A senior attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union says Florida’s new migrant detention center in the Everglades — “Alligator Alcatraz” — continues to operate outside the bounds of constitutional protections.
“[The government] is running roughshod over the most basic constitutional rights that people have when they are in government custody,” said Eunice Cho, senior counsel with the ACLU’s National Prison Project.
She spoke Sunday on WPLG 10’s “This Week in South Florida” as a federal judge in Miami, beginning Monday, prepares to hear challenges to the detention center.
The ACLU and other groups filed a July 16 lawsuit in Miami federal court challenging Alligator Alcatraz for violating detainees’ due process rights and limiting their access to legal counsel.
“We are hearing stories of officers who are going around the facility pressuring people to sign voluntary removal orders without being able to speak to counsel,” Cho told host Glenna Milberg on Sunday. “We heard a case of an intellectually disabled man being presented with a paper… he was told that he should sign the paper to get a blanket, and it turned out to be a voluntary departure form. And he was deported very soon after.”
Attorneys, she said, have been unable to get clear answers about who controls the detention center.
“It has been very unclear from the very start in that there have been changing positions about who is in whose custody, who is actually paying for the facility,” Cho said. “These are all murky questions that I think the public and the courts are still trying to figure out.”
Cho contrasted the Everglades camp with other immigration facilities.
“There are detention facilities that exist in Florida and the legal authority and the legal arrangements for those are far more typical … this is really a unique situation that nobody really has seen before.”
READ MORE: Detainees at Alligator Alcatraz sue Trump administration for not allowing them access to attorneys
The ACLU lawsuit also disputes the state’s description of detainees
“What is very clear is that the people who are being held at Alligator Alcatraz are far from the picture of what the government has been trying to paint them as,” Cho said. “There are people who have no criminal history whatsoever… people who have been living in the United States and Florida for decades, have had the same job for over 20 years, have five children and families here.”
Some detainees, she added, were in the middle of lawful immigration processes.
“[The government] is running roughshod over the most basic constitutional rights that people have when they are in government custody."Eunice Cho, senior counsel with the ACLU’s National Prison Project
“They really have ongoing petitions to stay in the United States. They have applications because they are married to a U.S. citizen… they came in on a student visa and are in the process of applying for another visa. These are people who have been rounded up and taken to Alligator Alcatraz.”
The lawsuit asks the court to guarantee detainees basic access to the legal system.
“What we want is to make sure that everyone in government custody at Alligator Alcatraz does have the right to communicate with their attorneys… that they’re able to do so in a confidential manner, in a timely manner, so that their case doesn’t meet deadlines before they’re actually able to meet,” Cho said.
She added: “It is not controversial that these are things that should be happening in any detention facility. It is a complete violation of due process for people not to be able to do so.”
Attorneys for detainees at the Everglades facility have called the conditions there deplorable, writing in a court filing that some detainees are showing symptoms of COVID-19 without being separated from the general population. Rainwater floods their tents and officers go cell-to-cell pressuring detainees to sign voluntary removal orders before they’re allowed to consult their attorneys.
“Recent conditions at Alligator Alcatraz have fueled a sense of desperation among detainees,” the attorneys said in the latest court filing.
Conditions at the hastily built detention center were outlined in a filing made last Wednesday ahead of a hearing Monday over the legal rights of the detainees.
Civil rights attorneys want U.S. District Judge Rodolfo Ruiz to ensure that detainees at the facility have confidential access to their lawyers, which the lawyers say they haven’t had.
The state of Florida disputed claims that detainees’ attorneys have been unable to meet with their clients. Since July 15, when videoconferencing started at the facility, the state has granted every request for a detainee to meet with an attorney, and in-person meetings started July 28, state officials said. The first detainees arrived at the beginning of July.
Attorneys for detainees also wanted the judge to identify an immigration court that has jurisdiction over the detention center so that petitions can be filed for the detainees’ bond or release. The civil rights attorneys say they’ve been told regularly that federal immigration courts in Florida don’t have jurisdiction over the detainees held in the Everglades.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
