Detained immigrants at 'Alligator Alcatraz' say there are worms in food
and wastewater on the floor
[July 12, 2025]
By GISELA SALOMON and KATE PAYNE
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.
Descriptions of detainees, attorneys and families differ from the
government’s account
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.
Concerns about medical care, lack of medicines
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.
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Detainees wave and spell out a rough SOS to a helicopter flying
overhead, at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Krome
Detention Center, Friday, July 4, 2025, in Miami. (AP Photo/Rebecca
Blackwell)
“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.
No meetings with attorneys
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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