Guards at a Florida immigration detention camp known as “Alligator Alcatraz” allegedly used teargas and batons to quell a disturbance among detainees, according to reports broadcast on Friday.
At least three migrants told Miami’s Spanish-language channel Noticias 23 that officers engaged in a mass beating after prisoners began shouting for freedom when one received word of a relative’s death. The men claimed guards rushed in and struck detainees indiscriminately, while also deploying teargas inside the facility.
“They’ve beaten everyone here, a lot of people have bled. Brother, teargas. We are immigrants, we are not criminals, we are not murderers,” one detainee was quoted as saying in a call to the station.
Accounts from inside also described a fire alarm sounding continuously and a helicopter circling overhead.
The tented camp, located in the Everglades wetlands and officially operated by Florida’s division of emergency management (FDEM) on behalf of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has faced repeated allegations of inhumane conditions since opening in early July. Migrants are reported to be confined in metal cages as they await deportation.
Donald Trump and Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, visited the site shortly after it opened, praising its harsh conditions.
Last week, federal judge Kathleen Williams ordered the closure of Alligator Alcatraz within 60 days after finding it in breach of environmental laws. She subsequently rejected a joint request from the state of Florida and the Trump administration to delay the ruling.
The FDEM denied that any violent incident had taken place. “These reports are manufactured. There is no uprising happening at Alligator Alcatraz. Detainees are given clean, safe living conditions and guards are properly trained on all state and federal protocols,” Stephanie Hartman, the agency’s communications director, said in a statement.
Activists who have maintained a near-permanent protest at the gates of the facility since its opening said they had no knowledge of an uprising but cited other accounts of mistreatment.
“People held inside the facility were on hunger strike for more than 14 days, despite the DeSantis administration denying it. What they apparently did was ship people who were hunger striking out to other facilities, Krome in Miami, to Texas and so on to break it up,” said Noelle Damico, director of social justice at the Workers Circle.
She added that news of unrest would not surprise her “given the abuses that people have experienced”.
DeSantis told reporters this week that removals from the camp had been accelerated. Kevin Guthrie, FDEM’s executive director, said in a memo that officials expected the population to fall to zero “within a few days”.
Earlier this month, the governor also announced plans for a new detention centre in northern Florida, to be called the “deportation depot”. Other Republican-led states have unveiled similar proposals, with mock names such as the “Speedway Slammer” in Indiana and the “Cornhusker Clink” in Nebraska.
