Inside the Hell of Alligator Alcatraz

For our November+December issue, we investigated the brutal rollout of President Donald Trump’s immigration police state: the surge in funding and manpower, the troubling arrests by masked agents, the increasing use of problematic tech, the incessant cruelty of the messaging, and the shadowy profiteers cashing in on the administration’s anti-immigrant crackdown. Read the whole package here.

When the Alligator Alcatraz detention center was announced by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier in June, he explained the site was chosen because of its remote location deep in the Everglades: “People get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.”

Located at a 39-square-mile airport facility and surrounded by Big Cypress National Preserve, the camp was erected in a matter of days. Crews hauled prefab kitchens and restrooms, lighting, and tents onto the site as protesters gathered near the entrance. By early July, the first of thousands of expected detainees had arrived. Tourists stopped to snap pictures in front of the blue “Alligator Alcatraz” sign.

Almost immediately, word began to spread about terrible conditions: Chain-link cages. Flooded tents. Clouds of mosquitoes. Malfunctioning AC. Scarce food. Zero recreational time. The Department of Homeland Security denied many of these claims, but court challenges ensued, and in late August, US District Judge Kathleen Williams ordered the facility shut down within 60 days, saying it could negatively affect the nearby Miccosukee Tribe and the local environment. DHS and Florida appealed, and weeks later an appellate court blocked Williams’ order. The state said in a court filing that the facility would resume accepting detainees.

Meanwhile, red-state governors have been gleefully proposing their own versions of Alligator Alcatraz, with alliterative names such as “Cornhusker Clink” (Nebraska) and “Speedway Slammer” (Indiana). In September, Florida officials opened a second facility, this one at a shuttered men’s prison near Jacksonville. They’re calling it the “Deportation Depot.”

Here are 10 things to know about Trump’s most notorious detention center:

 

Alligator Alcatraz was built for 3,000 people, though its capacity is expected to swell to 5,000.

It costs $245 a day per bed to operate the facility.

Federico Tramonte

• According to an ACLU lawsuit, exposure to sun and mosquitoes is “used as form of punishment and retaliation, with restrained individuals placed outside for hours at a time to be bitten and sun burned.”
• The ACLU lawsuit noted that an intellectually disabled detainee “was asked to sign a form in exchange for a blanket, without the opportunity to speak with counsel. Unbeknownst to him, the form actually provided for his voluntary departure, and he was then deported without finishing his removal proceedings.”
• At 13 feet above sea level and surrounded by swampland, Alligator Alcatraz is vulnerable to hurricanes and tropical storms, which hit the area every two years on average. (Officials claim the site can withstand a Category 2 storm.)
• A spokesperson for Florida’s attorney general told Fox News that “there are monsters awaiting deportation within Alligator Alcatraz far worse than the monsters lurking in the surrounding Everglades.” But an investigation by the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times found hundreds of detainees there who had no criminal convictions or pending charges.

 

One detainee said the abysmal conditions at the site created “a tinderbox.”

Initially, there was no water to flush toilets and little access to showers. Drinking water was permitted only at mealtimes.

During frequent summer rains, the tents leaked.

Federico Tramonte

• Each giant tent contains eight chain-link cages built for 32 detainees, with 16 bunk beds and three toilets.
• An immigration lawyer called the conditions at Alligator Alcatraz “psychological warfare”—detainees are trapped in limbo for weeks in always-lit tents as their immigration cases languish, despite the state’s promises to set up makeshift courts and quickly process those inside.
• The Miccosukee Tribe, with 10 villages within a 3-mile radius, argued in court that the facility threatened 80 percent of their homes, two schools, and the tribal government building. They claimed wastewater contamination would ruin their water supply and noise and light pollution would affect traditional hunting and gathering sites.
• The annual operating cost of Alligator Alcatraz, with some 1,000 employees, is estimated at $450 million. Florida signed one-time contracts for things like IT infrastructure ($21 million), roads ($11 million), fencing ($6.8 million), and armory systems, air operation, shuttles, and emergency services ($5.1 million).