‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Is Worse Than You Realize
The Trump administration has made a point of trumpeting Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” as a shining example of efficiency in the government’s mass-deportation efforts and a blueprint for other states to follow.
But there are a few questions yet to be answered. Such as, will other facilities also lack plumbing and be required to truck out sewage? Will they be hastily built in a matter of days? And will the food there, as some Alligator Alcatraz detainees claim, also come with a side of maggots?
These are just some of the issues the Everglades facility is dealing with even as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem praises it as a beacon of “efficiency” and a model for other states to replicate. Reports of an ongoing hunger strike by detainees have been swiftly dismissed as “fake news” by the Department of Homeland Security, which has been silent on reports of numerous ambulances seen leaving the facility over the weekend.
“After a certain amount of time, you have to get medical attention for people participating in a hunger strike,” says Adriana Rivera of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, a nonprofit that helps immigrants with legal services and advocacy. The group documented a string of ambulances leaving Alligator Alcatraz in recent days. “Some of the men who have participated in the hunger strike are being transferred out” now, she said, apparently “to break up the troublemakers, so to speak.”
Erected on an abandoned airstrip known as the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, the temporary tent city was thrown together in just eight days after Florida authorities presented the federal government with a “marketing pitch” inspired by President Donald Trump longing for the reopening of the original Alcatraz.
Gonzalo Almanza Valdez, who was taken into custody despite having a green card and being a permanent U.S. resident, has been held at the facility since July 11 and has not yet been allowed to meet with his attorney, says Anna Weiser of the Smith & Eulo law firm. She said no reason has been given for his detention and no charging document to indicate any criminal proceedings, though a past racketeering charge that has long since been “fully resolved” may have put him in the crosshairs.
His wife, Aschly, says guards at the facility seemed to start mistreating him after he spoke out about his case to the press and joined a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. He’s been on a strict diet for medical reasons, she says, and initially staff seemed to be providing him with the appropriate foods. But then they started bringing him items he’d get sick from eating.
“Once the lawsuit and everything started coming out, there was one day he didn’t eat for almost a whole day because they kept getting it wrong,” she says. He’s described walking on floors covered with water “mixed with poo and pee” from the lack of proper plumbing, she says, and told her he’d watched a fellow detainee’s health suffer after he wasn’t given antibiotics he’d been prescribed following a recent surgery.
The guards have also begun to appear to taunt detainees in subtle ways, she says, apparently “to push people to either want to self-deport or snap.”
Weiser, who represents Valdez, says she’d just been informed this week she would finally be able to meet with him after being given the runaround for weeks and being told an immigration court had “no jurisdiction.”
“This is a disaster,” she says. “They built it … and they’ve taken all these people, but they have no process in place for them to see lawyers.”
Contrary to Governor Ron DeSantis’s assertions that everyone held in the facility is under “final removal orders,” Valdez was not, according to Weiser.
The hunger strike, which hit the two-week mark on Tuesday, was meant to protest the nightmarish conditions that include a lack of plumbing and food that some detainees say has contained maggots and other insects.
Florida is fronting $450 million to run the facility this year — “funded largely” by the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Shelter and Services Program, which is intended to assist with providing shelter and other services in the wake of disasters. But even with that steep price tag, human sewage has to be trucked out and water brought in.
“The backing up of toilets has been a huge issue,” Rivera says, adding that some detainees reported having to “dig the fecal matter out of the toilets with their bare hands” because there was no way to flush it.
The Florida Division of Emergency Management has denied the claims and said the facility is in “good working order,” but no independent inspections have been allowed. It’s not even clear who is in charge of the facility, though a federal judge has given federal and state authorities until August 18 to provide clarity on the jurisdictional “black hole” that has immigration lawyers questioning whether detention at the site is even legal.
That order is part of the civil-rights lawsuit over the facility filed by attorneys who say detainees are being held without charges and blocked from meeting lawyers. More than 250 people held at the center were also reportedly found to have no criminal convictions or charges, contrary to frequent claims by White House officials that it only houses the “worst of the worst.”
While the Trump administration appears to be proudly taking credit for Alligator Alcatraz, the federal government has also washed its hands of the matter in court, with the Department of Homeland Security saying an agreement Florida has with Immigration and Customs Enforcement means that “any decision to detain aliens … at the temporary detention center would be Florida’s decision, not DHS’s.”
Immigration lawyers say they can’t get a clear answer on who’s responsible for people kept in custody there, and detainees’ names don’t show up in ICE’s online locator database. The Florida Division of Emergency Management did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Legal challenges notwithstanding, the facility has been touted by the Trump administration as such a wild success that it calls for more of the same in other states. Noem named Arizona, Nebraska, and Louisiana as candidates where similar facilities could soon be built “right by airport runways” to expedite deportations.
Some state leaders, apparently having taken note of President Donald Trump’s gleeful reaction to Alligator Alcatraz, which he said he’d like to see in “many states,” seem to be vying with Florida for the president’s attention.
Texas senator John Cornyn said a similar detention center is in the works in that state, but says officials have yet to think of a “similarly attractive name.” According to Governor Greg Abbott’s X account, it will be the “LARGEST illegal immigrant detention center” built under the Trump administration.
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