Detainees Being Deported from ‘Alcatraz’

By Dara Kam, The News Service of Florida

TALLAHASSEE — About 100 undocumented immigrants have been deported from an airstrip adjoining the detention center dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” and “the cadence” of outgoing flights is increasing, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday.

Speaking to reporters outside the detention complex in the Everglades, DeSantis and other state officials staunchly defended Florida’s efforts to aid President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts amid litigation over the controversial site.

“We’re here today to say this was never intended to be something where people are just held and we just kind of twiddle our thumbs. The whole purpose is to make this be a place that can facilitate increased frequency and numbers of deportations of illegal aliens, and that is the goal,” DeSantis said.

DeSantis said “hundreds of illegals have been removed” from the facility by U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials. About 100 detainees were deported directly to other countries from the airstrip known as the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, and an unspecified number of people were taken to sites in other states to be processed, according to DeSantis.

“We look forward to the cadence (of the flights) increasing,” DeSantis added.

State officials said the center, quickly erected late last month, is designed to alleviate a federal detention-bed shortage for people who are in the country illegally. The site has a capacity of 2,000 people and could be built out to house up to 4,000 detainees if necessary, state Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said Friday.

Attorneys representing detainees in a federal class-action lawsuit assert that some of the people at the complex have not exhausted their legal remedies and have not been ordered to be removed from the U.S. The lawsuit alleges that people held at the complex unlawfully are being denied access to legal representation and are unable to contest their detention.

Guthrie said Friday that detainees should have onsite access to legal representation on Monday and that officials were slated “to go with that almost 24/7 if we need to.”

Responding to Guthrie’s comments, an American Civil Liberties Union spokeswoman said “significant due process concerns” remain for detainees, an issue the organization expects the federal judge to consider.

“It should never take a lawsuit, media attention and public outcry just to ensure that people being detained in cages can speak to a lawyer,” Keisha Multford, deputy director of communications for the ACLU of Florida, said in a statement.

DeSantis contended Friday that people locked up at the complex have been issued what is known as a “final removal order” by federal officials and are set to be deported.

“This should be a pretty simple process. You either have a right to be here or you don’t. … But, yeah, they’ve been ordered to be removed from the country,” DeSantis said.

Multford said “it is absolutely not the case” that all of the people detained at the facility have had final orders of removal. Lawyers and families of detainees “have repeatedly attested to this,” she added.

“Regardless, individuals with removal orders are still entitled to due process and access to legal counsel to challenge those orders,” Multford said.

Guthrie on Friday also heatedly denied that detainees were receiving inadequate medical care at the facility.

“Absolute crap,” he said, when asked about the issue.

But Catherine Blankenship, an attorney with the Sanctuary of the South, said her client Michael Borrego Fernandez’s experience “tells a different story.”

According to the lawsuit, Borrego, who was born in Cuba, was transported from the facility to a hospital after experiencing profuse bleeding this month. Borrego, who is one of the named plaintiffs in the case, returned to the detention center after a few days but was not provided with prescribed antibiotics, the lawsuit alleged.

“He has reported blood in his stool, continued bleeding, and great need for postoperative care that he is not receiving. … It is shameful that the government has opened this facility without ensuring access to counsel or even the basic ability to responsibly care for human beings held there,” Blankenship told The News Service of Florida in an email, adding that the facility “should be shut down.”

As the dragnet of undocumented immigrants ramps up, DeSantis and other state officials are advising people who are in the country illegally to leave the U.S. before they are detained.

DeSantis pointed to a program launched by the Trump administration in May that allows people who voluntarily register for self-deportation using a federal mobile app to have their travel expenses paid and receive $1,000 after they arrive in their home countries.

Larry Keefe, executive director of the new State Board of Immigration Enforcement, urged people to self-deport instead of winding up at a place such as Alligator Alcatraz. 

“If you do not … you will very likely be in a place just like this, if not this place, and you will be here for the entire duration of the time that you are exhausting your due process rights. You will not be living freely in our communities while you are awaiting the due process to take place for years or months,” Keefe said.

Guthrie also pushed back against allegations that the facility could harm the Everglades and the surrounding Big Cypress National Preserve. Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity filed a federal lawsuit alleging that state and federal officials violated federal law by failing to conduct an environmental-impact study before building the facility.

Guthrie said Friday that the facility “is surrounded by 39 square miles of natural buffer” and that 100 flights a day previously occurred at the taxiway now being used to deport immigrants.

“All of a sudden, the governor is tearing up the environment. … There’s much less than 100 flights a day coming in and out of this facility,” Guthrie told reporters.

But Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, said the governor’s visit to the facility underscores its threat to the sensitive Everglades ecosystem.

“Jet fuel is being trucked into the site, human sewage is being trucked out, and at least 20 acres of new pavement have been laid — all without the legally required environmental impact analysis. This is an Everglades catastrophe unfolding before our eyes, which is why we’ve taken legal action,” Samples said in a statement.