ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
A federal judge has temporarily halted all construction at the immigration facility in the Florida Everglades known as Alligator Alcatraz. She ordered the two-week pause while she hears a challenge from environmental groups. The facility is near a rarely used airfield, with tents and caged cells for up to 5,000 migrant detainees. The state of Florida built it quickly to hold what Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called the worst scumbags, but family members and detainees' advocates say the majority of migrants held there are not hardened criminals and conditions are dangerous. NPR's Jasmine Garsd reports from Ochopee, Florida.
JASMINE GARSD, BYLINE: The woman says the nightmare started with a weekend fishing trip in early July. She and her husband live in Fort Lauderdale. They drove out to the swamplands in the Everglades with their baby to fish for perch.
M: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: She says they were approached by a Fish and Wildlife officer who called immigration when her husband wasn't able to show a driver's license.
M: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: They're both in the U.S. without legal status. She's been here for 10, he for 20 years. NPR is granting the family anonymity because they fear retaliation from immigration officials. She asked that we use her initial, M.
M: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: They were detained and held separately in a local jail. M says she couldn't get the baby to calm down. She taps on the table, recalling how she heard a knock on the wall.
(SOUNDBITE OF KNOCKING)
M: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: M knocked back.
M: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: "And I told the baby, that's your father," she says. They kept tapping on the wall back and forth for the next 8 hours. She says it kept her and the baby calm. M and the baby were released that night. She was placed in an ankle monitor and ordered to leave the country within three months, but no one would tell her where her husband had been taken. For the next three days, she said she called immigration officials, scoured immigration detention websites. Her husband was nowhere to be found.
On the local news, there were talks of a new detention facility in the Everglades, one with its own runway for deportation flights and a nickname given by local and national Republicans - Alligator Alcatraz, because it's surrounded by more than 2,000 square miles of isolated swampland and alligators. Here's President Trump joking about the treacherous landscape there.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We're going to teach them how to run away from an alligator - OK? - if they escape prison. How to run away. Don't run in a straight line. Run like this.
GARSD: The detention center is run entirely by the state of Florida, but the state can apply for federal reimbursement through FEMA. A Miami Herald investigation found around 35% of the immigrants being held at the facility have no criminal conviction. Among those who do, convictions range from traffic violations and illegal reentry to attempted murder.
As for M's husband, 20 years ago, he had a cocaine possession charge, which he pled not guilty to and was dropped. Around the same time, he pleaded no contest to driving without a license, a misdemeanor. These days, the couple run a landscaping business. They're active in their local evangelical church. When they got detained, M contacted immigration lawyer Jeff Botelho.
JEFF BOTELHO: Well, I mean, she was desperate. She was desperate for help.
GARSD: Botelho does not represent M's husband currently, but he did make phone calls to try and help locate him. And what he found is what many immigration lawyers have confirmed - that it's incredibly hard to get in touch with clients detained at the so-called Alligator Alcatraz or get any information. Botelho says, blustered, he eventually reached out to someone at the Florida attorney general's office.
BOTELHO: She kind of froze for a second and said, sir, I don't have a number for Alligator Alcatraz. Like, I couldn't believe it. I was like, what are we in Russia? What is this? Like, you don't have a number for a facility where the government of the state of Florida is housing immigrants?
GARSD: NPR reached out multiple times to the Florida attorney general and the Florida Division of Emergency Management and received no response. After four days hearing nothing, M got a call around 3 in the morning. It was her husband. He was, in fact, being held at the hastily billed tent-and-trailer facility in the swampland encircled by barbed wire.
M: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: "He said it was horrible," she says. The heat becomes suffocating, he told her, and there's only enough water to shower once a week.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTOR: Shut it down.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Shut it down.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTOR: Shut it down.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Shut it down.
GARSD: At a recent protest outside the facility, advocates and family members of detainees shared accounts that echo those of M's husband - vermin, extreme heat, inedible food. Doctor Armen Henderson, from the nonprofit Dade County Street Response, called the place a disaster waiting to happen.
ARMEN HENDERSON: As a medical professional, I am concerned. It is inhumane to force people to live in these conditions. Shut it down.
GARSD: The White House says this is all nonsense meant to discredit Trump's immigration crackdown. Here's border czar Tom Homan this week at the White House.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TOM HOMAN: Bunch of crap. I was there. I walked through the detainee facilities. I walked through the medical facilities. I walked through the cafeteria. I had them show me, what did you feed these people today? I saw the lunch, what they fed them. They ate better yesterday than I am eating eating today.
GARSD: It's been over a month since M's husband was detained. In recent days, he was moved to another ICE facility in Florida. And this week, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem announced a new thousand-bed immigration facility in Indiana, done in conjunction with the state. She dubbed it the Speedway Slammer after Indianapolis' famous race track. In fact, the Trump administration is in talks with several other states to create similar detention centers as it expands detention capacity nationwide. They say Alligator Alcatraz isn't going anywhere. If anything, it's a blueprint.
Jasmine Garsd, NPR News, Ochopee, Florida. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
