Florida elected officials were finally let into “Alligator Alcatraz” on Saturday after President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement had, for several days, locked representatives out. The group of Democrats and Republicans weren’t allowed to take any photos or videos to document the conditions inside, which Representative Maxwell Alejandro Frost described as “horrible.”
“These are people being caged,” Frost, a Democrat and the first Gen Z congressional representative, explained in a video he posted to social media shortly after leaving. “It was very hot and warm within the actual tent where the cages are held.” The representative said that people were yelling out to them, “help me! Help me! I heard someone in the back yell, ‘I’m a US citizen.’”
Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat from South Florida who also toured the facility, said the detainees were subject to “really disturbing, vile conditions” and called for Alligator Alcatraz to be shut down. “This place is a stunt,” Schultz added, “and they’re abusing human beings here.”
After being denied entry to the facility since its opening over a week ago, elected officials were finally able to go on a supervised tour of the hastily constructed, 3,000-bed center that sits on an isolated airstrip surrounded by swampland. According to Politico, at least five members of Congress and roughly 20 state legislators were on the tour—enough people that they were split into multiple groups.
Republican representatives in the cohort painted a much different picture of the inside of Alligator Alcatraz.
“The rhetoric coming out of the Democrats does not match the reality,” State Senator Blaise Ingoglia said, adding that he thought the facility was safe and well-run. Another Republican state senator, Jay Collins, said that he observed “no squalor.” At the facility, according to Florida democrats, cage-style units of 32 men share three combination toilet-sink devices. “Would I want that toilet-and-sink combination at my bathroom at the house?” Collins said in a phone interview with the Associated Press. “Probably not, but this is a transitional holding facility.”
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The Trump administration has also maintained that they are not creating inhumane conditions, while also attempting to distance itself from the facility after environmental organizations filed a lawsuit challenging the detention center.
According to reporting from AP based on insider accounts, including from those who have been detained at the facility, “worms turn up in the food,” the toilets “don’t flush,” the floors are flooded with “fecal waste,” and “mosquitoes and other insects are everywhere.”
A Venezuelan detainee who was not identified in the article for fear of reprisals, told that they are locked up 24 hours a day with no windows and no way to know the time, said the cells as “zoo cages,” and described a day when he and other detainees, after protesting the conditions and not to going to the dining room, were left without food all night.
Stephanie Hartman, spokesperson of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which built the center, has also held that, “the reporting on the conditions in the facility is completely false. The facility meets all required standards and is in good working order.” Hartman disputed the AP’s reporting of detainees’ experiences, saying, “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.”
This isn’t the first time the Trump administration and stateside immigration officials have tried to restrict access to immigration facilities. In Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Ras Baraka was denied entry into a federal immigration detention facility, arrested outside the fence, and charged with trespassing. Representative LaMonica McIver of New Jersey, who was also at the detention center seeking information from immigration officials, was charged with assault.
Also on Saturday, members of Congress were denied access to the Adelanto Detention Center in California after immigration officials there implemented a new policy that requires one week of notice before opening their doors to representatives.
Prior to the Florida tour, on Thursday, a group of five Democratic lawmakers in Florida had sued the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, and the FDEM, “alleging they were unlawfully blocked from conducting an unannounced inspection of” Alligator Alcatraz, per CBS News. The suit, filed with the Florida Supreme Court, argues that leaders exceeded their legal authority when they denied legislators entry on July 3. Under Florida law, lawmakers are entitled to inspect detention facilities without prior notice, according to CBS.
“The law is unambiguous: We have the right to inspect detention facilities at any time, without prior notice,” the group of petitioners wrote in a statement. “Oversight cannot be choreographed,” they said, adding that the Saturday tour “is not about transparency; it’s about containment.” The group let in this weekend were instructed not to bring phones or cameras inside, and journalists were not permitted to join.
Federal Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was across the state in Tampa when the representatives toured the facility, said that “any issues” at the Everglades detention center have been addressed.” What’s more, she’s looking to build other facilities like Alligator Alcatraz. According to Noem, she has talked with five unnamed Republican governors about modeling other facilities on it.
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