OCHOPEE, Florida (AP) — Democratic lawmakers condemned the conditions at the new Everglades immigrant detention center in Florida after visiting it on Saturday, describing it as overcrowded, unsanitary, and crawling with insects. The Republicans said they didn’t see any of that during the same tour of the remote facility that authorities have dubbed the “Alligator Alcatraz” or “Alcatraz of the Alligators” in English.
The visit, organized by the state government, came after several Democrats were previously denied access to the 3,000-bed detention center that the state rushed to build on an isolated airstrip ringed by swamps. So many state legislators and members of Congress showed up on Saturday that they were divided into several groups.
“There are conditions truly disturbing and vile, and this place needs to be shut down immediately,” said federal Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to reporters after touring the cluster of tents, trailers, and temporary buildings. “This place is a sideshow, and they are abusing human beings here.”
Cage-like units housing 32 people share three combined toilet-and-sink fixtures; visitors measured the temperature at 28 degrees Celsius (83 degrees Fahrenheit) at the entrance to a housing area and 29 degrees Celsius (85 degrees Fahrenheit) in a medical intake area, and crickets and other insects were reportedly abundant, she and her Florida Democratic colleagues said.
While the visitors were not allowed to speak with detainees, Democratic Representative Maxwell Alejandro Frost said one detainee shouted “I am a U.S. citizen!” and others yelled “Freedom!”
State Senator Blaise Ingoglia, a Florida Republican, countered that he had seen a well-managed and safe facility where housing was clean and the air conditioning functioned properly.
“The rhetoric from the Democrats doesn’t match reality,” Ingoglia asserted, noting that he walked the site with the same group that Wasserman Schultz joined. He recalled that a handful of detainees became “a little loud” when the visitors appeared, but he said he couldn’t understand what they were saying.
Senator Jay Collins said he was in another group and also found the detention center clean and operating smoothly: “There’s no misery.”
Collins, a Republican, pointed out backup generators, a system to track dietary needs, and military-style bunk beds with solid mattresses. The sanitation provisions appeared adequate, though basic.
“Would you want that toilet-and-sink combination in your home bathroom? Probably not, but this is a temporary holding facility,” Collins said over the phone.
Journalists were not permitted to tour, and lawmakers were instructed not to bring phones or cameras into the detention center.
Requests for comment were sent to the Florida Division of Emergency Management, the agency that built the facility, and to staff of Governor Ron DeSantis, the Republican. DeSantis spokesperson Molly Best highlighted one of Ingoglia’s optimistic comments in a social post.
Elsewhere in the state, in Tampa, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that “any problems there have been addressed” at the Everglades detention center. She added that she has been talking with five other Republican governors—unnamed—about establishing additional facilities modeled after this one.
DeSantis and his fellow Republicans have pitched the improvised detention center—a swarming of tents, trailers, and temporary buildings put together in days—as a decisive, hard-line response to President Donald Trump’s call for mass deportations. The first detainees arrived on July 3, after Trump toured the site and praised the facility.
The center, described as temporary, is meant to help the Trump administration reach its goal of expanding U.S. migrant detention capacity from about 41,000 to at least 100,000. The Florida location and its name—a nod to the infamous Alcatraz prison that once housed federal inmates in California—are intended to underscore a deterrence message against irregular migration.
Before the facility opened, officials said detainees would have access to medical care, continuous air conditioning, an outdoor recreation yard, legal counsel, and clergy.
But detainees, their families, and advocates have told The Associated Press that conditions are appalling and that the food is worm-infested, toilets overflow onto the floors, mosquitoes buzz around fenced bunks, and the air conditioning sometimes fails in the humid Florida summer heat. One man told his wife detainees go days without a shower.
Stephanie Hartman, a spokesperson for Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, called those descriptions “completely false,” saying detainees consistently receive three meals a day, unlimited potable water, showers, and other essentials.
“The facility meets all required standards and is fully operational,” she stated.
Five Democratic state lawmakers attempted to visit the site when it opened on July 3 but were denied access. The state later organized the Saturday tour.
The lawmakers filed a suit over the denial, arguing that DeSantis’s administration blocked their oversight authority. A DeSantis spokesperson dismissed the suit as “silly.”
