Giant bugs, heat and a hospital visit: Inside Alligator Alcatraz's first days

[LetMyPeopleVote]

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Giant bugs, heat and a hospitalization: Inside Alligator Alcatraz’s first days

The calls from Alligator Alcatraz’s first detainees brought distressing news: Toilets that didn’t flush. Temperatures that went from freezing to sweltering. A hospitalization. Giant bugs. And little or no access to showers or toothbrushes, much less confidential calls with attorneys. The stories, relayed to the Miami Herald by the wives of detainees housed in Florida’s makeshift detention center for migrants in the Everglades, offer the first snapshots of the conditions inside the newly opened facility, which began accepting detainees on July 2. They reveal detainees who are frightened not just about being deported, but also about how they are being treated by the government, which is saying little about what is taking place inside.

REMINDER: Being an undocumented immigrant doesn't make you a criminal, it's a civil offense. You should not be treated like a criminal.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article310130645.html

The calls from Alligator Alcatraz’s first detainees brought distressing news: Toilets that didn’t flush. Temperatures that went from freezing to sweltering. A hospital visit. Giant bugs. And little or no access to showers or toothbrushes, much less confidential calls with attorneys.

The stories, relayed to the Miami Herald by the wives of detainees housed in Florida’s makeshift detention center for migrants in the Everglades, offer the first snapshots of the conditions inside the newly opened facility, which began accepting detainees on July 2. They reveal detainees who are frightened not just about being deported, but also about how they are being treated by the government, which is saying little about what is taking place inside.

“Why would we treat a human like that?” a woman whose Venezuelan husband is housed in Alligator Alcatraz told the Miami Herald. “They come here for a better life. I don’t understand. We are supposed to be the greatest nation under God, but we forget that we’re under God.”

The men, whose identities the Herald is withholding due to their families’ fears that the government will punish them for speaking out, described harsh conditions at the detention center, pitched as a new model for holding migrants ensnared in President Donald Trump’s war on illegal immigration. The state, which intends to eventually house 3,000 or more people at the site, has said the detainees’ descriptions provided to the Herald are “untrue.”

[cbabe]

1. Not true? Then let legislators in to see. Or what are they hiding?

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article309927070.html

What are they hiding?’ Florida lawmakers shut out of Alligator Alcatraz

By Antonio Maria Delgado Updated July 4, 2025 10:49 AM

In a surprising and possibly unlawful act, five state legislators were denied entry Thursday into a taxpayer-funded migrant detention center deep in the Everglades, raising questions about what will happen behind the razor-wire fences that are being erected surrounding the controversial facility the state has named Alligator Alcatraz.

Armed only with state law and a growing list of humanitarian concerns, state Senators Shevrin Jones and Carlos Guillermo Smith, along with Representatives Anna V. Eskamani, Angie Nixon and Michele Rayner, arrived at the gates of the facility to conduct what they saw as a legally authorized inspection. What they encountered instead was silence, locked doors and a bureaucratic wall.

… more …

[Norrrm]

2. What do they have to hide?

[BOSSHOG]

5. Thank You My Friend

Those who were sent to Alcatraz had due process. Those in Florida have not.

The trump/desantis/Bondi/homan inhumane hellhole is Alligator Auschwitz. There was no due process at Auschwitz and republicans have no use for due process unless it applies to them.

[Emile]

3. I fear a hurricane will flatten this hell hole

and everyone in it.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

4. This is standard for most prisons, not to diminish the facts of this concentration camp.

[Justice matters.]

6. A majority (if not all) detainees in all US prisons have DUE PROCESS.

Or HAD before this fascist regime led by a convicted felon and supreme idiot.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

7. And still they bake and freeze in their cells and are served one meal a day with worms in it.

[Justice matters.]

8. That's to be corrected but the point is they have at least one recourse.

Through their lawyers (which is part of the constitutional structure).

If they don't use it, that's another question for another day.

The point of this subject here is Alligator Aushwitz provides no due process at all, just like the model in NAZI Germany.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

9. .

If they don't use it, that's another question for another day.

Lol wait, are you saying that people in inhumane conditions in prison simply aren't using their "constitutional structure"?

The point of this subject here is Alligator Aushwitz provides no due process at all, just like the model in NAZI Germany.

Oh see when the headline said "Giant bugs, heat and a hospital visit," I simply wanted to point out that incarceration in this country has always been cruel, harmful and disgusting, no matter who is running the prison. This country specializes in it, and what we see at the Everglades Concentration Camp is not new or unusual.

[Justice matters.]

10. Ok, we're not discussing about the same topic.

I base my comments on the fact that this criminal administration is trampling on the constitution by denying due process to the victims of its criminal kidnappings.

You base your comments on the fact that Alligator Auschwitz is no different to the abject conditions of most of the prisons and you have a point, but we're not talking about the same topic.

[DENVERPOPS]

11. Trump probably appointed

that inhumane Sheriff down in Arizona to run the camp.......

[Hekate]

12. Concentration Camp. Death Camp.