More than a week after several state legislators were denied access to Alligator Alcatraz, federal and state lawmakers on Saturday were given a supervised tour of the controversial facility used to house and process suspected undocumented immigrants.
U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, was joined by other Democratic members of Congress, including U.S. Rep. Darren Soto, of Orlando, U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, of Orlando and U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, of Parkland. Also on the tour was a bipartisan group of nearly two dozens state legislators, including Democratic state lawmakers denied access last week.
Democrats described harsh and horrific conditions for those imprisoned in cages crammed with 32 adult men in each.
" They are using cages. These detainees are living in cages. The pictures that you've seen don't do it justice. They are essentially packed into cages, wall to wall humans," said Wasserman Schultz.
But Republican state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, of Spring Hill, painted a different picture.
" I will tell you is that the rhetoric does not match the reality from what you guys have been hearing from Democrats, especially congressional Democrats. It's actually a very well-run facility. The idea that the detainees are in there and they're in squalid conditions is just not accurate," he said.
The large cadre of Democratic lawmakers scoffed at his remarks.
" Unfortunately, my colleagues, they take this as a game. And that's how they have been operating in there, but what we just saw is not a game," said state Sen. Shevrin Jones, of Miami Gardens.
The group on Saturday was originally told they would get a 90-minute tour, but an email sent late Friday night said the group would be broken up into three separate 30-minute tours. Instead the group received a tour that was more than two and a half hours long.
“My heart is broken, leaving this place,” said Frost. “It's very emotional to see people caged like that, to see, humans caged like that.”
Frost and others said they were not allowed access to the detentions units that were in use or the medical facility on site.
" We have done multiple ICE detention, unannounced visits, and been able to see the medical units," said Frost in reference to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the lead federal agency in charge of President Donald Trump's aggressive nationwide deportation campaign.
Frost said he was told by detention staff that the facility currently held nearly 1,000 detainees — all male adults — and that the capacity would grow to 4,000 in August.
The Associated Press reported Friday that people being held there say worms turn up in the food, toilets don’t flush, flooding floors are filled with fecal waste, and mosquitoes and other insects are everywhere. Detainees are said to go days without showering or getting prescription medicine, and they are only able to speak by phone to lawyers and loved ones. At times the air conditioners abruptly shut off in the sweltering heat.
The AP based its reporting on interviews with attorneys and relatives of those detained at Alligator Alcatraz. Authorities have denied media access to the facility or detainees.
The Democratic lawmakers verified some of those same claims. They reported the housing unit they were allowed to see was infested with bugs. And that the facility was very hot, even in air-conditioned units.
" They only let us go up to the entranceway of where they were housing the detainees. They would not let us even a step past the threshold. It was 83 degrees. That was without being all the way in with all of the bodies that were living inside," said Wasserman Schultz.
But their inability to view certain areas of the facility hindered their opportunity to verify other claims, including those about the conditions of the bathrooms.
" Some of the biggest complaints we've heard is that there's three toilets, but a lot of the time only one is working and they get backed up. Feces are being spread everywhere. And I asked them, I want to come in and I wanna see the toilets. They said, we'll show you the toilets of a new unit that no one's in yet," said Frost.
READ MORE: Florida legislator expects 'sanitized version' of Alligator Alcatraz in scheduled weekend tour
State and federal officials dispute the negative descriptions of the conditions at the detention center reported by the Associated Press.
“The reporting on the conditions in the facility is completely false. The facility meets all required standards and is in good working order," said Stephanie Hartman, a spokesperson with the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which built the center.
Frost said authorities showed lawmakers the cages but did not allow them to go into the tent or speak to any of those being detained.
“I saw a lot of people, young men who looked like me and people who were my age, people who were yelling, help me, help me,” said Frost, whose mother is a Cuban refugee. “I heard in the back, someone say, I'm a US. citizen.”
“As we were walking away, they started chanting [in Spanish], ‘Libertad, Libertad, Libertad … Freedom.”
Speedy construction
Florida officials built the facility of heavy-duty tents, trailers and temporary buildings in eight days as part of the state’s efforts to help carry out Trump’s national immigration crackdown.
It includes more than 200 security cameras, 28,000-plus feet of barbed wire and 400 security staff. Inside the compound’s large white tents, rows of bunkbeds are surrounded by chain-link cages.
The facility is located at an airport used for training about 50 miles west of Miami and will have a capacity of about 3,000 detainees when fully operational, according to state officials.
The center is estimated to cost $450 million a year, with the expenses incurred by Florida and reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a U.S. official said.
“Every Floridian should be ashamed of the fact that our taxpayer money is being used for this internment camp, where people are in horrible conditions,” said Frost.
He added that Gov. Ron DeSantis “is using our taxpayer money for a [political] stunt” and “it's not a stunt with zero victims — a stunt that is using humans.”
“I left the camp with more questions than when I went in," said House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell, D-Tampa. "How is a collection of tents and fences costing us $450 million dollars? Who could possibly think this is a good use of our money? Why are DeSantis’ attention-seeking stunts so expensive?
Trump and other top administration officials toured the facility on July 1. It was heralded by Trump and Republicans as a potential model for other states to aggressively ramp up detention and deportation efforts.
Protesters have decried the facility as an inhumane makeshift prison camp, but supporters have embraced it as an innovative” and “cost-effective” way for the federal government to operationalize enough detention space to carry out Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
State legislators denied access
Days after Trump visited, a group of Democratic Florida legislators arrived at the detention center to tour.
But state Sen. Jones, state Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando, along with state Reps. Dr. Anna V. Eskamani, D-Orlando, Angie Nixon, D-Jacksonville, and Michele Rayner, D-St. Petersburg, said they were “illegally” denied access.
The legislators have since sued DeSantis and other state officials, saying he overstepped his authority in blocking legislative oversight.
“Florida law is unambiguous — state legislators have full access to inspect any state-operated facility. This is not a federal facility,” said the legislators. “Denying us entry is not only unlawful — it’s a disgrace.”
In response, DeSantis administration officials on Wednesday invited state and federal lawmakers to tour the facility on Saturday.
The federal legislators vowed that they would return to conduct unannounced oversight visits, a right they say is granted to them by federal law because the facility is "working had in glove with ICE" in reference to Immigration Customs and Enforcement.
Legal fight over Alligator Alcatraz
The immigration detention center has drawn intense criticism from immigrant advocates, environment activists and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida.
Environmental groups and Native American tribes have protested against the center, contending it is a threat to the fragile Everglades system, would be cruel to detainees because of heat and mosquitoes, and is on land the tribes consider sacred.
The environmental groups contend that the facility should be halted because it threatens environmentally sensitive areas and species in the Everglades and Big Cypress National Preserve.
Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit last month seeking a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to put the project on hold until legal wrangling is resolved.
WLRN's Sergio Bustos contributed to this story.
