to the bathroom, and bring him the food that the guards leave by the door.
Several days after the strike began, rather than meet their demands for visitation from ICE officers and basic necessities, ICE instead retaliated against the hunger strikers, sending in guards in riot gear, placing all hunger strikers in disciplinary solitary confinement, and restricting their already limited contact with the outside world.
The hunger strikers and other individuals at Camp J were abruptly transferred to Angola earlier this month; many individuals have now come to experience the inhumane conditions at Angola after having survived the tortuous conditions at “Alligator Alcatraz,” the hastily-built detention center in the south Florida Everglades.
“We stand with the hunger strikers as they demand medical care, basic necessities, and contact with ICE.” said Bridget Pranzatelli of the National Immigration Project. “The urgency of the situation at Camp J cannot be overstated. These men must be released and the facility must be shut down.”
“This hunger strike is a testament to the strength of the people held in Camp J,” said Amaris Montes of Rights Behind Bars. “It also shows the dire conditions that ICE has intentionally created by placing people in a facility that should never have been opened in the first place. Releases must happen immediately before even more blood is on ICE’s hands.”
“For years, our coalition has fought to end ICE detention in Louisiana and the Southeast. We are raising the alarm: the hunger strikers’ struggle at Camp J is life or death. We urge Louisiana elected officials and the broader community to uplift the hunger strikers’ demands,” said a representative of the SE Dignity Not Detention Coalition.
No human being deserves to be treated this way. Shame on ICE, the Louisiana Department of Corrections, the State of Louisiana, and the private contractors who profit from the detention of human beings, including LaSalle Corrections, for subjecting individuals to such appalling conditions. The hunger strikers demand for basic human decency must be met, and Camp J must be shut down yet again.
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About the National Immigration Project (NIPNLG)
The National Immigration Project is a membership organization of attorneys, advocates, and community members who believe that all people should be treated with dignity, live freely, and flourish. We litigate, advocate, educate, and build bridges across movements to ensure that those who bear the brunt of racist criminal and immigration systems are uplifted and supported. Learn more at nipnlg.org. Follow the National Immigration Project on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, and X at @NIPNLG.
About the Southeast Dignity Not Detention Coalition (SEDND)
The Southeast Dignity Not Detention Coalition is a grassroots group of immigrants, legal advocates, organizers, and community activists working to end immigrant detention across the southeast U.S. beginning with closing all ICE jails overseen by the abuse-plagued New Orleans ICE Field Office.
About Rights Behind Bars (RBB)
Rights Behind Bars is a non-profit legal advocacy organization working alongside incarcerated people to challenge the cruel and inhumane conditions of confinement.