
DACA recipient detained at Alligator Alcatraz, attorney says. ‘We don't know why'
Attorney Phillip Arroyo said his client, whom he isn't identifying out of fear of retaliation, arrived in the United States from Mexico when he was a minor. The man, now in his early 30s, has legal status through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, according to the attorney.
Arroyo said his client was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after a 'misunderstanding' during a traffic stop. He was sent to Alligator Alcatraz on Friday and remains at the facility, Arroyo said.
Considering his client's legal status, Arroyo told the Herald he's confident he will be able to get an immigration bond. But if that fails, the attorney said he is prepared to file a federal civil rights lawsuit seeking his client's release.
'The narrative is that only violent criminals are being sent to Alligator Alcatraz,' Arroyo said. 'We don't know why [he was sent there] because he has legal status.'
The man, Arroyo said, was arrested on a charge of driving without a valid driver's license. However, he did have a valid driver's license at the time of the traffic stop, Arroyo said, and prosecutors are reducing the misdemeanor to a civil citation.
Attorney Josephine Arroyo, who is also representing the man, told the Orlando Sentinel that he was issued a citation last year that was mailed to an address where he no longer lived. That led to his arrest when he was pulled over in Orange County.
The man's family paid a bond to release him from jail, but he was then detained by ICE, Arroyo told the Herald. He was held at the Orange County jail when his family and attorney lost contact with him.
His loved ones didn't hear from him for days, Arroyo said, until he called his brother from the Everglades, where the state of Florida has been detaining migrants caught up in President Donald Trump's mass-deportation campaign. Only one of three phones in his cage pod works, according to Arroyo, who said he was able to speak with his client on Tuesday for the first time.
During their conversation, Arroyo said his client described poor conditions at the facility: The food was rotten. The toilets were flooded with excrement. The air conditioning broke, and detainees had to swat away mosquitoes in the sweltering heat. He said he wasn't allowed to shower for four days.
Similar complaints have been reported by other detainees. But Stephanie Hartman, a spokesperson for the state Division of Emergency Management, told the Herald Wednesday evening that the allegations about the conditions of the facility were 'completely false' and that Alligator Alcatraz 'meets all required standards and is in good working order.'
The state has invited state and federal lawmakers to tour the facility on Saturday.
Arroyo said he tried to set up an attorney visit but was told by Alligator Alcatraz officials that there was 'no information' about a visitation policy.
'Apart from the horrors in that facility, the lack of access to an attorney is troubling to me,' he said. 'It's a Sixth Amendment violation.'
Hartman said detainees do have access to phone and video calls with their attorneys, and has told the Herald that visitations could be arranged upon request. She didn't confirm whether lawyer calls are being recorded or monitored, and did not respond to questions about how visitations can be arranged.
Miami Herald staff writer Ana Ceballos contributed to this report
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Immigration attorneys and environmental activists — even the Mexican government and the Archdiocese of Miami — have all asked who's in charge at Alligator Alcatraz. They say they can't get a straight answer. 'We've gotten a lot of runaround,' Archbishop Thomas Wenski told the Miami Herald after trying unsuccessfully to provide religious services for detainees. 'We don't know who's really accountable for that facility, whether it's the state of Florida or the federal government.' Now nearly a month since Florida opened the country's newest, most novel immigration detention center, the question of whether the state or federal government has jurisdiction over the facility — and especially its detainees — continues to puzzle legal experts, tangle up lawsuits and complicate due process for the people held there. 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The Mexican government is now working to transfer them out of the detention center and to an ICE facility, he said. 'This is a prison that is not under the custody of ICE and that has no immigration judge on site,' Sabines said. 'We are in limbo.' Also complicating their cases, according to Sabines: the brothers were only assigned an Alien Registration Number — the identifier used by ICE to keep track of detainees — for the first time on Wednesday. Sabines' comments echoed frustrations aired more than a week ago by immigration attorneys who said they had been unable to find a court assigned to handle cases for Alligator Alcatraz detainees. The state said Friday that on-site legal services would be available for detainees starting Monday. MIXED MESSAGES Federal and state officials have delivered mixed messages about who's in charge of what. 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Debbie Wasserman Schultz said Florida Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie told her during a tour of the site that his agency does not have the direct 287(g) authority to run the facility. She and other Democratic lawmakers said officials clarified to them many times that ICE 'is calling the shots' while they toured Alligator Alcatraz on July 12. 'They [FDEM] are not designated to manage this facility on behalf of the federal government,' said Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat. 'We were not able to get clarity on whose 287(g) authority this facility is being run.' Jennifer Whitlock, senior policy counsel at the National Immigration Law Center, an advocacy organization for low-income immigrants, said she's baffled by how Alligator Alcatraz came to be, if it's not being run by ICE. Whitlock said the state and federal governments' statements that Alligator Alcatraz is authorized through the state's various 287(g) agreements sound inaccurate. A 287(g) agreement permits local and state officers to hold detainees in 'custody,' but it does not allow for detention without ICE oversight, Whitlock said. Operating a state detention center, rather than holding detainees in state prisons and county jails, is stretching the 287(g) agreement beyond the bounds of what Congress intended, Whitlock said. In the federal statute allowing 287(g) agreements, it says that any officer, employee, or political subdivision of the state is acting under the 'color of Federal authority.' Also, anyone acting on behalf of a 287(g) agreement is supposed to be under the supervision of the U.S. Attorney General — which would be Pam Bondi. 'I don't know if there is actually a plan in place for any sort of oversight,' Whitlock said. The DeSantis and Trump administrations have been clear that Alligator Alcatraz is not a federal detention center, but have been less forthcoming about what it is under state and federal law. On the state side, officials have said that the facility is not a state correctional institution because it's managed by the Division of Emergency Management, not the Department of Corrections. If that is the case, it's not legally subject to the state's standards for jails and prisons, Whitlock said. A spokeswoman for Florida's Division of Emergency Management did not answer questions about which laws regulate the operations and oversight of Alligator Alcatraz. The majority of federal immigration detention centers are run through government service contracts, said Nanya Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council. Whether through private companies or local governments, there is typically an agreement in place for the federal government to fund the facility while another entity sets it up, staffs it and runs day to day operations. While DeSantis has mentioned the possibility of getting refunded by the Trump administration for the facility's cost — about $450 million a year — DHS officials have said the federal government is not currently funding any aspect of Alligator Alcatraz. Because Florida hasn't been paid, a formal federal contract likely doesn't exist for Alligator Alcatraz, Gupta said. 'This is the Trump administration and the state of Florida being shifty about what authority they're invoking, when it suits them,' Gupta said. 'My guess is that the only way we'll be able to find that clarity, if at all, is through continued litigation in the federal courts.' Miami Herald staff writers Ana Claudia Chacin and Lauren Costantino, and Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau reporter Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.