Detainees' Families Decry Alligator Alcatraz 'Humanitarian Crisis'

Guards at Alligator Alcatraz are limiting air conditioning for detainees, forcing them to stand in the elements for punishment, and holding them in custody longer than they're allowed by law, according to detainees' family members and prominent members of local nonprofits.

Several Florida nonprofits, led by the Florida Immigration Coalition, joined medical professionals, public health experts, and families of detainees on Tuesday outside Alligator Alcatraz, enduring the oppressive swamp heat and endless barrage of mosquito bites to call for the detention center closure. Sonia Collazo, who spoke to reporters in Spanish and through a translator, described the sweltering conditions her 63-year-old husband, Rafael, has experienced at the tent detention facility.

"Officers are cursing him, telling him to go back where he came from," Collazo told reporters outside the facility. "His feet have fungus due to the humidity.

"This place is a cage. It's for dogs. They don't deserve to be here, no matter what; they're human."

The conditions outside the center were brutal enough to cause at least one woman to collapse from apparent heat exhaustion.

About 50 people gathered in the 90-plus-degree heat on the side of U.S. Route 41, about an hour and fifteen minute drive from Miami, to urge Miami-Dade County officials to push for the immediate evacuation and closure of the facility, which they describe as a concentration camp. A few cars drove by and offered honks, seemingly supporting the protesters and their picket signs targeting President Donald Trump, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Some passersby made their feelings more clear, like the heckler with an Alabama license plate who yelled "deport, deport, deport!" as he drove past, and another man who belted "Go Trump" from his lifted truck.   Florida nonprofits like Florida Rising, Florida Immigrant Coalition, Dream Defenders, and Dade County Street Response spoke out against the detention facility between family members who told of the horrors their detainee husbands and sons faced.

In a statement to New Times, Florida Immigrant Coalition co-executive director Tess Petit called Alligator "an atrocity in our community."

“The concept is morally repugnant because it mimics concentration camps that have left very negative memories for our country's history," Petit said. "But the conditions under which people are detained raise major medical concerns.

"From the toilets and sink systems they use, which, if not cleaned regularly, can cause serious environmental contamination. We also understand there are temperature control issues in the cages. Sustained exposure to heat will not only help propagate germs and viruses but can also cause severe health issues, up to cardiac arrest. This kind of treatment to human beings is not the American way.”   Nonprofit officials say more than 1,000 detainees are cramped into the 39-acre camp officials swiftly built on the remote Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, an airstrip in the middle of the inhospitable Florida Everglades. As the gathering wore on, the sun beat down on participants in sweltering, humid air, with the heat index reaching 106 degrees by 3 p.m. Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service. ICE has refused to answer New Times’ multiple data requests, making it difficult to pin down the number of detainees.

Detainees are sleeping in overcrowded pods and drinking water from toilet spigots. They’ve reported sewage backups that flood cages with feces, constant light exposure, and denial of medical care, according to nonprofit officials and family members who spoke at Tuesday’s press conference.
"The immigration detention camp in Miami is not just a policy failure, but a blatant assault on human rights in a country that no longer upholds constitutional protections,” Armen Henderson, executive director at Dade County Street Response said. “By imprisoning innocent people in tents surrounded by fences and barbed wire, with no proper sanitation, it is nothing less than a concentration camp. This is a public health crisis unfolding in our own backyard."

According to a Yale School of Public Health study, the area is swarming with over 7 billion mosquitoes, many carrying dangerous viruses, including the Everglades virus, West Nile, Zika, and dengue. During our less than two-hour visit, one member of our team counted six mosquito bites on just her face. We swatted the bloodsuckers away to no avail, departing with countless itchy welts, some more swollen than others.

Florida Immigrant Coalition officials and their nonprofit partners are calling for emergency health screenings for detainees, medical monitoring for workers and contractors, full legal access for detainees, independent inspections of conditions at the facility and, optimally, they say, the immediate evacuation of the facility. “This isn’t a detention facility. It’s a public health experiment gone horribly wrong,” Miami-Dade Regional Director at Florida Rising Sebastian Caicedo said. “People are being exposed to viruses, sewage, and extreme trauma. It’s state-sponsored cruelty, and it has to stop.”