
A look inside Florida's ‘Alligator Alcatraz' detention center
Get Starting Point
A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.
Enter Email
Sign Up
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.
Advertisement
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.
Advertisement
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.'
Advertisement
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.
Advertisement
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.
Advertisement
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.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles

Epoch Times
a few seconds ago
- Epoch Times
Trump Admin Recommends Location Verification for Advanced AI Chips
The Trump administration on July 23 recommended strengthening export controls to verify the location of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips; part of wider efforts to ensure they do not find their way into the hands of foreign adversaries such as China. The White House revealed the recommendations in ' America's AI Action Plan,' which centers on three main pillars: innovation, infrastructure, and international diplomacy and security.


Indianapolis Star
a few seconds ago
- Indianapolis Star
Trump administration chooses Indy as a USDA hub in sweeping agency reorganization. Here's why
Indianapolis will soon serve as one of five U.S. Department of Agriculture hubs as the federal agency reduces and reorganizes its workforce under President Donald Trump's administration, the USDA announced July 24. 'American agriculture feeds, clothes, and fuels this nation and the world, and it is long past time the Department better serve the great and patriotic farmers, ranchers, and producers we are mandated to support," Agriculture Secretary Brooke L. Rollins said in a news release. "President Trump was elected to make real change in Washington, and we are doing just that by moving our key services outside the beltway and into great American cities across the country." Indiana's capital city joins Kansas City, Missouri; Raleigh, North Carolina; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Salt Lake City, Utah, as hub locations. The rationale for selecting these five centered on the cost of living compared to Washington, D.C. and the cities' pre-existing concentration of USDA employees, according to the release. In Indianapolis, for example, the federal government only has to pay employees 18% above a position's base salary due to the lower cost of living, nearly half of Washington D.C.'s rate of almost 34%. The move comes as a review of the USDA revealed a "bloated, expensive, and unsustainable organization," with the release citing increases in workforce and salaries over the past four years. The relocation efforts will happen in phases with a goal of ensuring no more than 2,000 employees remain in the D.C. region, an area that currently employs 4,600 employees. Sen. Todd Young of Indiana celebrated the announcement in a post on X this morning. Not every employee may agree to move, however. During President Donald Trump's first term when two USDA research offices moved to Kansas City, the majority of employees refused to relocate while overall morale at the agency sank, Politico reported in 2019. Those changes were reversed under the Biden administration. This latest relocation comes after more than 15,000 employees left the department through a deferred resignation program as part of efforts to reduce federal bureaucracy. The National Family Farm Coalition, an advocacy organization for small farms, released a statement in April that the staff reductions would cause dysfunction and disrupt the supply chain. Most recently, Rollins told Congress in May that the agency was looking to fill critical positions.


San Francisco Chronicle
29 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
The Latest: Justice Department to meet with Epstein's former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell
Justice Department officials are set to meet on Thursday with Ghislaine Maxwell, the imprisoned girlfriend of financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to a person familiar with the matter. The meeting in Florida, which Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said on Tuesday he was working to arrange, is part of an ongoing Justice Department effort to cast itself as transparent following fierce backlash from parts of President Donald Trump's base over an earlier refusal to release additional records in the Epstein investigation. A replica Oval Office on display near the White House just got a Trump makeover The replica Oval Office now looks exactly like President Trump's. But it's not the blingy version he's currently using. Visitors starting Thursday will experience the mock Oval Office as it was in the Republican president's first term, until it's redecorated again next year to incorporate the golden touches and other flourishes Trump brought to the workspace after he returned to power in January. 'Just like the White House itself, our Oval Office is a living space, so it changes and evolves as the actual Oval Office changes,' Stewart McLaurin, president of the White House Historical Association, said Wednesday as he led The Associated Press on a tour of the space as it was being revamped. The mock-up is inside 'The People's House: A White House Experience,' an educational center the association opened last year one block west of the Executive Mansion. House subcommittee voted Wednesday to subpoena Justice Department for Epstein files A House subcommittee voted to subpoena the Department of Justice for files in the Epstein case after Democrats successfully goaded GOP lawmakers to defy Trump and Republican leadership to support the action. The vote showed the intensifying push for disclosures in the Epstein investigation even as House Speaker Mike Johnson — caught between demands from Trump and clamoring from his own members for the House to act — was sending lawmakers home a day early for its August recess. Meanwhile, Democrats on a subcommittee of the powerful House Oversight Committee made a motion for the subpoena Wednesday afternoon. Three Republicans on the panel voted with Democrats for the subpoena, sending it through on an 8-2 vote tally. Democrats cheered the action as proof that their push for disclosures in the Epstein investigation was growing stronger. The committee agreed to redact information on victims, yet Democrats successfully blocked a push by Republicans to only subpoena information that was deemed to be 'credible' — language that Trump has also used when discussing what he would support releasing. Bondi facing Democratic calls to testify following report she told Trump he was in Epstein files Bondi is facing Democratic calls to testify before Congress after the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that she told Trump his name was among many high-profile figures mentioned in the files, which the Justice Department this month said it would not be releasing despite a clamor from online sleuths, conspiracy theorists and members of Trump's base. Trump's personal ties to Epstein are well-established and his name is already known to have been included in records related to the wealthy financier. Sen. Adam Schiff responded to the report by calling on Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Justice Department declined to comment on the report but issued a joint statement from Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche saying that investigators had reviewed the records and 'nothing in the files warranted further investigation or prosecution.' The mere inclusion of a person's name in Epstein's files does not imply wrongdoing and he was known to have been associated with multiple prominent figures, including Trump. Senate Democratic Leader calls for closed-door briefing on the Epstein files Democrats aren't letting up on their calls for disclosure from the Trump administration on the sex trafficking investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer started the morning off with a speech calling for a closed-door briefing for senators from the Trump administration on the Epstein files. While the administration is unlikely to comply with the New York Democrat's demand, Democrats are pouncing on the issue and have found some success this week by daring Republicans to join them in votes to demand disclosure of the files. 'A good number of people voted for Trump because he promised to be their voice against the so-called deep state. But now they've seen he's very much part of that deep state. He's right in the middle of it,' Schumer said. Lara Trump says she's sitting out the North Carolina Senate race The president's daughter-in-law formally made her decision public Thursday in a post on X, as news of RNC Chair Michael Whatley's expected entrance into the race emerged. Lara Trump said she was 'deeply grateful' for encouragement to seek the open seat in her home state and appeared not to close the door to a possible future run, saying she looked 'forward to the future, wherever that leads.' Lara Trump served alongside Whatley as RNC co-chair during last year's elections and had been seen as having the right of first refusal to seek the seat, which Democrats see as a top pickup opportunity in next year's midterms. Biden's former chief of staff appears on Capitol Hill for House Republican age inquiry Ron Klain, who served as former President Joe Biden's first chief of staff, entered the House Oversight Committee's hearing room just before 10 a.m. for testimony as part of House Republicans' probe into Biden's age and alleged cognitive decline. Klain took no questions as he entered the room. UnitedHealth stocks dip The stock price dropped 2%, or $6.13, to $286.50 on Thursday morning. Company shares have mostly shed value since December, when UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot in midtown Manhattan on his way to the company's annual investor meeting. What to know about UnitedHealth Group The company's business covers more than 8 million people as the nation's largest provider of Medicare Advantage plans. The business has been under pressure in recent quarters due to rising care use and rate cuts. UnitedHealth also runs one of the nation's largest health insurance and pharmacy benefits management businesses. It also operates a growing Optum business that provides care and technology support. UnitedHealth says it is under a federal investigation and cooperating Shares of UnitedHealth Group dove early Thursday after the health care giant said it was under a Department of Justice investigation. The company said it has started complying with both criminal and civil requests from federal investigators and it was working cooperatively with them. '(UnitedHealth) has a long record of responsible conduct and effective compliance,' the company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal said federal officials had launched a civil fraud investigation into how the company records diagnoses that lead to extra payments for its Medicare Advantage, or MA, plans. Those are privately run versions of the government's Medicare coverage program mostly for people ages 65 and over. RNC Chair Michael Whatley plans to run for an open Senate seat in North Carolina That's according to two people familiar with his thinking, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't permitted to speak on the record. President Trump, according to one of the people, asked him to make the run after Trump's daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, mulled the seat. Politico first reported news of Whatley's plans. Democrats see North Carolina as their top pickup opportunity next year after Sen. Thom Tillis announced his surprise retirement after clashing with Trump. While Lara Trump had been seen as having the right of first refusal, Whatley is considered by national Republicans to be a strong contender for the seat, thanks, in part, to the large fundraising network he's cultivated as RNC chair and his perceived loyalty to the president. He's a well-known name in the state, having served as GOP chair there, and has no voting record that could be used against him by Democrats. — Jill Colvin Trump's trip to Scotland highlights his complex relationship with his mother's homeland President Trump's trip to Scotland this week will be a homecoming of sorts, but he's likely to get a mixed reception. Trump has had a long and at times rocky relationship with the country where his mother grew up in a humble house on a windswept isle. He'll be met by both political leaders and protesters during the visit, which begins Friday and takes in his two Scottish golf resorts. It comes two months before King Charles III is due to welcome him on a formal state visit to the U.K. 'I'm not proud that he (has) Scottish heritage,' said Patricia Sloan, who says she stopped visiting the Turnberry resort on Scotland's west coast after Trump bought it in 2014. 'All countries have good and bad that come out of them, and if he's going to kind of wave the flag of having Scottish heritage, that's the bad part, I think.' Trump's schedule, according to the White House 3 p.m. ET — Trump will sign executive orders 4 p.m. — Trump will visit the Federal Reserve Man accused of attempting to assassinate Trump returns to court and hopes to represent himself The man charged with attempting to assassinate Trump last year at his Florida golf course will return to court Thursday to once again explain why he wants to fire his court-appointed lawyers and represent himself. Ryan Routh previously made the request earlier this month during a hearing in Fort Pierce before U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon. She didn't rule during the hearing but said she would issue a written order later. But now Routh, 59, is set to be back in front of Cannon, a day after his court-appointed federal public defenders asked to be taken off the case. Routh is scheduled to stand trial in September, a year after prosecutors say a U.S. Secret Service agent thwarted his attempt to shoot Trump as he played golf. Routh has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempting to assassinate a major presidential candidate, assaulting a federal officer and several firearm violations.