A systems engineer who showed up for a site inspection before installing a new intercom system for a Customs and Border Protection office in Florida says he was greeted with handcuffs.
Angel Camacho, a Venezuelan asylum seeker and IT project manager with a master’s degree in telecommunications, has lived in the United States with his family for nearly a decade.
But after he arrived for what he thought was “just another job” at a Border Patrol office last month, agents detained him and sent him to Alligator Alcatraz, the state’s detention camp in the Everglades. He was imprisoned there for 30 days.
Camacho, 43, does not have a criminal history but does not have lawful status. He received temporary protected status after arriving in the country on a tourist visa in 2016 and has applied for permanent residency as the spouse of an American citizen, with whom he is raising American-born children.
“I have a work permit, Social Security number, driver’s license, pay my taxes every year,” he told NBC6 Investigates.
The Trump administration has broadly canceled legal protections for more than 1 million people who were granted humanitarian protections to live and work in the United States, and immigration court judges have dismissed hundreds of pending cases — reversals that have radically expanded a pool of “undocumented” people vulnerable for arrest and removal.
“They didn’t catch me doing anything wrong,” Camacho told the outlet. “I just went there to work, and it was too easy for them to catch me and say, ‘This is an immigrant.’”
Camacho’s employer submitted his driver’s license as part of a security screening and was told he was “approved” for entry, according to a CBP email seen by NBC6. “We just need to know what time he is coming, so we can be prepared,” the email said.
When he showed up the next day on January 6, Camacho was immediately arrested, he said.
“I say, ‘Good morning. I’m Angel. And they say, ‘Oh yes, we are waiting for you,’” he told NBC6. “They say, ‘I have to detain you.’ I said, ‘What are you? Joking?’”
Trump promised that the state’s notorious detention camp would hold “some of the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet,” but only one in four detainees there have criminal convictions, with just 7 percent having convictions for violent crimes, according to ICE data.
Hundreds of Alligator Alcatraz detainees have filed federal lawsuits seeking their release, joining a massive wave of litigation against ICE detentions in federal courtrooms across the country.
Judges are routinely reprimanding government lawyers for flouting court orders that the attorneys for the Department of Justice have conceded they are failing to keep up with.
Earlier this month, a federal appeals court in New Orleans ruled that immigrants who have been arrested in the nation’s interior — not only those who recently crossed the U.S.-Mexico border — may be held without bond hearings while their cases proceed, an argument that is now being tested by federal courts in cases across the country.
In the case of Camacho, who allegedly entered the U.S. legally on a visa in 2016, he was able to get a bond hearing, post $5,000 for his release, and submit to ankle monitoring after his detention, NBC reported.
“That’s the worst nightmare I’ve ever been in,” Camacho said of his experience inside Alligator Alcatraz. “That’s not a place for nobody, especially if you never commit any crime.”
Detainees there have alleged widespread abuse and illness and accused officers of retaliating against them for seeking legal help.
People there have reported being shackled inside a metal cage and left outside without water for up to a day at a time, according to a recent report from Amnesty International.
Homeland Security officials insist that the facility in the Big Cypress National Preserve region of the Florida Everglades is a state-run operation managed by the Florida Division of Emergency Management, though records in a long-running court case appear to show that the state sought and received federal funding for the project, along with guidance on how those funds can be spent.
Administration officials have repeatedly refuted claims of abuse at the facility and encouraged immigrants to “self-deport” to avoid detention.
