Topline
The immigration facility in the Florida Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz” sometimes kept detainees in 18-square-foot metal cages used as “calming areas,” the Department of Homeland Security inspector general noted in a new report on the facility, where President Donald Trump suggested inmates could be eaten by alligators if they escaped.
The small metal enclosures some detainees were kept in for periods of time at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility known as “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida.
Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General
Key Facts
The state-run facility, operated by a contractor, confined 79 detainees in the cages, approximately the size of phone booths, from periods ranging from several minutes to two hours, the inspector general wrote.
The practice is “unlike any OIG team has observed in ICE facilities” and “is highly unconventional and does not align with standards for humane treatment,” the report says.
Facility staff described the enclosures as “calming areas” for detainees and said some asked to go inside of them, though inspectors found at least one instance in which a detainee was put inside a cage for failing “to comply with a lawful command.”
Staff claimed detainees were not locked inside, though a keypad lock is visible on an image of one of the cages included in the report.
The soft-sided facility was shut down in June amid steep operating costs and as hurricane season’s peak approached.
Tangent
Trump visited the facility in July last year, praising its remote location and the possibility that migrants could be eaten by alligators if they escaped. “That’s not a place I want to go hiking anytime soon,” he said during the visit, referring to the surrounding Everglades, adding, “very soon this facility will have some of the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet. We’re surrounded by miles of treacherous swampland, and the only way out is really deportation.”
Key Background
Investigators found the facility complied with intake and use of force standards, but not with standards related to environmental health and safety, medical care, recreation, food service, personal hygiene or special management units. Detainees did not have sufficient living space and spent most of their time in “cramped” housing units where they had anywhere between 29 to 41 square feet of space each, far below the federal standard of 75 square feet.
further reading
‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Can Remain Open, Court Rules—Pausing Shutdown Order (Forbes)
Federal Judge Orders ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ To Be Shut Down Within 60 Days—No New Detainees (Forbes)
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