Welcome to alligator Alcatraz. The entrance here is a 30 foot tall wall. None of this was here five days ago. It's got razor wire on the top. Just unbelievably impressive. Not a fun place to be put in prison. You do not want to go here. [00:00:18] I'm getting swarmed by mosquitoes right now. And we saw at least 30 alligators on our way in. Driving it is in the middle of nowhere. It took us an hour, four hour drive to get here today. It's crazy. [00:00:36] Last week, Florida's alligator Alcatraz welcomed its first round of migrants into the haphazard facility. And like we all expected, it is not fit for human confinement. So CBS News Miami spoke with detainees at the facility, and they claim that they [00:00:53] are enduring inhumane conditions, including a lack of access to good water, inadequate food and the denial of religious rights. Writes. So here is some of the things that what the detainees are saying. One detainee, a Cuban reggaeton singer, La Figura, who was arrested [00:01:10] on assault charges, told CBS Miami. We've been here at Alcatraz since Friday. There's over 400 people here. There's no water to take a bath. It's been four days since I've taken a bath. They only brought a meal once a day and it had maggots. [00:01:27] They never take off the lights for 24 hours. The mosquitoes are as big as elephants. It's unbelievable. Another detainee had this to say. I'm on the verge of losing my mind. I've gone three days without taking my medicine. It's impossible to sleep with this white light that's on all day. [00:01:46] They took the Bible I had and they said, in here there is no right to religion. And my Bible is the only thing that keeps my faith. And now I'm losing my faith. Yeah, that'll do it. And a third detainee had this to say. I don't know their motive for doing this. If it's a form of torture. [00:02:03] A lot of us have our residency documents and we don't understand why we're here. Okay, so that is the scary part here. People who shouldn't be sent to alligator Alcatraz, which was only for the worst of the worst, are now being sent there, and attorneys for those currently being held in the detention center [00:02:22] cannot even reach their clients, it seems. So Magdalena Cooper of Coopers and Associates, who's representing a Honduran immigrant located at the facility, told this to Forbes. We were advised that they had no instructions on how to handle attorney visits. [00:02:39] Chelsea and Noel, of Dibrugarh, and Noel also had sought to contact her client. My client was transferred to the Alligator Alcatraz facility after being picked up from an ice hold, she said in an interview. Since his transfer, I have been able to schedule. [00:02:56] Unable to schedule any contact with him, I have reached out to the Krome Detention Center and they advise me that they have no information on the new facility as of yet. Florida officials have predictably denied the allegations that this facility [00:03:11] is subpar, even though they put it up in like, what do you say, five days? Claiming that the reporting on the conditions in the facility is completely false. The facility meets all required standards and is in good working order. But I guess, you know, maybe all of that is just subjective. [00:03:27] But I mean, like, how can it be up to any kind of standards when it was just built in less than a week? So here's this from Ali Velshi over at MSNBC. He said Florida's attorney general, James Mayer, said the facility will mostly consist of tents and trailers with no brick and mortar construction required, [00:03:45] which seems not great considering Ford is stifling summer heat and humidity, and a hurricane season that is predicted to be even worse than in past years. It was also reported last week five Democratic state lawmakers [00:04:01] were denied access to the facility due to safety reasons, so we don't actually know what is going on inside the facility. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava is now demanding monitoring access to the facility due to all the reports that are coming out about it, she said. [00:04:17] This detention centers like Chrome and the newly opened facility in the Everglades have been placed in isolated areas with poor access to hospitals and legal counsel. Families and advocates are being shut out and the public is left in the dark. [00:04:34] In two letters now sent to Kristi Noem and the Florida AG. Cava is requesting a few different things a detailed report of all deaths that have occurred in Ice custody in Florida, meetings with local officials, medical experts to discuss detention [00:04:51] center conditions, weekly site reports, remote video monitoring access and scheduled site visits. So was I want to get your thoughts on this. We're going to be talking about the monetization and the meme ification of all this in a little bit, but are we surprised that this thing is being run about as well [00:05:10] as like, like a public toilet? Well, I mean, we can't be surprised, especially as you mentioned, Yaz, how haphazardly this all came together. They kind of just slapped it together as quickly as possible, which is why it's like these shoddily built tents and trailers because they, [00:05:30] you know, they ran into the problem that just picking people up. You got to be able to process them before you move them out. And they're not able to, you know, meet the rate of their deportations. That that has been their stated goal, which, you know, [00:05:47] if the reporting is to believe they're trying to at least surpass the Obama levels of I think it was something like 400,000 a year or something like that. And, you know, they're just not getting to that level yet. They, they weren't even able to reach 200,000 I think by the time June came. [00:06:05] So they were at a slower pace, and they realized that they have to be able to detain these folks, instead of allowing them to just, you know, go through their process, their court process, and, you know, going out and doing the process and the way that it was meant to be carried out. [00:06:24] I just think, you know, again, we've talked about this a lot on the show. The depravity is kind of the point. They're trying to send a message to all undocumented people that when they catch you, they're going to put you basically in a gulag. And they want people to, quote unquote, self-deport. [00:06:42] And this is despite the fact that most of the people that they're picking up are doing the process legally. Now, conservatives, what they would say is that Biden, he didn't have the authority. He he did these executive orders that sort of, made it way less restrictive [00:06:59] in terms of the standards for people who are seeking asylum, etcetera, etcetera. That being said, he was the president, the duly elected president at the time, and these folks are actually following the laws under which they came, under the pretense under which they came. [00:07:15] And conservatives would say that was illegitimate. And therefore we get to treat these people like pieces of garbage. Yeah. I mean, I had a Republican voter recently say to me like, oh, why can't they just come over here legally? A lot of the people who are going through legal avenues, they're being picked up at [00:07:32] courthouses, wherever they come from. They show up for their court appearances because that is part of the legal process. And then they're being thrown into facilities like this one, and their lawyers can't even get to them. So, you know, we're going to get to a lot more of that. The depravity really was on display, though, with that clip that we just saw [00:07:50] from Ben Johnson. And he was like, giddy about how how horrible it was and how high the walls were and how isolated it was and how like, there's so many mosquitoes there. Mosquitoes are not just they don't just make you itchy, they carry so many diseases like it's really unsafe for people to be there. [00:08:06] So Anyway, of course they're going to use this as a way to, you know, get some good coverage on social media and make some money off of it because they wouldn't be the MAGA people that we have come to know if they weren't. So the news surrounding Alligator Alcatraz only gets worse, because the GOP [00:08:26] is treating the literal torture of these migrants as a tourist attraction. You can see there in the video. It's unbelievable. Republicans have also sought to capitalize on the center by selling alligator Alcatraz merchandise in two different online stores. [00:08:43] One of those stores is run by the Republican Party of Florida, and the other one is run by the Florida AG Othmayr. It's unbelievable. Take a look. These potentially torturous conditions for undocumented immigrants are being monetized. [00:08:59] It's as depraved as you can imagine. The Republican Party of Florida pushed out this campaign email last week saying in part, quote, the feds have green lit alligator Alcatraz, Florida's gator guarded, python patrolled prison for illegal aliens who thought they could game the system surrounded by miles of swamp and bloodthirsty wildlife. [00:09:16] This ain't no vacation spot. It's a one way ticket to regret for criminals who wish they'd self-deport. And then there's the option to snag your swag. Because yes, of course they're selling merch. They're always selling merch. For just $15, you can have your very own alligator Alcatraz beer koozie. [00:09:35] There's nothing funny about this. This is sadistic glorification of human pain and suffering. There's nothing classier that I can think of than an alligator Alcatraz beer koozie. So each shop has an even larger variety of items, including buttons [00:09:52] and of course, bumper stickers, because we know that they love their bumper stickers. Was the corruption here is kind of out in the open. The inhumanity is being celebrated. This place is active in our country right now. Due process has already been suspended in this country. [00:10:07] They're like denying people the right to religion. Where are the constitutionalists now? I never thought I'd say this one, but where are the Christian activists? And that's the thing is, like, I'm not a Christian. I'm not religious. But like, people have a right to their Bibles. [00:10:23] They have a right to practice their own religion and just outright denying it, if that is actually what happened that is unconstitutional. So we all knew something like this was inevitable once Trump got into office. But maybe there's some hope in the fact that this place seems like it's being so [00:10:40] poorly run that they're either unwilling to spend the money on keeping it open, or maybe it'll just become so much of a cesspool that it can't stay open. I mean, it doesn't seem like they're running with any kind of standards right now, or trying to meet any kind of safety criteria, but maybe [00:10:57] that there's a silver lining there. I mean, they're not off to a great start, and, you know, that they're they're not going to funnel any of the merch revenue from what they're selling back into the facility. The people who are selling it are just going to keep that money. Well, of course not. [00:11:12] I mean, the corruption is the key word, and I'm happy you used that there. But before we get to the corruption part of this whole debacle, I think, folks, the viewers need to understand that the anti-immigration portion [00:11:29] of the right wing, and more specifically, the MAGA coalition, is one of the most animating elements of Donald Trump's rise in the Republican Party. Right. Like there's this anti-elite sort of establishment, whether that be the media, [00:11:47] whether that be the government, whether that be college universities, you know, all of these institutions that we've come to to love and trust. There's a backlash towards the institutions. There's a backlash against neoliberalism, which is just like marketized [00:12:03] the hell out of everything. Outsource every single American's freaking job overseas for the cheapest labor possible. And then, you know, a, a rejection of that neoliberalism. And then what ties it together is this anti-immigrant sentiment, [00:12:18] which I know, yes, there's a lot of xenophobia, racism tied into it, but a lot of it is an economic sort of outlook that they're bringing all of these, who they would call illegal people and so that they could work for cheap. Our economy is based on cheap labor. [00:12:35] It's why, like, they fight us tooth and nail over a federal increase of the minimum wage, which is why, like even Biden, a freaking union bus with the railroad workers, every single, every now and again, excuse me. Like, our economy is based off of this idea that we need an unlimited reserve [00:12:52] of cheap old labor. Right. And so the movement is based on that. And, you know, the anti-immigration part, like, yes, I think Trump is playing with fire here. The Republicans, the right wing, they're playing with fire. Yes, to the base, to the people who love Trump the most. [00:13:10] They cannot get enough of this. They feel like the immigration system has been unfair. They feel like people have jumped the line. They feel like resources are being allocated to new people who they themselves are being told there's no resources for anything pertaining to their lives. Cool. You're making the most foaming at the mouth right wingers. [00:13:28] Yeah, they're getting really excited right now. However, independents, obviously Democrats and liberals and leftists and all that other stuff, they're not flowing with this. You can go look at Joe Rogan, you go look at Tim Dillon. These people are not down with this rounding up workers at Home Depot. [00:13:45] It's insane. And then, you know, for the corruption piece. Yes, I know I've been yapping up right now. I think for the corruption piece, they've basically signed a blank check for Ice and the immigration roundups. This is the biggest law enforcement agency in America, [00:14:03] probably in the world right now. This anti immigration regime, they're not going to hire a bunch and train a bunch of people into how to do this. They're going to outsource this to private companies, bro. They're just going to rake in this cash. And I promise you, they are not going to deport 10 million people in four years. [00:14:21] I promise you, it's just going to be a blank check to these private companies. Yeah. The what did you say? The economy is built on cheap labor. You're absolutely right. And right now they are struggling to reconcile these two things. [00:14:36] On one hand, they need the cheap labor to appease these business bosses. And honestly, in the capitalist system that we have here in this country, that's all that matters is cheap labor. They have to maximize the dollar. They have to maximize profits. That is the whole point of our entire economy. [00:14:54] And so whenever the dollar is prioritized, that means that people are not prioritized. And that's why the idea of running this country as a business never made a whole lot of sense to me, as you know, a leftist or whatever you want to call me. Because if you run a dirty. Company, that's what we're going to call you. [00:15:10] - Yes. - Thank you. But that's the thing. Like if you run it as a business, then you're not running it for people, and government is for the governing of people. And I don't know why people don't really understand that. I think like there's an idea that in a perfect world, there's some kind of balance that can be struck somewhere where people would get [00:15:28] all the things that they need and want to live quiet, comfortable, safe lives. But at the same time, we're still going to be like promoting business and running an efficient economy. Sure, those are good goals to have, right? But whenever business is the goal, then the person is no longer the goal, right? [00:15:45] Business means low prices, which means people are not getting paid and it means higher profits, which means people are getting overcharged. The consumer is getting overcharged, but also at the same time, the consumer is really the only thing of value in this country right now. Businesses can't run without consumers. And here we are today. [00:16:03] And now you see Trump, who is trying to appease these business bosses. But at the same time, he's trying to appease his MAGA, his MAGA base that is incredibly xenophobic, that really wants to see all these people get deported. I think you mentioned earlier in the segment that they're trying to beat [00:16:19] Obama's numbers, right? And they can't do it. They're not doing they're not doing a good enough job at meeting these these arbitrary benchmarks that they've set for themselves. Right. And they promise, you know, we're going to get rid of all these criminals and all these gang members. But the truth is, a lot of these immigrants are not criminals [00:16:37] and they're not gang members. So inevitably they have to just start locking people up. So and we just saw, you know, Trump, he alienated a huge swath of his base just by floating the idea of amnesty for illegal farm workers in this country right now. But this administration, they do this thing where they have like a problem that [00:16:57] is being presented to, you know, something that their base thinks is a problem. And they say, fine, we'll work on that. And then their solution just creates much bigger problems that they pretend to just not see. So I'll give you the final word before we get a break. I mean, yeah, that's another thing to understand. [00:17:13] I think we need to hit home Substantively I like. I think even with the insane new Ice budget, all of the craziness they're doing in MacArthur Park with the freaking Army dudes on horses looking ridiculous, all of that is spectacle. Like you don't do spectacle if you actually have the goods, if you actually [00:17:33] have a way of delivering this thing that you told all of these people that you were going to deliver for them, which is rollback completely, not just seal off the border, which you notice they don't talk about anymore. Nobody's coming across the border anymore, but actually reverse it in the sense of sending all of these people, quote unquote, back to where they came from. [00:17:51] They're not going to do it. They they allocated all this money. It's not going to happen. Yeah. So good luck to them, I guess. Like, I don't know like they they have to this thing can't stay open like this thing cannot go on. [00:18:06] And the people who are supporting it are very much so on the wrong side of history. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets its wings. Totally not true, but it does keep you updated on our live shows.