Prisoners at Florida's newly opened immigrant detention center in the Everglades are suffering in squalid conditions and are cut off from legal access, according to attorneys, detainees, family members, and lawmakers.
While Florida state officials insist that the hastily constructed tent prison, which they've dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz," is orderly and clean, multiple reports and first-hand accounts say the opposite.
Regina de Moraes, a Miami immigration attorney, says one of her clients was transferred from the tent camp to the Krome Detention Center, another nearby Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility, on Monday for a bond hearing.
Krome has also been plagued by reports of overcrowding and poor conditions, but de Moraes' client told her "Alligator Alcatraz" is even worse.
"They are in cages like animals at the zoo," de Moraes says. "There's barely food to eat. The electricity goes off all the time, so the air conditioning is coming and going. Also that becomes an issue with the toilets, because the toilets don't function when there's no electricity."
The description echoes other reports from detainees, their families, and lawyers and lawmakers. The Associated Press reported last Friday that "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."
"The conditions in which we are living are inhuman," a Venezuelan detainee told the A.P. by phone from the facility. "My main concern is the psychological pressure they are putting on people to sign their self-deportation."
Family members who spoke to the Miami Herald similarly described a lack of showers, toilets without water, and oppressive heat and bugs.
A Guatemalan woman told CNN that her husband, a detainee at the camp, went six days without a shower. "The detainees are being held in tents, and it is very hot there," the woman said. "They're in bad conditions.…There's not enough food. Sick people are not getting medication. Every time I ask about his situation, he tells me it's bad."
A group of Democratic lawmakers was allowed limited access to the camp on Saturday—two days after filing a lawsuit over being denied entry—but was not allowed to view the units where detainees are currently being held or the medical facilities.
"They are essentially packed into cages, wall-to-wall humans, 32 detainees per cage," Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D–Fla.) told reporters.
The Eighth Amendment guarantees prisoners the right to basic healthcare, hygiene, and adequate living conditions.
The Florida Division of Emergency Management, which constructed and manages the detention camp, has repeatedly insisted these reports are false and that plumbing and other amenities at the facility are in good working order. It also says that detainees have regular access to phone and video calls on request.
The lack of legal access at the detention camp, though, is harder to wave off. The Trump administration's mass deportation initiative has attempted to limit detainees' due process ability to challenge removals at every step.
Because the detention center is run by the State of Florida, rather than the federal government, it creates transparency problems and legal muddiness over jurisdiction. People transferred to the detention center disappear from a federal immigration detainee locator system, and attorneys have found it nearly impossible to get answers from Florida officials on how to reach their clients.
De Moraes says her client was held in the camp for eight days and nine nights in total, but she was never able to visit him.
"One individual was able to see their attorney one time, but after that, it seems that the facility blocked attorney visits," she says. "I requested through [ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations] and also through the email that they gave reporters. Nobody responds to me. Nobody gets back to me."
The Miami Herald reported yesterday on attorneys' struggles to arrange phone calls and interviews with their clients.
"I've called, I've emailed everybody and their grandmother and their grandmother's sister. Nobody emails you back and nobody calls you back," Atara Eig, a Miami immigration attorney, told the Miami Herald.
Lack of timely access to legal counsel and family can have profound consequences in federal immigration court, where there's an emphasis on expediency. It also generally makes it harder for attorneys to give their clients the best defense.
"When I did my bond motion, I put in just approximate facts that I knew from the documents that I gathered and from speaking to my client's sister, but I hadn't had access to my client to get the nitty-gritty of what an attorney should put in a bond motion," de Moraes says. "It harms my work, and it also harms, as an officer of the court, what I am writing in my motion and signing off on. It doesn't make me feel good about it."
Katie Blankenship, an attorney with Sanctuary of the South, told the A.P. she was denied entry to Alligator Alcatraz after driving and waiting hours to speak with clients, including a 15-year-old Mexican boy with no criminal charges. She said she was told to wait for a phone call in 48 hours to 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 told the A.P. "You have due process obligations, and this is a violation of it."
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