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maxwell alejandro frost
'A Form of Torture': Detainees Allege Mistreatment at 'Alligator Alcatraz'
"We're human beings; we're not dogs," said one detainee. "We're like rats in an experiment."
Jul 08, 2025
Detainees at the "Alligator Alcatraz" concentration camp in the Florida Everglades say they are enduring inhumane conditions, including inadequate and maggot-infested food, inability to bathe, flooding, and denial of religious practice, CBS News Miami reported Tuesday.
Officially known as Krome Detention Center, the 5,000-bed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immigration detention facility located on the grounds of a rarely used municipal airport approximately 20 miles west of Miami last week began receiving people arrested during the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign. While U.S. President Donald Trump and other proponents of the prison have sadistically joked about alligators eating escaping prisoners, the biggest dangers faced by detainees are found inside the facility's walls.
"A lot of us have our residency documents and we don't understand why we're here."
"They're not respecting our human rights," one detainee told CBS News Miami during a phone interview. "We're human beings; we're not dogs. We're like rats in an experiment."
"I don't know their motive for doing this, if it's a form of torture," he added. "A lot of us have our residency documents and we don't understand why we're here."
Another inmate, the Cuban reggaeton artist Leamsy La Figura, said guards "only brought a meal once a day and it had maggots."
"They never take off the lights for 24 hours," he claimed. "The mosquitoes are as big as elephants," and "there's no water to take a bath, it's been four days since I've taken a bath."
A Colombian detainee said his mental health is breaking down.
"I'm on the edge of losing my mind. I've gone three days without taking my medicine," he said. "It's impossible to sleep with this white light that's on all day."
"They took the Bible I had and they said here there is no right to religion," the detainee added. "And my Bible is the one thing that keeps my faith, and now I'm losing my faith."
DHS officials have not yet responded to the detainees' allegations.
On Monday, Florida state Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith (D-17) confirmed that "several immigrants who aren't facing any criminal charges" were nevertheless sent from the Orange County Jail in Orlando to Alligator Alcatraz.
This, after Democratic state lawmakers were denied entry to the facility last week. The Florida Division of Emergency Management claimed that "the legal authority cited by the legislators does not extend to this facility in the manner requested."
"Florida statute grants inspection authority to a legislative committee, not to individual legislators engaging in political theater," the agency added.
Meanwhile, Alligator Alcatraz merchandise offered at the Florida Republican Party's online store has been "selling like hotcakes," according to Evan Power, the state GOP chair.
Responding to this, Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.) told The Guardian that "cruelty was always the point."
"Selling hats and merchandise for a place that is about to become a hell on Earth for thousands of people who are going to be subjected to some of the worst conditions and human rights abuses you could think of is disgusting," he added.
'Alligator Alcatraz' Denounced as Epitome of GOP Dehumanization and Cruelty Toward Migrants
"There's no clearer illustration of the brutality of the Trump administration than robbing funds from cities supporting asylum-seekers to build... a f*up Floridian replica of one of our most notorious prisons to disappear, isolate, and abuse immigrants."
Jun 25, 2025
Rights advocates and Democratic officials across the United States this week are condemning the Trump administration and Florida Republicans' effort to construct a migrant detention facility in the Everglades dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz."
Republican Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier laid out plans to transform the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport—previously called the Everglades Jetport—into a temporary detention facility for undocumented immigrants in a video posted on the social media site X last week.
The site "presents an efficient, low-cost opportunity to build a temporary detention facility because you don't need to invest that much in the perimeter. People get out, there's not much waiting for 'em other than alligators and pythons," he said in the video. "Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide."
"Detaining immigrants at a remote airfield in the Everglades, with no clear legal framework or due process, is about fear, not safety."
Citing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Reuters reported that "the Florida facility, estimated to cost $450 million annually, could eventually house up to 5,000 people."
According to The New York Times, "A spokesperson for the attorney general said work on the new facility started on Monday morning." The effort is directly tied to President Donald Trump's push for mass deportations that critics denounce as devastating for families and the economy.
Trump's homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, told USA Today that the facility will be partly funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Shelter and Services Program. Her department said on X that "we are working on cost-effective and innovative ways to deliver on the American people's mandate for mass deportations. Alligator Alcatraz will expand facilities and bed space in just days, thanks to our partnership with Florida."
Responding to that post, Uthmeier wrote that "I'm proud to help support President Trump and Secretary Noem in their mission to fix our illegal immigration problem once and for all. Alligator Alcatraz and other Florida facilities will do just that. We in Florida will fight alongside this administration to keep Florida safe, strong, and free."
Florida turning airfield in the Everglades into "Alligator Alcatraz" to hold detained migrants
[image or embed]
— MSNBC (@msnbc.com) June 24, 2025 at 1:16 PM
The plan has been lambasted by some local environmentalists and Indigenous people, as well as Florida Democrats. José Javier Rodríguez, a Democrat running to be the state's attorney general, said in a Wednesday statement that Uthmeier's Alligator Alcatraz "isn't a serious plan, it's a reckless, rushed project that puts lives and resources at risk."
"Detaining immigrants at a remote airfield in the Everglades, with no clear legal framework or due process, is about fear, not safety," he continued. "The most obvious reason seems to be political theater, just trying to get attention in Washington, rather than looking out for the interests of our state and its people."
"Now they're funding it with FEMA dollars—money meant to help us prepare for hurricanes and natural disasters, especially in states like Florida," he added, also noting Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' use of emergency powers to seize the site.
Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.) also blasted the plan, saying in a Tuesday statement that "Donald Trump, his administration, and his enablers have made one thing brutally clear: They intend to use the power of government to kidnap, brutalize, starve, and harm every single immigrant they can—because they have a deep disdain for immigrants and are using them to scapegoat the serious issues facing working people."
"They would rather us point fingers at immigrants for the housing crisis, violence, lack of healthcare, and high costs that plague our nation rather than blame the inaction of politicians and greedy corporations," he argued. "This was never about public safety. It was never about putting America first."
Frost continued:
They target migrants, rip families apart, and subject people to conditions that amount to physical and psychological torture in facilities that can only be described as hell on Earth. Now, they want to erect tents in the blazing Everglades sun and call it immigration enforcement. They don't care if people live or die; they only care about cruelty and spectacle.
I've toured these facilities myself—real ones, not the makeshift tents they plan to put up—and even those detention centers contain conditions that are nothing short of human rights abuses. Places where people are forced to eat, sleep, shower, and defecate all in the same room. Places where medical attention is virtually nonexistent.
Anyone who supports this is a disgusting excuse for a human being, let alone a public servant.
Frost wasn't the only federal lawmaker who sounded the alarm this week. Congresswoman Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), a fierce critic of the president's anti-migrant agenda, said Tuesday that "there's no clearer illustration of the brutality of the Trump administration than robbing funds from cities supporting asylum-seekers to build 'Alligator Alcatraz.'"
"Nope, that's not an island for bad-behaving alligators your family could visit after Disney," she wrote on social media. "It's a f*up Floridian replica of one of our most notorious prisons to disappear, isolate, and abuse immigrants."
Notably, Trump last month advocated for reopening the island prison of Alcatraz in California's San Francisco Bay.
'The GOP Promised to Make Life Easier for Working Families,' But Here's the Real Agenda
"Mike Johnson is committing to slashing Social Security and Medicare to get the speaker's gavel," said one progressive group.
Jan 03, 2025
As Republicans took full control of Congress this week and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump prepared to take office later this month, Democratic lawmakers renewed warnings about how the GOP agenda will harm working people and pledged to fight against it.
"Today, the 119th Congress officially begins. Our top priority over the next two years must be fighting for working families and standing up to corporate power and greed," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair emeritus of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said on social media Friday.
"While Republicans focus their energy for the next two years on giving tax breaks to the rich and cutting vital public programs, Democrats will continue working to lower costs and raise wages for all," Jayapal promised. "We'll always be fighting for YOU."
In addition to members of Congress being sworn in on Friday, nearly all Republicans in the House of Representatives reelected Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) as speaker and the chamber debated a rules package that Democrats have criticized since it was released by GOP leadership earlier this week.
"Their governance will be marked by consolidated power, scapegoated communities, and campaigns of punishment."
The package fast-tracks a dozen bills on a range of issues; they include various immigration measures as well as legislation attacking transgender student athletes, sanctioning the International Criminal Court, requiring proof of United States citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, and prohibiting a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for fossil fuels.
"Speaker Johnson has said that the 119th Congress will be consequential. Today, both in Speaker Johnson's address and in the rules package the Republicans have passed, Republicans have shown us what the consequences of their leadership will be," Rep. Delia C. Ramirez (D-Ill.) said in a statement. "In their first order of business, Republicans advanced a legislative package that abuses the power of Congress to persecute trans children athletes, take federal funding away from sanctuary cities like Chicago and Illinois, scapegoat immigrants, erode voting rights, and put new criminal penalties on reproductive care providers."
"For the first time in history, they seek to make the speakership less accountable to the full body of legislators and to limit our ability to consider emergency bills," Ramirez noted. "Overall, they are using the rules to make Congress less transparent, less accountable, and less responsive to the needs of the American people. Their governance will be marked by consolidated power, scapegoated communities, and campaigns of punishment."
Speaking out against the package on the House floor, Jayapal said it "makes very clear what the Republican majority will not do in the 119th Congress," stressing that the 12 bills "do nothing to lower costs or raise wages for the American people."
These bills also won't "take on the biggest corporations and wealthiest individuals who profit from the high prices and junk fees and corporate concentration that's harming Americans across this country," she said. "Because guess what? These corporations and wealthy individuals are the ones that are controlling the Republican Party for their own benefit."
Jayapal highlighted the exorbitant wealth of Trump's Cabinet picks, just a day after the president-elect announced corporate lobbyist and GOP donor Ken Kies as his choice for assistant secretary for tax policy at the Treasury Department—which is set to be led by billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, as Republicans in Congress try to pass another round of tax cuts for the rich.
GOP lawmakers are also aiming "to make meaningful spending reforms to eliminate trillions in waste, fraud, and abuse, and end the weaponization of government," Johnson said in a lengthy social media on Friday. "Along with advancing President Trump's America First agenda, I will lead the House Republicans to reduce the size and scope of the federal government, hold the bureaucracy accountable, and move the United States to a more sustainable fiscal trajectory."
In other words, responded the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), "Mike Johnson is committing to slashing Social Security and Medicare to get the speaker's gavel."
Republicans have a slim House majority and Trump-backed Johnson was initially set to fall short of the necessary support to remain speaker, due to opposition from not only Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) but also Reps. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and Keith Self (R-Texas). However, after a private conversation, Norman and Self switched their votes.
"Johnson cut a backroom deal with the members that voted against him so they'd flip their votes. So he will get gavel now. I'm sure in time we'll find out what he sold out just so he'd win," Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.) said on social media.
"What did Johnson sell out to become speaker? Social Security or Medicare? Or perhaps veterans?" he asked.
Citing a document circulated ahead of the vote by Johnson's right-wing critics that lists "failures" of the 118th Congress, the PCCC said: "Looks like all of the above. But his holdouts put Social Security in their first bullet of grievances."
After the vote, Norman and 10 right-wing colleagues released a letter explaining that, despite sincere reservations, they elected Johnson because of their "steadfast support of President Trump and to ensure the timely certification of his electors."
"To deliver on the historic mandate earned by President Trump for the Republican Party, we must be organized to use reconciliation—and all legislative tools—to deliver on critical border security, spending cuts, pro-growth tax policy, regulatory reform, and the reversal of the damage done by the Biden-Harris administration," they added.
Politico reported that "House Republicans are hoping to start work on the budget targets for critical committees on Saturday—the first step in kicking off their ambitious legislative agenda involving energy, border, and tax policy."
According to the outlet:
"The Ways and Means Committee is just going to be able to draft tax legislation according to what the budget reconciliation instructions are," said House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.), who will be leading the charge on extensions of... Trump's tax cuts.
"And so when the conference figures out what they want in those instructions, we'll be able to deliver according to those parameters," said Smith, when asked about the primary goal of a GOP conference meeting tentatively scheduled for Saturday at Fort McNair, an Army post in southwest Washington.
That followed Thursday reporting by The Washington Post that Trump advisers and congressional Republicans "have begun floating proposals to boost federal revenue and slash spending so their plans for major tax cuts and new security spending won't further explode the $36.2 trillion national debt."
As the newspaper detailed, 10 policies that Republicans have considered are tariffs, repealing clean energy programs, unauthorized spending, repealing the Biden administration's student loan forgiveness, shuttering the Education Department, cutting federal food assistance, imposing Medicaid work requirements, blocking Medicare obesity treatment, ending the child tax credit for noncitizen parents, and cutting Internal Revenue Service funding.
"The GOP promised to make life easier for working families," Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), the Democratic whip, said on social media in response to the Post's article. "Now, they want to slash your school budget, raise your grocery costs, and hike your energy bills—all to pay for billionaire tax cuts."
"We will not allow Republicans to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and food assistance to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy," she added Friday. "No way."
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