Human Security Centre Human Rights and International Security Research
By Sam Biden, Junior Fellow
4 September, 2025
The Alligator Alcatraz Detention Facility
On June 23 of this year, the state of Florida began constructing a temporary immigration detention center deep within the Florida Everglades. Known informally as “Alligator Alcatraz” (AA) the makeshift facility is built out of tents, trailers, chain-link fences and barbed wire with a limit of 5,000 detainees. The makeshift facility sits in isolation with an equally intimidating surrounding environment, plagued by snakes, mosquitoes and alligators, hence the now infamous title. Behind the spectacle in the media, AA serves as another extension of the historic anti-illegal immigration policy enacted by the initial Trump administration almost a decade ago. With antagonistic roots found in the migration protection protocols, the legislative groundwork that allowed for the “Remain in Mexico” (RMX) program aimed at strict border enforcement on the Southern US-Mexico border, it became clear that AA was not built in isolation from previous policy decisions.
AA was erected on an abandoned 11,000-foot runway at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport. Within the makeshift tents, three toilets stand side by side without partitions, visible from the waist up and frequently overflowing with their adjoining spigot serving as the only source of running water. The tents routinely flood during storms and suffer routine power outages that cut ventilation, leaving them unbearably hot by day and bitterly cold by night, causing constant distress among the detainees. Many describe going days without access to soap or toothbrushes with scarce and often spoiled food, sometimes infested with maggots, being served. Though the facility is guarded by more than 400 personnel, medical care is virtually nonexistent with the withholding of prescriptions, disregard for chronic illnesses being commonplace and only acute emergencies being taken seriously. These issues came to light in a new, ongoing complaint on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a US-based think tank focusing on civil liberties.
Unlike every other major detention center in the country, AA provides no official protocols for confidential and effective attorney-client communication, nor have they expressed any future measures to rectify the issue. At AA, no system exists for in-person visits, secure phone calls, video conferencing or general counsel-client information exchange relating to charges, detainment period, health status etc. The only connection detainees have to the outside world is through monitored collect calls lasting no more than five minutes. These calls are routed through pay phones inside the tents and are recorded like any other facility, however, they are not in secure, private booths but are open to the public, meaning other detainees can listen into the call directly.
Many attorneys who’ve attempted to contact their clients have been met with hostility and a profound refusal to engage. ICE’s detainee locator, a website that allows people to accurately track the status of detainees held by ICE, routinely fails to list those held at Alligator Alcatraz, often resulting in errors, with many requests for information being wrongly passed on to the Krome North Service Processing Center in Miami. Calls to this facility have been repeatedly met with confusion – with staff there say they have no information on AA or anyone detained there. AA does have a direct email address open for attorneys to use to get in contact with their clients, however, the email itself is not actually contactable, bouncing back any correspondence from any of the detainee’s attorneys.
With many attorneys feeling electronic communication is being intentionally prevented, visits to the facility to book meetings to discuss their clients’ cases have been met with similar difficulties. For those who’ve made the trek through the threatening surroundings, they’ve been met by countless militarized checkpoints armed by the Florida National Guard and state law enforcement. Some attorneys have waited for hours outside a checkpoint after giving their identification, only to be told entry to the facility is forbidden. For those who’ve made it to the stage of filling in a “Legal Counsel Visitation Request Form”, they discovered that any confidential information they were going to share with their client, such as arguments for their defence, supporting documentation or even information from a loved one must all be presented alongside the form, which is then inspected by the officer in charge of processing. When this is done, all confidential information that is due to be exchanged between the attorney and client is revealed to the state before the state is granted access in court, in violation of due process. For the few that have received correspondence in return from AA, no instructions, details of time and dates for a phone call with their client nor any confirmation if their client had even received the request for a call were made. Repeated attempts for clarification were met with claims a member of staff will “be in touch” about arranging a phone call, with many being cancelled at the last moment or not set up at all. Following limited evidence of the inner workings of AA, key individual testimonies from two detainees remain a primary source of intelligence, painting a distressing yet expectedly poor picture of conditions at the facility.
Mr. Borrego, a Cuban national, was transferred from a Florida county jail to AA on July 5, 2025. In an attempt to maintain a crucial communication line with his family, Borrego arranged aid from a non-profit, immigration rights focused group called Sanctuary of the South (SOS), to challenge the original order for his removal from the US, instead allowing him passage to Cuba. Borrego described bleak conditions inside; only one meal per day, forced to be consumed in minutes alongside no daily showers and permanent confinement in cages under makeshift tents. Alongside this, assaults by guards are accompanied by medical neglect, with Borrego being hospitalized for severe bleeding from such an assault on July 11. When Borrego was returned to the facility some days later, staff intentionally withheld his prescribed antibiotics, causing a painful infection in his wounds, only worsened by the heat and humidity in the tents. SOS attorneys made repeated attempts to reach him. On July 10 they drove to the Everglades, but at the checkpoint they were held for over two hours before being barred from entry, followed by another attempt on July 15 where another request for visitation was ignored.
Similarly, another Cuban national named E.R, who has lived in the U.S. for a decade, was pulled over on June 27 while driving near Fort Myers. Officers provided no reason for the stop, issued no citation, yet he was arrested, transferred to ICE custody where he would be sent to AA the next day. E.Rs attorney has been denied any confidential contact in the same manner as Mr. Borrego with his calls being limited to minutes and overheard by dozens of others waiting to use the phones. Neither E.R nor his attorney has been provided with the name of his deportation officer, nor any way to communicate with ICE and he has effectively disappeared within the system, reachable only through sporadic, non-confidential phone calls. He describes being housed with 32 men in a cage inside a tent, with only three toilets visible to all and a single spigot for water. Three payphones serve the entire cage, forcing detainees to wait in long lines for their few minutes of contact. However, knowing when a phone call can be made is difficult as there is no official scheduling for making calls. Constant interruptions compound the issue, with rainstorms flooding the tents, soaking bedding and flooring while mosquitos swarm the cages and disorientate the detainees. While food is provided to those in captivity, it appears at random times with no warning only once a day, leaving many left hungry and waiting for the next unpredictable meal.
Overlap with RMX
RMX was designed to handle the ongoing, unauthorized migration crisis steadily mounting on the US-Mexico border. The goal of this policy was to achieve prosecutions against any unauthorized migrants, regardless of their needs, status or risk of harm. At the height of the program, US Federal investigators found reports of systematic and suspicion less strip searches, rotten food, moldy bathrooms, misuse of segregation and exaggerated delays to receive medical attention. Statistics show that over 69,000 people were placed under the program since its inception to its initial closure in 2022. With the revival of the program announced by President Trump in early 2025, pressure to handle new waves of detainee holding away from the border became a key priority for ICE.
In stark similarity to AA, the RMX program severely limited access to due process for migrants by restricting their ability to secure legal representation. Representation rates under the policy were consistently poor – hitting a record low of 1.3% in June 2019 with a high of just 7.5% by December 2021. The latter number also includes individuals who were later removed from the program and allowed to enter the US, suggesting that the true representation rate for those who remained in Mexico was even lower. This absence of legal counsel had a direct impact on asylum outcomes, with the case adjudication rate in the program being 10x lower than general immigration court, falling from 12% to 1.2%. Of 42,012 cases heard after a year of the program being in effect, only 521 were granted successful. Similar additional barricades plagued the program, with familial tracking and communication being heavily impacted by the focus on familial separation enforced by ICE. As the intentional restriction of legal aid and barriers placed to limit communication occur simultaneously, it appears these cross-facility similarities are part of a broader policy approach rather than specific to each program or facility.
Despite the breadth of RMX, it remained a largely ineffective and undeniably unlawful way of tackling illegal immigration. Both RMX and AA are part of a collective deterrent strategy by the current administration. Violent crackdowns, hateful political rhetoric and the misrepresentation of the rule of law all underpin the broader policy objectives. Despite the continual evolution of these follow-up iterations, success with this strategy will remain scarce. Border apprehension data from 2019 shows little direct correlation between the introduction of RMX and overall migration trends, despite the program being expanded across more sectors, such as San Diego, El Paso and Yuma. The only decline in numbers occurred in June 2019 in Rio Grande, however, RMX was not in place during this time, therefore the decrease resulted from the internal crackdown in Mexico itself, something that would become a growing trend. In fact, RMX failed to act as a deterrent across its existence, with the largest decreases in traffic coming from these operations on behalf of the Mexican government. The US broadened the crackdown, implementing Prompt Asylum Claim Review (PACR) and Humanitarian Asylum Review Process (HARP) procedures, a set of guidelines ensuring detainment, hearing and deportation on a case-by-case basis within 10 days. With little turnover, fast-track agreements with Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, known as the Asylum Co-operative Agreements (ACA), an asylum-seeker exchange network, was established. Those arriving in the US illegally could be sent to one of the three prior states mentioned, even if there was no guarantee of safety by international standards, adding to the already mounting deterrent measures.
Conclusion
“Alligator Alcatraz” is merely an expansion of US immigration policy under President Trump. The lack of due process, poor living conditions, violence at the hands of officials and secrecy bear all the similar hallmarks of the initial anti-immigration stance pushed through in 2017. With the development of an anti-immigrant sentiment growing since the last election, coupled by the dehumanizing and targeted statements from government officials, it is likely that AA will be only one of a growing list of makeshift facilities designed to deport people as efficiently as possible.
Image: Interior of Alligator Alcatraz, with President Donald Trump in the background
