MIAMI — (AP) — At the brand new Everglades immigration detention center that officials have dubbed " Alligator Alcatraz," 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.
Inside the compound's large white tents, rows of bunkbeds are surrounded by chain-link cages. Detainees are said to go days without showering or getting prescription medicine, and they are only able to speak by phone to lawyers and loved ones. At times the air conditioners abruptly shut off in the sweltering heat.
Days after President Donald Trump toured it, attorneys, advocates, detainees and their relatives are speaking out about the makeshift facility, which Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration raced to build on an isolated airstrip surrounded by swampland. Detainees began arriving July 2.
“These are human beings who have inherent rights, and they have a right to dignity,” immigration attorney Josephine Arroyo said. "And they’re violating a lot of their rights by putting them there.”
Officials have disputed such descriptions of the conditions at the detention center, with spokesperson Stephanie Hartman of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which built the center, saying: “The reporting on the conditions in the facility is completely false. The facility meets all required standards and is in good working order.”
But authorities have provided few details and have denied media access. A group of Democratic lawmakers sued the DeSantis administration to be allowed in, and officials are holding a site visit by state legislators and members of Congress on Saturday.
Insider accounts in interviews with The Associated Press paint a picture of the place as unsanitary and lacking in adequate medical care, pushing some into a state of extreme distress.
“The conditions in which we are living are inhuman,” a Venezuelan detainee said by phone from the facility. “My main concern is the psychological pressure they are putting on people to sign their self-deportation.”
The man, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, characterized the cells as “zoo cages” with eight beds each, teeming with mosquitoes, crickets and frogs. He said they are locked up 24 hours a day with no windows and no way to know the time. Detainees' wrists and ankles are cuffed every time they go to see an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, accompanied by two guards who hold their arms and a third who follows behind, he said.
Such conditions make other immigration detention centers where advocates and staff have warned of unsanitary confinement, medical neglect and a lack of food and water seem "advanced," according to immigration attorney Atara Eig.
Trump and his allies have touted the Florida facility's harshness and remoteness as fit for the “worst of the worst” and as a national model for how to get immigrants to “self-deport.”
But among those held there are people with no criminal records and at least one teenage boy, attorneys say.
The Venezuelan man, a client of the Immigration Clinic of the University of Miami School of Law, said he and other detainees in his tent protested the conditions Thursday and decided not to go to the dining room.
“They left us without food all night. They took a Cuban protester to a punishment cell,” said the man, who has lived in the U.S. since 2021 and arrived at the facility July 7, according to clinic director Rebecca Sharpless.
Hartman, the DEM spokesperson, disputed detainees' accounts.
“These are all complete fabrications. No such incidents have occurred. Every detainee has access to medicine and medical care as needed and detainees always get three meals, unlimited drinking water, showers, and other necessities,” she said.
But immigration attorney Katie Blankenship also spoke of a lack of medical care, relaying an account from a 35-year-old Cuban client who told his wife that detainees go days without a shower.
The woman, a 28-year-old green card holder and the mother of the couple’s 2-year-old daughter, a U.S. citizen, also spoke to AP on condition of anonymity, fearing possible retaliation.
“They have no way to bathe, no way to wash their mouths, the toilet overflows and the floor is flooded with pee and poop,” the woman said. “They eat once a day and have two minutes to eat. The meals have worms,” she added.
Lawyers say the detainees' due process rights are among numerous constitutional protections being denied.
Blankenship said she was turned away after traveling to the remote facility and waiting for hours to speak with clients, including a 15-year-old Mexican boy with no criminal charges. A security guard told her to wait for a phone call in 48 hours that would notify her when she could return.
“I said, well, what’s the phone number that I can follow up with that? There is none,” Blankenship said. “You have due process obligations, and this is a violation of it.”
Arroyo's client, a 36-year-old Mexican man who came to the U.S. as a child, has been at the center since July 5 after being picked up for driving with a suspended license in Florida's Orange County. He is a beneficiary of the Obama-era program shielding people who arrived as children from deportation.
Blankenship's Cuban client paid a bond and was told he would be freed in Miami, only to be detained and sent to the Everglades.
Eig has been seeking the release of a client in his 50s with no criminal record and a stay of removal, meaning the government cannot legally deport him while he appeals. But she been unable to get a bond hearing.
She has heard that an immigration court at the Krome Detention Center in Miami “may be hearing cases” from the Everglades facility, but as of Friday, they were still waiting.
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Payne, who reported from Tallahassee, is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
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