Amnesty International Describes Alligator Alcatraz Like a Torture-Fueled CIA Black Site

When Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz,” the much more widely used name for the South Florida Detention Facility, went into use in July to detain immigrants swept up in Donald Trump’s ambitiously cruel deportation machine, we didn’t shy away from labeling the facility as emblematic of the “era of the new concentration camp,” this time on American soil. The allegations of abuse and mismanagement in the detainment center, illogically located within the middle of the swamp that is the Big Cypress National Preserve, began pretty much immediately, with floods inundating the hastily erected facility in dirty water and pestilence before it had even opened. Such basic environmental concerns were at the heart of a court order in August to shut down the facility, in which a U.S. District Judge cited that “the project creates irreparable harm in the form of habitat loss and increased mortality to endangered species in the area,” among other things. But wouldn’t you know it: A Federal appeals court would block the closure with its own order in October, authored by a judge whose spouse has close business ties to Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis. The Trump administration was not about to let its intentional cruelty be thwarted.

Now, an incendiary new report from international human rights organization Amnesty International is making the latest in a series of widely-ignored-by-lawmakers accusations about not just cruelty but outright torture at the site, which has also been linked with literally hundreds of detainees going missing from ICE’s online locator system–nothing new, given that ICE frequently interacts with people who have gone missing and may be alive or dead. Still, one would hope that Amnesty International’s graphic descriptions of CIA black site-like torture methods (such as migrants stuck in 2×2 foot metal boxes in the sun) now allegedly being employed in the state-run detainment camp in Florida would provoke stronger cries to shut down the barbaric facility, which is meant to be serving as a temporary holding site prior to deportation proceedings but instead for many prisoners seems to involve nothing but punitive treatment followed by seemingly random transfers to other facilities. You can read the full report, in shocking detail, here.

Many of the horrors present in the Amnesty International report have already been described before, but that doesn’t make them any less horrible. We’re talking about stuff like overflowing toilets and flooded rooms, 24/7 fluorescent lighting, and restricted access to food, water and medicine. But the report also contains specific instances of abuse witnessed personally by the non-governmental human rights organization’s own staffers at Miami’s Krome immigration processing center, which is operated by a private, for-profit company (Akima Global Services LLC) on behalf of the Trump administration, in addition to statements from detainees about Alligator Alcatraz itself. Try not to fly into a rage, reading this excerpt:

Amnesty International witnessed firsthand the disciplinary action taken against individuals detained at Krome. When touring the Special Management Unit of the facility, a man being held in solitary confinement put a sign through the metal flap opening in the door saying, “Help Me. I’m on Hunger Strike.” Amnesty International staff asked if they could speak with the individual and were initially allowed. Kneeling to hear the man through the metal flap, Amnesty International was told by ICE officials that the man had a broken hand and was being held in solitary confinement because he was on a hunger strike. The man showed Amnesty his bruised and mangled hand and said he had been waiting 37 days to receive medical attention for his hand. As the man was describing his injuries, an ICE official repeatedly and violently slammed the metal flap against the injured man’s hands and forced Amnesty International out of the solitary confinement area stating, “This is a detained population. They can be dangerous. Allow security to do their jobs, also he’s not on a hunger strike. He ate yesterday and today.”

Meanwhile, at Alligator Alcatraz, detainees are reportedly being subjected to the same types of interrogation torture that were applied to suspected terrorists at infamous sites like Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, such as “cramped confinement” outdoors, in metal boxes or cages so small that the person is chained in a hunched ball, unable to move. To again quote the report: