Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is pressing the Trump administration to repatriate 14 Mexican nationals being held at Alligator Alcatraz, the the controversial immigration detention center in the Everglades.
“All arrangements are being made to ensure they are repatriated immediately to Mexico,” Sheinbaum told reporters on Tuesday in Mexico City.
Among those being held are two brothers — one a tourist visiting Orlando and the other a recent immigrant — according to the Orlando Sentinel.
The newspaper reported that Carlos Martin Gonzalez, 26, was pulled over for having tinted car windows and a Mexican license plate. The Florida Highway Patrol arrested him for lacking valid car registration.
READ MORE: 'They chained me to the ground': Detainees at Alligator Alcatraz allege harsh punishment by guards
His older brother Oscar Alejandro Gonzalez, 31, later arrived with a car title that did not have either brother's name, and they were both detained and later sent to Alligator Alcatraz, the father of the two men told the Orlando Sentinel. He traveled from Mexico to help resolve the issue.
“I’m scared to be here, but I have to be here because I have to do something," the father told the Orlando Sentinel in an interview in Spanish.
“I hope this will all be resolved soon … it will be hard to leave here without my children, but I have faith in God,” said Martin Gonzalez said. “I will never visit Florida again.”
The Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times reported that of the more than 700 people detained at Alligator Alcatraz, more than 250 people have no criminal convictions or pending charges in the U.S. One third — or about 233 people — have criminal convictions, the report said. While some of those convictions are for violent offenses such as attempted murder, not all are; charges include traffic violations and illegal reentry, the Herald/Times reported.
The Associated Press reported that people facing no criminal charges, including a 15-year-old boy, were being detained at the site.
