Two Democratic senators are launching an investigation into allegations of torture at the detention facility center in Florida known as "Alligator Alcatraz."
Concretely, Jon Ossoff and Richard Durbin sent a letter to newly-appointed Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin that "there have been credible allegations that detainees at 'Alligator Alcatraz' have been punished with confinement in a small cage-like structure known as 'the box.'"
There, the letter added, detainees "are held in stress positions with hands and feet tightly shackled for hours at a time, in direct sunlight with no access to food or water," which would amount to levels of torture prohibited under U.S. and international law. Ossoff and Durbin request an immediate stop to the use of "the box."
The senators went on to detail other concerns, including access to medical care and legal counsel. In fact, in a lawsuit earlier this year, two people claimed that they were forced to write their lawyers' phone numbers on their bunks and walls using bars of soap after they were denied pens and paper, while phones available to detainees repeatedly glitched or failed when they attempted to contact legal counsel.
"The call would immediately drop," said one formerly detained man, identified only by his initials, H.C.R. "We didn't have any information, and neither did our relatives," he said during a video call to the court from Bogotá, Colombia, where he was deported in October.
The center has been involved in several other controversies. Earlier this month, Two Can be True, a newsletter by investigative journalist Monique O. Madan, reported that a guards were wearing Grim Reaper patches in their uniforms.
The patch features a skeleton resembling the Grim Reaper holding a scythe. The figure is shown riding a large alligator skull with its jaws open, alongside the words "Alligator Alcatraz" and "You Can't Hide."
"He told me he made the patches and that he gives them to people, including other guards," Courtney Prokopas, 41, an activist with Witness at the Border, a volunteer advocacy group that organizes demonstrations outside immigration detention centers across the U.S., told Madan.
Prokopas said the officer handed her the patch while he was leaving the facility on March 3. During the exchange, Martinez told her he had just been fired after a physical confrontation with another officer.
Clearly upset, Martinez told Prokopas that he previously worked for the Bexar County Sheriff's Office in Texas, where he had also just been discharged from Critical Response Strategies after a physical altercation with another guard. "He told me to keep the patch. I told him 'No, it's OK,' " Prokopas said. "He insisted and said he had plenty."
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