The legal and family defenders of immigrant detainees held in the notorious crocodile of Florida, Alcatraz, demand the closure of the state installation, since the accusations of human rights violations there and other immigration detention centers mount.
Those arrested in Aligator Alcatraz, a new installation in the Everglades, described what they called tortuous conditions in units similar to the cage full of mosquitoes, where fluorescent lights shine on them at all times. The detainees also attracted attention to unhealthy conditions, as well as the lack of food and reliable medical treatment for their chronic conditions.
“The detention conditions cannot be lived,” said Tessa Petit, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, during a press conference on Tuesday outside the facilities.
The impulse of the Trump administration to quickly increase immigration arrests has led to overcrowding in the immigration and customs compliance facilities. As of June 20, more than 56,000 people spent the night in detention centers throughout the country on a given day. That is 40% more than in June 2024 and the highest detention population in the history of the United States, according to a report by Human Rights Watch. Almost 72% of detainees have no criminal record.
Concerns about detention conditions intensified this week after the HRW report, published on Monday, documented “abusive practices” in three Florida immigration detention centers in the last six months. In addition, the New York immigration coalition launched a video that showed dozens of men lying on aluminum sheets on the floor of an immigration processing center full of people in New York City.
NBC News recently reported on similar accusations from immigration and detainee defenders held in detention centers in California, Texas, Louisiana, Washington and New Jersey. They described experimenting hunger, food and disease shortage.
‘It’s like a dog cage’
At Tuesday’s press conference, Sonia Vichara held her mobile phone to a microphone for her husband, Rafael Collado, to publicly describe the conditions she has suffered in the last two weeks.
“It’s like a dog cage,” said Collado, who is Cuban, in his native Spanish. He said that a combination of flooding waters of recent storms, limited access to showers and a bad sanitation have made him fungus.
While describing how the detainees are naked every time they move to a different cell and there is no established schedule to take their medicine to blood pressure, a guard told Collado to hang, he said, ending the call.
Vichara said her husband had been presenting her immigration quotes for years until she was recently arrested during a routine record in an ice field office in Miramar.
Another detainee, Juan Palma, also spoke with NBC Miami from inside Aligator Alcatraz on Monday.
“I feel that my life is in danger,” said Palma, who is Cuban, in Spanish. He described feeling “in a state of torture”, being polished by mosquitoes during his dream and unable to say night from day to day because the fluorescent lights of the installation are always lit.
Palma also informed that he was allowed to shower only every three or four days and stay in a cage -style unit with another 32 people.
Both Vichara and Palma’s wife, Yanet López, said that their respective husbands have a criminal record, but made their time. NBC Miami reported that the palm registration included great theft, counterfeit credit and drums. Vichara did not provide details of the Collado registration only that he just said: “He made a mistake, but paid for 10 years.”
That is no excuse to put the detainees in danger, Petit said.
“We are talking about exposing people to diseases and even their death. That is a violation of human rights, no matter if you are an immigrant,” he said.
The National Security Assistant Secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, has denied all accusations of inhuman conditions in Aligator Alcatraz and in immigration detention centers throughout the country, telling NBC News in an email on Tuesday: all detainees have adequate meals, medical treatment and have opportunities to communicate with their relatives and lawyers.
McLaughlin also said that ICE “has worked diligently to obtain a more necessary detention space while avoiding overcrowding”, adding that the National Secretary of National Security Kristi Noem “has asked the states and the local government to help with the capacity of the bed and the detention space.”
Concerns increase as the population detained increases
Janeisy Fernández Díaz, Michael Borrego Fernández’s mother, a Cuban national who is celebrated in Alcatraz, asked for the closure of the installation on Tuesday.
“I want this place to close,” he said on behalf of his son, who is one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed last week by the American Union of Civil Liberties against the Department of National Security.
In the complaint, four people arrested in the Alcatraz crocodile and their lawyers claim that the federal government has interfered with its ability to access the detainees and provide them with advice, as well as “hard and inhuman conditions” in the installation.
Borrego Fernández reported that people in Cocodrilo Alcatraz “are only allowed one meal per day (and only minutes are given to eat), they are not allowed daily showers and otherwise they remain 24 hours in a cage inside a tent,” says the complaint. He also reported cases of physical assaults and excessive use of force by the guards, along with the lack of medical attention and care.
According to Thomas Kennedy, spokesman for the Coalition of Immigrants of Florida, Borrego Fernández has spent more than 17 days at the facilities, asking questions about the operational standards of the installation.
Aligator Alcatraz is not a traditional detention center, since it is operated and financed by the state of Florida to enforce federal immigration laws.
NBC News has a request for pending information to Florida officials, requesting a list of detainees and a copy of the rules that describe the detention rules in the facilities.
During Tuesday’s press conference, immigration defenders set out to reject the name of Cocodrilo Alcatraz, which began as a political nickname invented and adopted by Republican leaders and is now the official name of the installation.
It is not the only immigration center in Florida that faces accusations.
Based on interviews with 11 current and previous detainees at the North Krome Northard Service Processing Center, Broward’s Transition Center and the Federal Detention Center between January and June, as well as data analysis and conversations with 14 immigration lawyers, human rights surveillance concluded in their report that people in these facilities were submitted to “dangerously substantially substantial medical care, lawyer. abusive and restrictions on access to legal and psychological access “and psychological”. ”
The report also found that the detainees were forced to sleep on cold concrete floors without bedding and received “deficient” food.
