Jul 9, 2025
Alligator Alcatraz Detainees Speak Out About HORRIFYING Conditions
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immigration detention facility nicknamed "Alligator Alcatraz" is reportedly a humanitarian nightmare.
- 18 minutes
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.
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