By JENNIFER PELTZ and ALEXANDRIA RODRIGUEZ Associated Press
OCHOPEE, Fla. (AP) — Democratic lawmakers condemned Florida’s new Everglades immigration detention center after visiting Saturday, describing it as crowded, unsanitary and bug-infested. Republicans on the same tour said they saw nothing of the sort at the remote facility that officials have dubbed “ Alligator Alcatraz.”
The state-arranged tour came after some Democrats were blocked earlier from viewing the 3,000-bed detention center that the state rapidly built on an isolated airstrip surrounded by swampland. So many state legislators and members of Congress turned up Saturday that they were split into multiple groups.
“There are really disturbing, vile conditions and this place needs to be shut the hell down,” U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat, told reporters after visiting the agglomeration of tents, trailers and temporary buildings. “This place is a stunt, and they’re abusing human beings here.”
Cage-style units of 32 men share three combination toilet-sink devices, the visitors measured the temperature at 83 degrees (28 degrees Celsius) in a housing area entranceway and 85 (29 Celsius) in a medical intake area, and grasshoppers and other insects abound, she and her fellow Florida Democrats said.
Although the visitors said they were not able to speak with the detainees, Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost, also a Democrat, said one called out “I’m an American citizen!” and others chanted “Libertad!,” Spanish for “freedom.”
State Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, a Republican from Florida, countered that he had seen a well-run, safe facility where the living quarters were clean and the air conditioning worked well.
“The rhetoric coming out of the Democrats does not match the reality,” said Ingoglia, who said he toured in the same group as Wasserman Schultz. Ingoglia said a handful of detainees became “a little raucous” when the visitors appeared, but he did not make out what they were saying.
State Sen. Jay Collins was in another group and said he also found the detention center to be clean and functioning well: “No squalor.”
Collins, a Republican, said he saw backup generators, a tracking system for dietary restrictions and military-style bunks with good mattresses. The sanitation devices struck him as appropriate, if basic.
“Would I want that toilet-and-sink combination at my bathroom at the house? Probably not, but this is a transitional holding facility,” Collins said by phone.
Journalists were not allowed on the tour, and lawmakers were instructed not to bring phones or cameras inside.
Messages seeking comment were sent to the state Division of Emergency Management, which built the facility, and to representatives for Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican. DeSantis spokesperson Molly Best highlighted one of Ingoglia’s upbeat readouts on social media.
Across the state in Tampa, federal Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that of the Everglades detention center that “any issues that were there have been addressed.” She added that she has talked with five unnamed Republican governors about modeling other facilities on it.
DeSantis and fellow Republicans have touted the makeshift detention center, constructed in days as an efficient and get-tough response to President Donald Trump’s call for mass deportations. The first detainees arrived July 3, after Trump toured and praised the facility.
Described as temporary, it is meant to help the Republican president’s administration reach its goal of boosting 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.
Ahead of the facility’s opening, state officials said detainees would have access to medical care, consistent air conditioning, a recreation yard, attorneys and clergy members.
But detainees and their relatives and advocates have told The Associated Press that conditions are awful, with worm-infested food, toilets overflowing onto floors, mosquitoes buzzing around the fenced bunks, and air conditioners that sometimes shut off in the oppressive South Florida summer heat. One man told his wife that detainees go days without getting showers.
Division of Emergency Management spokesperson Stephanie Hartman called those descriptions “completely false,” saying detainees always get three meals a day, unlimited drinking water, showers and other necessities.
“The facility meets all required standards and is in good working order,” she said.
Five Democratic state lawmakers tried to visit the site July 3 but said they were denied access. The state subsequently arranged Saturday’s tour.
The lawmakers have sued over the earlier denial, accusing the DeSantis administration of impeding their oversight authority. A DeSantis spokesperson has called the lawsuit “dumb.”
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Peltz reported from New York, and Rodriguez reported from Ochopee.