OCHOPEE, Fla. (AP) — Florida lawmakers took a state-arranged tour of the new Everglades immigration detention center on Saturday after some were blocked earlier from viewing the remote facility that officials have dubbed “ Alligator Alcatraz.”
Democratic and Republican state legislators and members of Congress were heading into the facility Saturday morning. So many politicians turned up that they were split into multiple groups to tour the 3,000-bed detention center that the state rapidly built on an isolated airstrip surrounded by swampland.
Gov. Ron DeSantis and fellow Republicans have touted the makeshift detention center — an agglomeration of tents, trailers and temporary buildings constructed in a matter of days — as an efficient and get-tough response to President Donald Trump’s call for mass deportations. The first detainees arrived July 3, after Trump toured and praised the facility.
Described as temporary, the detention center is meant to help the Republican president’s administration reach its goal of boosting the United States’ migrant detention capacity from 41,000 people to at least 100,000. The Florida facility’s remote location and its name — a nod to the notorious Alcatraz prison that once housed federal inmates in California — are meant to underscore a message of deterring illegal immigration.
Ahead of the facility’s opening, state officials said detainees would have access to medical care, consistent air conditioning, a recreation yard, attorneys and clergy members.
But detainees and their relatives and advocates have told The Associated Press that conditions are awful, with worm-infested food, toilets overflowing onto floors, mosquitoes buzzing around the fenced bunks, and air conditioners that sometimes shut off in the oppressive South Florida summer heat. One man told his wife that detainees go days without getting showers.
Florida Division of Emergency Management spokesperson Stephanie Hartman called those descriptions “completely false,” saying detainees always get three meals a day, unlimited drinking water, showers and other necessities.
“The facility meets all required standards and is in good working order,” she said.
Five Democratic state lawmakers tried to visit the site when it opened July 3 but said they were denied access. The state subsequently arranged Saturday’s tour.
The lawmakers have sued over the denial, saying that DeSantis’ administration is impeding lawmakers’ oversight authority. A DeSantis spokesperson has called the lawsuit “dumb.”
As Democratic officials headed into the facility, they said they expected to be given a sanitized and limited view.
U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz told reporters the lawmakers came anyway because they wanted to ask questions and get a sense of the structure and conditions.
