Detainees at a state-run immigration detention center in the middle of the Florida Everglades were held inside phonebooth-sized cages to “reflect on their behavior choices” and “manage their emotions,” according to policy documents uncovered by a federal watchdog. The Department of Homeland Security’s independent inspector general determined that Alligator Alcatraz failed to comply with at least six different detention standards, including basic medical care, food, hygiene and environmental health and safety. Showers were “infested with small bugs” and detainees lacked access to safe food and clean water, with cells containing a single five-gallon water jug next to open toilets, according to the report.
Detainees were given one plastic cup that they couldn’t clean throughout their stay, they said. Cramped metal enclosures were used as “calming areas” that held detainees for up to two hours at a time “to reflect on their behavior choices, manage their emotions, reduce stress, and practice self-directed behavior,” according to the report, citing Homeland Security’s policy manual. Use of those small cages “for any reason is unprecedented,” investigators wrote.
The cage-filled detention complex, which cost more than $1 million a day to operate, was built quickly last summer to support President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, as states raced to build makeshift prisons to boost detention capacity for the administration’s efforts to hold tens of thousands of people. Florida’s state-run facility lasted only a year and closed this summer before the upcoming hurricane season, despite the facility holding detainees throughout the 2025 season. Florida spent at least $300 million on the 3,000-bed project on the site of a decommissioned airstrip roughly 40 miles west of Miami.
Hundreds of Alligator Alcatraz detainees filed federal lawsuits seeking their release, joining a massive wave of litigation against Immigration and Customs Enforcement detentions playing out in federal courtrooms across the country. One lawsuit accused the facility of blocking detainees from legal counsel and forcing people into “overcrowded, unsanitary, and harsh conditions” with inadequate food, flood-prone cells, and “excessive use of force” from guards that sent at least one man to a hospital. Federal investigators made an unannounced visit to the facility in January, several months before it was emptied and effectively closed.
The facility “did not provide detainees with sufficient living space, creating cramped conditions for detainees who spent most of their time in their housing units, which may harm detainees’ physical and mental health,” according to the inspector general. At least 79 detainees were held in the small metal enclosures, which confined them to roughly 18 square feet of space, between July 17, 2025, and January 18, 2026, the report found. National standards require detainees to be given at least 75 square feet of floor space per person, but even the typical cells inside Alligator Alcatraz provided only 28 square feet per detainee, investigators discovered.
Detainees also only showered three days a week, despite federal standards requiring daily access, while “the facility’s showers were infested with small bugs, specifically on the ceilings,” according to the report. Detainees also were offered only one hour of recreation time, three days per week, with limited access to exercise or other activities, which could negatively affect physical and mental health,” the report found. Federal standards require access to at least one hour of recreation per day, five days per week, or a minimum of six hours per week over at least four days.
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