For two weeks at the end of August “Alligator Alcatraz”, the harsh immigration jail in the Florida Everglades notorious for allegations of inhumane treatment and due process violations, looked like it was done.
A district court judge ruled that its hasty construction in the fragile wetlands breached federal environmental laws, and state officials appeared to be complying with her closure order by shipping out hundreds of detainees and winding down operations.
To many observers, the existence of the bleak, remote tented camp looked to have been a dark but brief chapter in the ongoing cruelty of the Trump administration’s broader immigration crackdown that has broken apart families and imprisoned thousands with no criminal record or history.
Then two Donald Trump-appointed appeals court judges, one whose husband has close ties to the Republican Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, stepped in. Not only did their pause on Miami judge Kathleen Williams’s order allow DeSantis to keep Alligator Alcatraz open, it seems to have supercharged activities at his flagship detention camp.
“It’s roared back into action,” said Noelle Damico, director of social justice at the Workers Circle, an advocacy group that has helped organize vigils attended by hundreds of protesters at the jail every weekend since it opened in early July.
Immigration activists who have maintained a near constant presence at the gates say they have witnessed countless buses coming and going as the 3,000-capacity camp rapidly fills up again; attorneys for some of the detainees say Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials are escalating efforts to block access to their clients.
The Miami Herald reported that hundreds of Alligator Alcatraz captives, of the estimated 1,800 held there in July ahead of the legal maneuverings, had since “dropped off the grid”.
It suggests the site has again become a key hub of a secretive Trump program exposed by a Guardian investigation last month that transfers detainees around the country to other Ice facilities in a kind of “lawless limbo”, or simply deports them without notification to attorneys or family members.
“Now it’s back open, this mismanaged state-run facility is essentially operating like a US black site, people are being disappeared, and the cruelty and chaos is by design,” Damico said.
“But there’s also a growing awareness that this is an absolute break with everything our nation stands for. Across the country people are saying this is wrong, and we will continue to be here as long as people are being detained at the facility in reprehensible conditions.”
Numbers at her group’s Sunday vigils have swelled since the site’s resurgence, she said, and protests against Ice had taken place in other Florida cities, including outside DeSantis’s newly opened “Deportation Depot” jail in Baker county.
The Everglades camp, which was built in eight days in June on a largely disused airstrip 40 miles west of Miami, is the subject of several lawsuits filed by groups seeking its closure. Williams issued her preliminary injunction, stayed by the 11th circuit court of appeal, in an action filed by the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians and an alliance of environmental groups.
Williams agreed with their assertions that acres of newly paved roads, installation of hundreds of yards of chain-link fences, and night-time light pollution visible for miles was harmful to the ecologically sensitive land.
The appeals court panel, however, found in a 2-1 ruling that because the state had initially used its own money (an estimated $450m) to build it, it could not be considered a US government project and therefore no environmental impact study was required.
On Thursday, it was reported that Florida received a $608m reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for Alligator Alcatraz and other Ice-related projects.
“This seems to be the smoking gun proving that our lawsuit is entirely correct,” said Elise Bennett, Florida and Caribbean director at the Center for Biological Diversity.
“This is a federal project built with federal funds that’s required by federal law to go through a complete environmental review. The Trump administration can’t keep lying through their teeth to the American public at the expense of Florida’s imperiled wildlife.
“Our legal system can and should stop this incredibly harmful boondoggle.”
Further insight into the resurrection of Alligator Alcatraz came last week in a separate lawsuit in Florida’s middle district, filed on behalf of detainees who say they are being denied meetings with their immigration attorneys in breach of their constitutional rights.
Ice requires three business days’ notice to set up a face-to-face meeting, a condition “dramatically more restrictive than at other immigration facilities” the lawsuit states, adding that attorneys often show up to find their clients have been transferred elsewhere “immediately prior to the scheduled visits”.
“Some detainees never have the chance to meet with their attorneys,” it said.
In testimony sent to the Guardian, the daughter of one undocumented Alligator Alcatraz detainee, who did not want to be named for fear of retaliation, said she was allowed to speak to him only in short phone calls that were monitored.
“They are being treated like the worst of the worst. They are treated like animals and have been put in cages like animals,” she said.
“They are chained by their hands and their ankles, they shower every three days with reused clothing they all share, and I can’t even imagine the quality and quantity of the food they are given.
“They can’t even tell what time of day it is. Actual criminals are receiving better treatment than the humans trapped in this place.”
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the homeland security department, denied any mistreatment of detainees in a statement that insisted all allegations to the contrary were “hoaxes”.
“Alligator Alcatraz does meet federal detention standards,” she said.
In additional comments last month following the Guardian’s findings of due process violations, previously unreported accounts of neglect and abuse, and documented health emergencies, McLaughlin said: “Any claim that there are inhumane conditions at Ice detention centers are false. Ice has higher detention standards than most US prisons that hold actual US citizens.
“All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with lawyers and their family members.”
Tessa Petit, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, said the revival of Alligator Alcatraz followed a pattern.
“We’ve seen it in the history of not only DeSantis, but also the Trump administration. They start something, they make mistakes, we win [in court], then they come back harder and stronger,” she said.
“Now they are more emboldened and empowered to just do what they’re doing, because it feels like they have more of the federal government support. So there’s no more shame in doing the wrong thing, no more shame in disappearing people.
“We’re seeing that they’re learning, and we’re seeing the same thing happening in Baker. Nobody can tell us how many people are in both detention facilities, the families are hearing from their family members only once they’ve been deported, and lawyers still don’t have access to their clients.”
Petit added that the camp’s comeback had effectively chilled dissent.
“People are more and more afraid to reveal what is going on, and those who are being detained are also afraid to speak up,” she said. “They’ve feared them into silence.”
