The controversial but now defunct Everglades migrant detention center known as "Alligator Alcatraz" did in fact employ punitive practices that presented "significant risks to detainee health and safety," according to the Department of Homeland Security's independent watchdog.
In a report released over the weekend, the DHS' Office of Inspector General (OIG) confirms what WLRN reported exclusively more than a year ago — that Alligator Alcatraz was using small enclosures to confine detainees for hours at a time as punishment for infractions including talking back to guards.
In WLRN's July 2025 report, one Nicaraguan detainee said he had been "chained" and made to stand in what he said guards called "the box," exposed to the summer sun with no water.
"I did nothing violent," the detainee, who had no criminal convictions and asked not to be named, told WLRN by phone from inside the facility.
"They treat us like real criminals, like murderers — we’re just immigrants."
READ MORE: 'They chained me to the ground': Detainees at Alligator Alcatraz allege harsh punishment by guards
At the time, a spokesperson for the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which operated Alligator Alcatraz, called such abuse claims "false" and insisted "no guards are punishing detainees."
But the DHS OIG report found that the so-called "box" — "small metal enclosures," it said, of about 18 square feet, which match the Nicaraguan detainee's description of about 16 square feet in WLRN's report — were in fact used between July 2025, when Alligator Alcatraz opened, and January 2026.
"Use of these small metal enclosures for any reason is unprecedented among detention facilities OIG has inspected," the DHS OIG concluded, "and presents significant risks to detainee health and safety."
The report also found "the absence" of many "well defined" federal detention facility standards at Alligator Alcatraz.
Alcatraz, which the report refers to as a Florida Soft-Sided Facility, "did not provide detainees with sufficient living space, creating cramped conditions for detainees who spent most of their time in their housing units, which may harm detainees’ physical and mental health," according to the report.
While the OIG found that Alcatraz did comply with accepted "Intake and Use of Force standards," it failed when it came to environmental health and safety, medical care, food, hygiene and recreation.
Alligator Alcatraz was hastily assembled in the middle of the Everglades west of Miami last summer as part of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' campaign to have the state partner with President Donald Trump's sweeping detentions and deportations of undocumented migrants.
From the start, the facility's conditions were widely condemned as cruel, especially after media reports confirmed that the majority of its detainees were not criminal migrants.
It held more than 1,500 migrant detainees at a time; Florida officials said it processed and deported more than 22,000 until it shut down in June due to serious cost overruns — including almost $1.5 billion pledged to vendors and contractors.
The Trump administration had pledged to reimburse Florida for more than $600 million of the detention center's costs, but so far the state has received less than a sixth of that.
In its response to the OIG report, DHS officials put the blame on Florida for any abuses that occurred at Alligator Alcatraz.
WLRN reached out to the Florida Division of Emergency Management, but it has yet to issue its own response.
At a press conference in Miami on Monday, DeSantis said: "I think some of this stuff is going to be characterized in a certain way, no matter what. But I can tell you, when they set [Alligator Alcatraz] up, their goal was not only to meet the federal standards, but to actually exceed the federal standards."
