Lawyers and Families Report Squalid Conditions and Lack of Legal Access at Alligator Alcatraz
Prisoners at Florida’s newly opened immigrant detention center in the Everglades are suffering in squalid conditions and are cut off from legal access, according to attorneys, detainees, family members, and lawmakers.Â
While Florida state officials insist that the hastily constructed tent prison, which they’ve dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” is orderly and clean, multiple reports and first-hand accounts say the opposite.
Regina de Moraes, a Miami immigration attorney, says one of her clients was transferred from the tent camp to the Krome Detention Center, another nearby Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility, on Monday for a bond hearing.Â
Krome has also been plagued by reports of overcrowding and poor conditions, but de Moraes’ client told her “Alligator Alcatraz” is even worse.
“They are in cages like animals at the zoo,” de Moraes says. “There’s barely food to eat. The electricity goes off all the time, so the air conditioning is coming and going. Also that becomes an issue with the toilets, because the toilets don’t function when there’s no electricity.”
The description echoes other reports from detainees, their families, and lawyers and lawmakers. The Associated Press reported last Friday that “people held there say worms turn up in the food. Toilets don’t flush, flooding floors with fecal waste, and mosquitoes and other insects are everywhere.”
“The conditions in which we are living are inhuman,” a Venezuelan detainee told the A.P. by phone from the facility. “My main concern is the psychological pressure they are putting on people to sign their self-deportation.”
Family members who spoke to the Miami Herald similarly described a lack of showers, toilets without water, and oppressive heat and bugs.
A Guatemalan woman told CNN that h
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