SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis says the first deportation flights have begun from the new migrant detention center referred to by President Trump and others as Alligator Alcatraz. The remote facility in the Everglades has come under intense scrutiny and generated controversy. Now some people detained there allege harsh treatment by guards. Tim Padgett, with our member station WLRN in Miami, is on the story and joins us now. Tim, thanks so much for being here.
TIM PADGETT, BYLINE: Thank you, Scott.
SIMON: First, please remind us how this detention center came about and immediately became a source of controversy.
PADGETT: Well, it was a very sudden action taken by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis late last month out on an idle airstrip in the remote Everglades, where the concept was that detainees would, of course, be met by alligators and other wildlife if they try to escape. President Trump and DeSantis hope it will serve as a punitive showcase to deter illegal immigration. Critics say it's just one more piece of performative demonization of immigrants. And although Alligator Alcatraz is for immigrant detention, which is supposedly a federal function, it's run by Florida's Division of Emergency Management. But apparently, DeSantis is going to tap into federal FEMA money to reimburse Florida for the $450 million cost of its first year of operation.
Either way, a big reality is that it's a hastily constructed tent structure with caged cells for up to 5,000 detainees. So detainees have complained of substandard food, large mosquitoes, overflowing toilets, scant air conditioning, lights on continuously, a lack of access to showers and especially access to lawyers who say they're not allowed in the facility and can only engage their detainee clients by phone or Zoom.
SIMON: And I gather this week you spoke with a Nicaraguan migrant inside the detention center. What did he say?
PADGETT: Well, he's a 21-year-old asylum-seeker who says he came to the U.S. border in 2023 as a student protester fleeing Nicaragua's brutal Ortega dictatorship. He asked that his name not be used for fear of government retaliation here. He'd been arrested in Fort Lauderdale before this for improper exhibition of a firearm, but he was not convicted. So he's one of the hundreds of noncriminal migrants in Alligator Alcatraz, which is a facility that was supposedly for criminal migrants only. And he claims that after a shouting match with guards last Saturday over detainee clothing regulations, one of them called the man, who is Black, the N-word, and they shackled his hands and feet. He says they then put him outside in what they call the box, a four-by-four-foot square, he said, directly in the hot Florida sun. Here's what he told me.
UNIDENTIFIED MIGRANT: They chained me to the ground. I was in the sunlight from 1 o'clock to, like, 7 o'clock in the evening. This is unhuman. They treat us like real criminals that murdered. We're just immigrants.
PADGETT: Now, he claims that when a fellow detainee from Honduras complained to the guards about this punishment, they did it to him, too.
SIMON: Of course, Tim, it's hard to verify what the detainees say when there's little access for journalists or lawyers in that place. How do officials respond to these allegations?
PADGETT: That's right. But the Florida Division of Emergency Management categorically denies the claims of punishment as, quote, "false." It insists that Alligator Alcatraz guards do not punish detainees and that they follow all proper prison, state and federal protocols. But the other significant response has been from Florida Republicans who insist the public needs to remember that this is essentially a prison, where many, if not most of the detainees do, in fact, have criminal histories, and that it's not supposed to be, as the Florida House speaker said recently, a, quote, "five-star resort."
SIMON: Tim Padgett, WLRN in Miami, thanks so much for being with us.
PADGETT: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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