A Democratic congresswoman has given a scathing review of the Trump administration’s so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida, describing it as an “internment camp” that needs to be “shut the hell down.”
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who represents Florida’s 25th congressional district, said that pictures of the facility “don’t do it justice” and that detainees were being “packed into cages.”
On Saturday Florida lawmakers from both parties took a state-arranged tour of the new 3,000-bed detention center that the state rapidly built on an isolated airstrip surrounded by swampland in the Everglades.
Speaking at a press conference following the tour, Wasserman Schultz said that the walk-through had been “sanitized” but conditions were nonetheless “appalling.”
“They are essentially packed into cages, wall-to-wall humans, 32 detainees per cage,” she told reporters. “The only thing inside those cages are their bunk beds, and there are three tiny toilets.”
The units, Wasserman Schultz said, have sinks attached to the toilet resulting in detainees having to “brush their teeth where they poop.” There was minimal privacy for any person inside, she added.
“This place needs to be shut the hell down. They’re abusing human beings in cages,” the congresswoman later added in a post on X.
Trump and his allies, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, have touted the makeshift detention center — an agglomeration of tents, trailers and temporary buildings constructed in a matter of days — as an efficient and get-tough response to the president’s call for mass deportations.
Described as temporary, the detention center is meant to help the administration reach its goal of boosting the U.S. migrant detention capacity from 41,000 people to at least 100,000.
The Florida facility’s remote location and its name — a nod to the notorious Alcatraz prison that once housed federal inmates in California — are meant to underscore a message of deterring illegal immigration.
Despite the outrage of Democrats like Wasserman Schultz, other Republicans who took the tour said the conditions were “clean, air conditioned and well-kept.”
“The rhetoric does not match the reality,” said State Senator Blaise Ingoglia, a DeSantis ally. “It’s basically all political theater coming from the [Democrats]. What they’re saying is pure bullshit.”
