MIAMI (AP) \u2014 Worms in the food. Toilets that don\u2019t flush, flooding floors with fecal waste. Days without a shower or prescription medicine. Mosquitoes and insects everywhere. Lights on all night. Air conditioners that suddenly shut off in the tropical heat. Detainees forced to use recorded phone lines to speak with their lawyers and loved ones.<\/p>\n
Only days after President Donald Trump toured a new immigration detention center<\/a> in the Florida Everglades that officials have dubbed \u201cAlligator Alcatraz,\u201d<\/a> these are some of the conditions described by people held inside. <\/p>\n Attorneys, advocates, detainees and families are speaking out about the makeshift migrant detention center Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis\u2019 administration raced to build<\/a> on an isolated airstrip surrounded by swampland. The center began accepting detainees<\/a> on July 2.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are human beings who have inherent rights, and they have a right to dignity,\u201d said immigration attorney Josephine Arroyo. \u201cAnd they\u2019re violating a lot of their rights by putting them there.\u201d<\/p>\n Government officials have adamantly disputed the conditions described by detainees, their attorneys and family members, but have provided few details, and have denied access to the media. A televised tour for Trump and DeSantis showed rows of chain-link cages, each containing dozens of bunkbeds, under large white tents.<\/p>\n \u201cThe reporting on the conditions in the facility is completely false. The facility meets all required standards and is in good working order,\u201d said Stephanie Hartman, a spokesperson for the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which built the center.<\/p>\n A group of Democratic lawmakers sued the DeSantis administration<\/a> for access. The administration is allowing a site visit by state legislators and members of Congress on Saturday, July 12. <\/p>\n Descriptions of attorneys and families differ from the government\u2019s \u201cmodel\u201d<\/p>\n Families and attorneys who spoke with The Associated Press relayed detainees\u2019 accounts of a place they say is unsanitary and lacks adequate medical care, pushing some into a state of extreme distress.<\/p>\n Such conditions make other immigration detention centers<\/a> where advocates and staff have warned of unsanitary confinements, medical neglect and a lack of food and water seem \u201cadvanced,\u201d said immigration attorney Atara Eig.<\/p>\n Trump and his allies have praised this detention center\u2019s harshness and remoteness as befitting the \u201cworst of the worst\u201d and as a national model for the deterrence needed to persuade immigrants to \u201cself-deport\u201d from the United States.<\/p>\n But among those locked inside the chain-link enclosures are people with no criminal records, and at least one teenage boy, attorneys told the AP.<\/p>\n Concerns about medical care, lack of medicines <\/p>\n Immigration attorney Katie Blankenship described a concerning lack of medical care at the facility, relaying an account from a 35-year-old Cuban client who told his wife that detainees go days without a shower. The toilets are in the same space as the bunkbeds and can\u2019t handle their needs, she said.<\/p>\n The wife, a 28-year-old green card holder and the mother of the couple\u2019s 2-year-old daughter, who is a U.S. citizen, relayed his complaints to the AP. Fearing government retaliation against her and her detained husband, she asked not to be identified.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have no way to bathe, no way to wash their mouths, the toilet overflows and the floor is flooded with pee and poop,\u201d the woman told the AP. \u201cThey eat once a day and have two minutes to eat. The meals have worms,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n The woman said the detainees \u201call went on a hunger strike\u201d on Thursday night to protest the conditions.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are days when I don\u2019t know anything about him until the evening,\u201d she said, describing waiting for his calls, interrupted every three minutes by an announcement that the conversation is being recorded.<\/p>\n No meetings with attorneys<\/p>\n The detainees\u2019 attorneys say their due process rights are among numerous constitutional protections being denied.<\/p>\n Blankenship is among the lawyers who have been refused access. After traveling to the remote facility and waiting for hours to speak with her clients, including a 15-year-old Mexican boy with no criminal charges, she was turned away by a security guard who told her to wait for a phone call in 48 hours that would notify her when she could return.<\/p>\n \u201cI said, well, what\u2019s the phone number that I can follow up with that? There is none,\u201d Blankenship recalled. \u201cYou have due process obligations, and this is a violation of it.\u201d<\/p>\n Arroyo\u2019s client, a 36-year-old Mexican man who came to the U.S. as a child, has been detained at the center since July 5 after being picked up for driving with a suspended license in Florida\u2019s Orange County. He\u2019s a beneficiary of the DACA program<\/a>, created to protect young adults who were brought to the U.S. as children from deportation and to provide them with work authorization.<\/p>\n Blankenship\u2019s Cuban client paid a bond and was told he\u2019d be freed on a criminal charge in Miami, only to be detained and transferred to the Everglades. <\/p>\n Eig has been seeking the release of a client in his 50s with no criminal record and a stay of removal, meaning the government can\u2019t legally deport him while he appeals. But she hasn\u2019t been able to get a bond hearing. She\u2019s heard that an immigration court inside the Krome Detention Center in Miami \u201cmay be hearing cases\u201d from the Everglades facility, but as of Friday, they were still waiting.<\/p>\n \u201cJurisdiction remains an issue,\u201d Eig said, adding \u201cthe issue of who\u2019s in charge over there is very concerning.\u201d<\/p>\n