The torturous methods allegedly used at Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” echo one of the most horrific abuses carried out by the CIA at its secret “black site” prisons after the September 11 attacks.
Guards at the immigration detention center in the Everglades punish detainees by confining them in what inmates call “the box,” a 2x2-foot cage-like structure where their hands and feet are shackled to the ground, and they are unable to sit or move, according to a new report from Amnesty International.
The global human rights organization alleged in a damning 48-page report that the federal Krome North Services Processing Center—and especially Alligator Alcatraz—are subjecting people in detention to punishment and conditions that violate international law.
“Amnesty International considers that detention conditions at both facilities amount to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and in some instances, torture or other ill-treatment,” the report reads. “The use of the ‘box’ at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ constitutes torture.”
The human rights group, which operates in more than 150 countries, interviewed detainees at the ICE-run Krome North Processing Center who had previously been held at Alligator Alcatraz. They all described “the box” similarly: an outdoor, cramped cage where people were held for hours in solitary confinement, exposed to the South Florida sun and mosquitoes with no food or water. Some compared the experience to being a caged animal at a zoo.
“People ended up in the ‘box’ just for asking the guards for anything. I saw a guy who was put in it for an entire day,” one former detainee alleged.
Another said two of his cellmates were dragged to the box by ten guards because he needed his medication, and the men were calling out for help.
“They were taken to the ‘box’ and punished just for trying to help me,” he said. “Any time that anyone demanded that our rights be respected, they were punished.”
The CIA used a similar torture method at its post-9/11 black sites, including on Abu Zubaydah, the longest-held prisoner in the U.S. war on terrorism and the first to be waterboarded by the agency. Zubaydah was held for more than 11 days in a coffin-size confinement box and for 29 hours in a smaller one—still larger than the boxes reportedly used at Alligator Alcatraz—measuring 21 inches wide, 2.5 feet deep, and 2.5 feet high.
Black site detainees were also held naked, forced into stress positions, deprived of sleep and solid food, and physically assaulted—all allegations now being leveled against the Florida immigration center.
“It’s a copy of Guantánamo,” a Cuban man who was detained there for 11 days told Amnesty International. “The conditions are inhuman.”
“Alligator Alcatraz” is the first state-owned and -operated detention center in the United States. A pet project of Gov. Ron DeSantis, allegations of inhumane treatment at the facility—including beatings and gropings—have circulated since its hasty opening on July one.
A spokesperson for the failed presidential candidate rejected Amnesty International’s report as “politically motivated.”
“None of these fabrications are true. In fact, running these allegations without any evidence whatsoever could jeopardize the safety and security of our staff and those being housed at Alligator Alcatraz,” Florida Press Secretary Molly Best wrote in a statement to the Daily Beast.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson slammed the human rights report as “deeply unserious.”
“What a joke,” she wrote in a statement to the Daily Beast. “Alligator Alcatraz is a state-of-the-art facility, with the highest detention standards, that will play a critical role in fulfilling the President’s promise to get the worst criminal illegal aliens out of America as fast as possible.”
A Department of Homeland Security Spokesperson categorically denied all allegations of inhumane treatment in a lengthy statement to the Daily Beast.
“Another day and another hoax about Alligator Alcatraz. Nearly every single day, my office responds to media questions on FALSE allegations about Alligator Alcatraz,” she wrote on Tuesday.
“The media is clearly desperate for these allegations of inhumane conditions at this facility to be true. Here are the facts: Alligator Alcatraz does meet federal detention standards. All detainee facilities are clean. Any allegations of inhumane conditions are FALSE,” she went on. “When will the media stop peddling hoaxes about illegal alien detention centers and start focusing on American victims of illegal alien crime?”
Human rights organizations and the media aren’t the only ones closing in on the detention center.
This summer, civil rights lawyers filed a lawsuit over whether detainees are receiving proper access to an attorney—one of three ongoing legal challenges over conditions at the detention center.
In August, a federal judge ordered the facility to shut down due to environmental concerns, ruling that the state violated federal law by constructing the compound—massive tents erected on an abandoned airstrip, with giant cages holding 35 to 38 inmates—without conducting required environmental assessments.
Because the facility is federally funded, it is subject to the National Environmental Policy Act, which mandates environmental reviews before any “major” federal action or construction project. That order, however, was paused in October by an appellate panel.
President Donald Trump has visited and praised the facility, encouraging other states to replicate it as his administration faces a shortage of detention centers amid its immigration crackdown.
But the detention center comes at a steep price. “Alligator Alcatraz” has already secured more than $360 million in state-issued contracts and is projected to require roughly $450 million annually to operate once fully operational, according to the Amnesty International report.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, meanwhile, has framed building more centers as a “cost-saving effort,” insisting they are “much less per-bed cost than what some of the previous contracts under the Department of Homeland Security were.”
Noem—who is currently fighting off rumors of being axed from Trump’s cabinet—isn’t exactly known for her fiscal intuition. In November, it was reported that she and Corey Lewandowski, her chief adviser turned alleged lover, ordered ten Spirit Airlines jets before realizing the planes had no engines.
