The notorious new “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration jail in the Florida Everglades contains hundreds of detainees with no criminal records or charges, it was disclosed on Sunday, as lawmakers decried “inhumane” conditions inside after touring the facility.
Donald Trump has insisted that the remote camp in swamp land populated by pythons and alligators was reserved for immigrants who were “deranged psychopaths” and “some of the most vicious people on the planet” awaiting deportation.
But at least one detainee shouted out to politicians during Saturday’s visit that he was a US citizen, the Democratic Florida congressman Maxwell Frost said. And the Miami Herald obtained and published a list of 700 people held in cages showing that at least 250 had committed no offense other than a civil immigration violation.
Authorities have refused to release a list of those sent there by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (Ice). The Florida department of emergency management, which operates the hastily assembled tent encampment, said in a brief statement: “All detainees at the facility are illegal immigrants, and any claim otherwise it’s completely false [sic]”.
Frost said the revelations, and the lawmakers’ visit, raised new questions about the legality of the camp, which federal agencies in court documents have insisted is entirely a state-run and -funded operation.
“There are Ice agents there every day, and I was told directly from the guy running the whole thing that Ice tells them exactly what to do, how to put everything together,” he said.
“They gave them the instructions on how to do the cages, the food, who comes in and goes out. It’s Ice making all the decisions, and he was very clear that the role the state is playing is logistical. This is a federal facility. Ice is calling all the shots.”
Frost said conditions for detainees were intolerable, with excessive heat and meager food portions.
There were three exposed toilets for 32 people held in each cage, some often not flushing, and drinking water was provided from a spigot on the cistern, Frost said. “It’s a huge cleanliness concern,” he said. “It’s the same unit where people are shitting, and if you really need to drink water you have to wait until somebody’s finished using the bathroom.”
He added that detainees were guarded by private security staff from a “hodgepodge” of companies. “It’s a huge source of taxpayer money, just going to corporations. But also what worries me is these people do not have the training you need to run a facility like this,” he said.
Florida officials have denied conditions are unsafe or unhygienic in previous statements, and accused media outlets of spreading “fake news”.
Meanwhile, judges in south Florida are mulling a lawsuit filed by two environmental groups trying to halt the jail. The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and Friends of the Everglades group are seeking a restraining order against activity at the camp at a largely abandoned airstrip in the wilderness west of Miami.
Their concerns, the CBD attorney Elise Bennett noted, were not just for conditions inside the camp. They say there is ongoing, irreparable damage caused by a network of new paved roads on fragile wildlife habitat, and light pollution in the previously dark night sky that can be seen from 15 miles (24km) away.
“We’re concerned that the court has not acted yet because we are continuing to see construction and operation activities at the site,” she said.
The lawsuit, in the US southern district federal court, names Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary; Todd Lyons, the acting director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (Ice); and Kevin Guthrie, the director of the Florida division of emergency management (DEM), as defendants.
Even without a ruling, the case has already proven disruptive. It has cast into doubt the assertion by Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, that the state would receive federal reimbursement of the $450m it spent to set up and operate the jail in support of Trump’s aggressive detention and deportation agenda.
In a written response, the justice department attempted to distance itself from the facility, arguing the homeland security department had “not implemented, authorized, directed or funded Florida’s temporary detention center”, and that Florida was “constructing and operating the facility using state funds on state lands under state emergency authority”. No request for federal funds was received, and no money given, it said.
The statement appeared to contradict Noem’s social media post insisting that Alligator Alcatraz would be “largely funded” by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), amplified by Trump on his visit to Florida earlier this month when he told reporters: “We took the Fema money … and we used it to build this project.”
Bennett said the federal filing did not hold water, calling it “a convenient litigation position that is belied by all the public statements these agencies and officials have been making, as well as just the nature of the activity”.
“Enforcing federal immigration law by detaining immigrants is inherently a federal action and it cannot occur without the participation of the federal agencies,” she said.
A new lawsuit was filed on Thursday by a number of Democratic state lawmakers who were turned away when they tried to access the jail despite their right under Florida statute to make unannounced visits to state and local detention facilities to “observe the unadulterated conditions” therein.
“Just hours before we were denied entry, they allowed the president of the United States and Fox News to basically run a propaganda video about how wonderful this site is, but that is not what we’re hearing on the ground,” state senator Carlos Guillermo Smith said.
“What are they hiding? What is it they don’t want us to see?”
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In an earlier emailed statement, Stephanie Hartman, the deputy director of communications for the DEM, accused the lawmakers of engaging in “political theater” for trying to visit the jail, despite Trump and Noem’s own well-publicized visit with a Fox camera crew in tow just 48 hours earlier.
She also said they had no entitlement to visit because they were acting as individuals, not a legislative committee, and because the facility was not under the jurisdiction of the Florida corrections department.
Smith said he was outraged that some undocumented detainees had no criminal convictions or charges, despite Trump touting it during his visit as a jail for the “most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet”.
Without federal reimbursement, Smith said: “Florida taxpayers could be left holding a half-a-million-dollar bag to pay for this cruel, inhumane, un-American detention camp that will ultimately bleed money out of our public schools, out of critical government services that Floridians need, and out-of-state resources that are required to support hurricane survivors.”
