A look inside Florida's ‘Alligator Alcatraz' detention center
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Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican, has positioned his state as particularly aggressive on immigration enforcement, deputizing state and local law enforcement to act as a 'force multiplier' for federal authorities.
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But opening the detention center in the Everglades was a move with little precedent that relied on emergency state powers. Until recently, the federal government has been responsible for housing immigration detainees, and it has largely detained people who recently entered the country illegally, or who have criminal convictions or outstanding deportation orders. But immigration enforcement has changed substantially under Trump, sweeping up people who were not the focus before.
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The Everglades facility serves as part of the local-federal immigration cooperation process known as 287(g). Under that system, local officials can arrest and detain migrants on behalf of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It is unclear, however, if and when detainees at the Everglades center would be transferred to ICE custody before being deported.
Most detainees at the center do not have criminal convictions, according to a government official with knowledge of the data who requested anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss it. At least some were transfers from local jails who had been taken into custody after getting pulled over for traffic violations; others had been transferred there from ICE custody.
Another government official who requested anonymity for the same reason said that in all, 60 percent of the center's detainees either have criminal convictions or criminal charges pending against them.
DeSantis is already considering opening another such facility in North Florida. The courts, however, have repeatedly held that immigration enforcement is a federal duty. Last week, the Supreme Court refused to revive an aggressive Florida immigration law blocked by lower courts that would have made it a crime for migrants without legal status to enter the state.
'States are not permitted to create their own immigration detention system,' said Lucas Guttentag, a former Justice Department official in the Biden administration. 'Everyone who values freedom and accountability should be deeply worried.'
Asked about the Everglades center, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, said, 'Under President Trump's leadership, we are working at turbo speed on cost-effective and innovative ways to deliver on the American people's mandate for mass deportations of criminal illegal aliens.'
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Although Trump made a splashy visit to the Everglades detention center two weeks ago, the federal government has distanced itself from the facility, saying it is Florida's responsibility. After environmental groups sued to halt construction of the center, Thomas P. Giles, a top ICE official, wrote in a statement responding to the suit that the agency's role 'has been limited to touring the facility to ensure compliance with ICE detention standards, and meeting with officials from the state of Florida to discuss operational matters.'
'The ultimate decision of who to detain,' he wrote, 'belongs to Florida.'
Detainees at the center do not show up in ICE's public database, making it difficult for relatives or lawyers to find them or know whether they have been deported. With 1,000 beds divided among fenced units that each house 32 men, it held about 900 detainees as of Saturday, according to members of Congress and state lawmakers. The vast majority were Hispanic.
Mass detentions have led to complaints of overcrowding and unsanitary and inhumane conditions at ICE detention centers across the country, though ICE has denied any problems. But some conditions at the Everglades detention center are specifically because of its rushed construction and remote location. It was built on an airfield with so little infrastructure that trash and sewage needed to be hauled away by large trucks.
State officials, who told lawmakers that they plan to expand the facility's capacity to 4,000 by next month, have dismissed detainees' descriptions of poor conditions as 'completely false.'
'The facility meets all required standards and is in good working order,' Stephanie Hartman, deputy director of communications for the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said in a statement.
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Relatives and lawyers of detainees say they have not been allowed to visit. So far, detainees have been allowed to make unlimited calls at no cost, but they may be monitored or recorded. Some detainees and their relatives declined to be named for fear of retaliation.
Members of Congress and state lawmakers visited the facility by invitation Saturday, after Democratic state lawmakers had been denied entry earlier this month when they showed up unannounced. State Democrats have sued, arguing that they are entitled to such oversight.
After the tour, state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, a Republican, described a bunk in an empty unit at the facility as 'better than my bed at home.'
Several Democratic lawmakers criticized the tour as 'sanitized' and said the conditions inside were worse than those in ICE detention centers. 'Every Floridian should be ashamed that our taxpayer money is being used to put people in these cages,' said Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost, D-Orlando.
The politicians' presence drew a modest crowd off US Highway 41, a two-lane road that crosses the Everglades from east to west. Among them was Benita Mendoza, whose husband, Jordan Márquez, who came to the United States from Cuba 19 years ago, was among the center's first detainees.
'He's always asking me, 'What time is it? What day are we in?'' she said, adding that Márquez, 43, told her he was not regularly getting his blood pressure medication.
Republicans have claimed that the center requires less security than others because of its inhospitable surroundings, inhabited by alligators and invasive pythons. Neither animal tends to attack people, and Native Americans, including the Miccosukee tribe, have long made their homes in the Everglades.
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A busload of detainees, including Herrera, arrived last Wednesday but were not immediately processed. They were kept on the bus overnight, shackled at their hands and feet, with no food or drink, Herrera and another detainee said. Herrera had been told he was going to the Krome detention center run by ICE, closer to Miami, but arrived at the Everglades center instead.
The men were placed in one of eight fenced units inside a huge tent; those with serious criminal records were given red wristbands. Herrera, 55, was released from prison two years ago after serving time for carjacking. He has lived in the United States since he was 3 and has no record of citizenship in Argentina, where his family was from, making it difficult to deport him.
On Tuesday, guards told Herrera that he was being transferred, though they did not tell him where he was going.
The Everglades center was different from the federal prisons and ICE detention centers he had spent time in, he said: It had no posted regulations or contacts for an inspector general; no law library or religious materials, including Bibles; no outdoor recreation time, at least not for his unit; no commissary or vending machines. In the background during one phone conversation with Herrera, some men inside the unit could be heard yelling in Spanish, 'Libertad! Libertad!'
Alexander Boni, 32, a detainee from Cuba, said he had asked for a face mask after other detainees became sick but did not get one.
'We're desperate in here,' he said.
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