Detainees at Florida’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ say they were punished for seeking legal help
FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) — Two former detainees at an immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz” testified Wednesday that they were punished for seeking legal advice and had to use soap to write down attorneys’ phone numbers because they didn’t have access to pen and paper.
The two men, who were deported to Colombia and Haiti, testified via video in a federal court in Fort Myers, Florida, that their monitored calls to people outside the detention center would be dropped whenever they talked about trying to get an attorney.
During a two-day hearing that started Wednesday, civil rights attorneys representing the former detainees sought a temporary injunction from U.S. District Judge Sheri Polster Chappell that would ensure that detainees at the state-run Everglades facility get the same access to their attorneys as they do at federally run detention centers. The Everglades facility was built last summer at a remote airstrip by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration.
The former detainees’ lawsuit claims that their First Amendment rights were violated. They say their attorneys have to make an appointment to visit three days in advance, unlike at other immigration detention facilities where lawyers can just show up during visiting hours; that detainees often are transferred to other facilities before their attorneys’ appointments to see them; and that scheduling delays have been so lengthy that detainees were unable to meet with attorneys before key deadlines.
The former detainees testified remotely from their home countries using translators and only their initials to protect their identities. While at the facility, the former detainee from Haiti said he was asked to sign documents he didn’t understand, which ended up being papers to self-deport to Haiti, where he feared returning. He had asked for asylum in the United States.
He then was presented with a second set of papers which a person in the detention center explained to him would get him self-deported to Mexico, which he signed because of his fear of returning to Haiti. In the end, he was sent back to Haiti, he said.
“I had to sign the documents,” he said. “I wasn’t able to speak first with attorneys… they forced me to do it.”
State officials who are defendants in the lawsuit denied restricting the detainees’ access to their attorneys and cited security and staffing reasons for any challenges. Federal officials who also are defendants denied that their First Amendment rights were violated.
Mark Saunders, an official with a private contractor overseeing operations dealing with attorney communications at the Everglades facility, testified that detainees have been meeting with their lawyers. He said that for at least the past six weeks the detention center has mandated that no attorney would be turned away.
Any written requests by attorneys to meet with detainees are answered within 24 hours and cellphones are available for confidential calls, Saunders said.
When the former detainee from Colombia asked to speak to an attorney, he said: “One officer told us that we did not have to fight our cases because they were already lost.” He said each time he asked his relatives on a call to help him to connect with a lawyer, “the call immediately dropped.”
He also said when he arrived at the detention center, they took away his medication, making it “very difficult” for his health.
Neither the attorneys from Florida nor federal attorneys said how many people are detained at the facility.
Juan Lopez Vega, deputy field office director of ICE’s enforcement and removal operations in Miami, unsuccessfully tried to quash a subpoena to appear in court. Even though his job included oversight of the state-run facility, he testified Wednesday that he had only visited the center once, when it was inaugurated in the summer of 2025.
The case over access to legal counsel was one of three federal lawsuits challenging practices at the immigration detention center. Another lawsuit brought by detainees in federal court in Fort Myers argued that immigration was a federal issue, and Florida agencies and private contractors hired by the state had no authority to operate the facility under federal law. That lawsuit ended earlier this month after the immigrant detainee who filed the case agreed to be deported from the United States.
In the third lawsuit, a federal judge in Miami last summer ordered the facility to temporarily pause operations because officials had failed to do a review of the detention center’s environmental impact. But an appellate court panel put that decision on hold for the time being, allowing the facility to stay open.
In addition to the Everglades facility, other detention centers under scrutiny include ICE facilities at the Fort Bliss Army base in El Paso, Texas; one in Miami; and others in California City and Adelanto, both in California.
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