At the brand new Everglades immigration detention centre, which officials call “Wannial Catraz,” those who remain there say the worms will appear in the food. Toilets are flushed, flooded floors with fecal waste, and mosquitoes and other insects everywhere.
Inside the large white tent of compounds, rows of bank beds are surrounded by chain link cages. Detainees are said to go every day without showering or taking prescription medication, and they can only talk to lawyers and loved ones on the phone. Sometimes the air conditioner suddenly stops in the swelling heat.
A few days after President Donald Trump toured, lawyers, supporters, detainees and relatives talk about the makeshift facility that Republican Ron DeSantis administration competed to build on an isolated runway surrounded by swamps. Detainees began arriving on July 2nd.
“These are people with inherent rights and have the right to dignity,” said immigration lawyer Josephine Arroyo. “And they are violating many of their rights by putting them there.”
Officials have challenged the detention center’s terms of explanation, with Florida Department of Emergency Management spokesman Stephanie Hartman building the center saying, “Reports on the conditions of the facility are completely false. The facility meets all standards and is in good order.”
However, authorities have provided little detail and have denied access to the media. A group of Democrats appealed to allow the DeSantis administration, and authorities are holding a site visit by state lawmakers and members of the legislature on Saturday.
Florida officials are finalizing a remote immigration detention site called “Alligator Alcatraz,” built on the isolated Everglades Airfield as part of a broader plan to expand detention capacity.
Detainees, lawyers and family descriptions are different from government accounts
An insider account in an interview with the Associated Press paints the place as unsanitary and lacking proper medical care, pushing some into a state of extreme pain.
“The conditions we live in are inhuman,” the Venezuelan detainee said over the phone from the facility. “My main concern is the psychological pressure they place on people to sign their self-reports.”
The man, who feared retaliation, asked not to be identified, characterized it as a “zoo cage” with eight beds each, filled with mosquitoes, cricket and frogs. He said they have no windows, no way to know the time and are locked up 24 hours a day. The detainee’s wrists and ankles are cuffed every time they see immigrants or customs enforcement officers, accompanied by two security guards holding their arms and a third guard following behind them, he said.
These conditions will be other immigration detention centres where advocates and staff have warned that they have “advanced” about unsanitary confinement, medical negligence and food and water shortages, according to immigration attorney Atara Eig.
Trump and his allies have touted the harshness and remoteness of Florida facilities as “worst and worst” suited to the “worst worst” and are promoting it as a national model of how to “self-abolize” immigrants.
But those include people with no criminal history and at least one teenager, the lawyer says.
Concerns regarding medical and drug shortages
A Venezuelan man, a client at the University of Miami Law School of Immigration Clinic, said he and other detainees in his tent had protested the conditions on Thursday and decided not to go to the dining room.
According to clinic director Rebecca Sharpress, a man who has lived in the US since 2021 and arrived at the facility said, “They left food without food all night.
Hartman, a spokesman for the DEM, challenged the detainee’s accounts.
“All of these are complete manufacturing. No such incidents have occurred. All detainees have access to medicine and medical care when necessary, and detainees always get three meals, unlimited drinking water, a shower and other essentials,” she said.
However, immigration lawyer Katie Blankenship also spoke about the medical shortage, informing her of an account from a 35-year-old Cuban client and told her wife that she would go to detainees for a few days without a shower.
The woman, a 28-year-old green card holder and a mother of a US citizen, the couple’s two-year-old daughter, also spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, fearing the possibility of retaliation.
“They’re bathing and washing their mouths, the toilets are overflowing, and the floor is overflowing with piss and poop,” the woman said. “They eat once a day and eat for two minutes. There are insects in their diet,” she added.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz of D-Florida is concerned about the “Wannial Catraz” being in an Everglades environment-sensitive area.
There are no meetings with lawyers
Attorneys say detainees’ due-process rights are one of many constitutional protections that have been denied.
Blankenship said he had traveled to a remote facility and waited hours to talk to clients, including a 15-year-old Mexican boy with no criminal charges. The guard told her to wait for a call within 48 hours to notify her when she returned.
“Well, what phone number can I follow up with? There’s nothing,” Blankenship said. “You have a legitimate process obligation, and this is a violation of that.”
Arroyo’s client is a 36-year-old Mexican man who came to the United States as a child and has been at the center since July 5th after being greeted to drive on a suspended license in Orange County, Florida. He is a beneficiary of an Obama-era program that protects those who arrive as children from deportation.
Blankenship’s Cuban client was told he would pay the bond and be released in Miami, but was taken into custody and sent to the Everglades.
EIG has been seeking releases of clients in their 50s without criminal history and removal stays. That is, the government cannot legally expel him while he sues. However, she was unable to get a bond hearing.
She heard an immigration court at the Chrome Detention Center in Miami from an Everglades facility that “there is a case of hearing illness,” but as of Friday they were still waiting.
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