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When Donald Trump touted his new Florida immigrant detention facility, which he dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” he promised that it would hold “some of the most vicious people on the planet.” Records obtained by The Miami Herald show the majority of detainees have no criminal convictions.
“It’s known as Alligator Alcatraz, which is very appropriate because I looked outside and that’s not a place I want to go hiking,” Trump said during a livestreamed event on July 1. “But very soon, this facility will house some of the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet.”
Only one-third of the approximately 900 immigrants detained at the Florida facility have been convicted of a crime, the Herald reported. Those charges range from little as a traffic violation or illegal re-entry all the way to murder. Another 250 detainees only have immigration violations on their records but no criminal convictions or pending charges.
A Syracuse University analysis of government data found that almost half of the people in ICE custody as of late last month did not have a criminal conviction or charge. Many are in the U.S. to seek asylum.
Conditions at the detention center are inhumane, said Democratic lawmakers who visited the site on Saturday. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz called the facility, where immigrants are locked in cells made of chain link fencing with more than 30 other detainees, an “internment camp.” Those cells are underneath tents, not permanent structures.
“They are essentially packed into cages, wall-to-wall humans, 32 detainees per cage,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said.
She also criticized the quality and amount of food given to immigrants there, noting that while guards received roast chicken and sausage, detainees were given a “gray turkey and cheese sandwich, an apple and chips.”
“I don’t see how that could possibly sustain them nutritionally or not make them hungry,” Wasserman Schultz said.
Homeland Security Sec. Kristi Noem defended the conditions in the Everglades detention center in an interview on Sunday.
“Our detention centers at the federal level are held to a higher standard than most local or state centers and even federal prisons. The standards are extremely high,” she said on NBC’s Meet the Press.
Noem even balked at calling the fenced-in areas where detainees are held “cells.”
“I’ve been there and I’ve seen these rooms that they are in. I wouldn’t call them ‘jail cells,’” Noem said. “I would call them a facility where they are held and that are secure facilities.”
A Guatemalan woman whose husband is detained at the facility said that there are not enough facilities to maintain sanitary conditions. He reported there were not enough facilities to wash hands, and he was unable to take a shower for six days. He was eventually woken at 3 a.m. to take a shower because the lines were so long.
“The detainees are being held in tents, and it is very hot there. They’re in bad conditions. … There’s not enough food. Sick people are not getting medication. Every time I ask about his situation, he tells me it’s bad,” she told CNN last week.
In addition to poor conditions, the the detention center’s location is highly vulnerable to flooding and hurricanes. The facility may not meet modern hurricane codes. It has already flooded once, the day after its grand opening.
“They are in a facility that is very inaccessible to lawyers, to family members, to oversight,” Renata Bozzetto, deputy director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, told The Washington Post. “So the location being so remote and isolated is a problem. Being in an environmentally fragile ecosystem is a problem. Being constructed with temporary materials will be catastrophic in case of a hurricane.”
Rep. Maxwell Frost, another Democrat who toured the facility, said he wanted to investigate reports of backed up toilets and “feces being spread everywhere,” but officials refused to allow them to see units where migrants were being detained. Instead, they were shown empty barracks.
“It is something everyone, whether you’re Democrat, Republican or anything, should be deeply ashamed of,” Frost said. “Immigrants don’t poison the blood of this nation. They are the blood of this nation.”
