Life inside notorious ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ in its final days

When her son was taken into immigration custody, Yaneisy Fernandez feared the worst. Then she got a call from him inside “Alligator Alcatraz”.

“We had no idea where he was until he called us,” Yaneisy told the BBC. “He said, ‘mom, they took me to the facility of the crocodiles.’ That’s how he put it.”

The temporary immigration detention centre built in Florida’s Everglades has quickly become a polarising symbol of President Donald Trump’s immigration policy.

Now, just two months after it opened, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said it will be shutting it down, in compliance with a judge’s orders. The process is already under way – border tsar Tom Homan told the BBC during a press conference that only about 50% of the detainees remain.

The BBC spoke to the families of two inmates who were moved in the past month, who say that their loved ones disappeared into the system when they were at their most vulnerable.

That includes Yaneisy’s son Michael Borrego Fernandez, who says he was left bleeding while in serious pain after a medical incident, before being moved to another facility. He is part of an ongoing lawsuit alleging inmates were denied in-person access to their lawyers.

Built over eight days at the end of June in the Everglades, a protected wetlands famous for its alligators, the South Florida Detention Facility quickly became one of the most notorious immigration detention centres in the US.

Dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz”, the facility was built to house about 3,000 people but was never at capacity, even as the number of individuals being held in immigration detention across the US reached a record-high of 59,000 as of mid-August.

While it was open, it was a lightning rod for America’s debate over Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration. Some came to visit the centre to protest, while others stopped by to take proud selfies with the “Alligator Alcatraz” sign outside.

When the facility first opened, the Florida Republican Party commissioned Alligator Alcatraz merchandise: t-shirts, caps and beer coolers.

“People are fired up about the idea that we are finally closing the border and sending people who are here illegally who are committing crimes out of the country,” said Florida GOP chair, Evan Power.

“We have laws that you have to follow,” Jack Lombardi, a Republican voter in Florida, told the BBC. “And you’re a guest in our country. […] The facts are you came to this country illegally. You came in here unwanted.”

There have been conflicting reports about conditions inside. After a visit by lawmakers in July, Republicans said it was a well-run, safe and clean facility. Democrats, however, described the conditions as vile, crowded and unsanitary.

Now, a judge has ordered a preliminary injunction to shut it down within 60 days, while they hear a case claiming the government did not follow protocol when it built the facility. Although the government is appealing against that decision, the DHS said it will obey the judge’s order.

“I disagree with the judge that made that decision,” Homan told media on Thursday. “I went down there. I walked into detention areas. I saw a clean, well-maintained facility.”

Michael Fernandez moved to the US from Cuba in 2019, and was granted temporary political asylum, his mother said.

After he got caught up in a hot-tub construction scheme in 2021, a judge ordered his removal. In June, he pleaded guilty to grand theft to avoid jail time, although he says he had no idea the company he worked for was scamming customers. His lawyer also says that Michael was not aware of the removal order against him.

In January, he got pulled over by police while driving his niece to school. By June, he was in the custody of US Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) officers, and moved to the Florida detention centre.

Michael had been in “Alligator Alcatraz” less than a week when Yaneisy received a call from some of the men detained alongside him.

“They told me that Michael woke up covered in blood,” she said. Michael had developed stage 4 haemorrhoids – the most severe type – she said. He was transferred to hospital and underwent colon surgery.

Back at the facility, Michael spoke to his mother in short, monitored phone calls. “He couldn’t even stay on the phone for more than a few seconds because he was in such severe pain,” she said. He told her that he had an infection. “He felt he was going to have a heart attack,” said Yaneisy. “And they took him back to hospital.”

Michael told her he was not being given pain medication and one night was handcuffed through the night in a way that he couldn’t sleep facedown as required after his surgery.

Yaneisy says Michael told her that they didn’t let him shower or give him a change of underwear when his briefs were covered in his blood and stool.

“This is not hygienic. They left him there like a dog, like someone who’s been thrown away,” she added.

Michael’s case is now part of a lawsuit against the Trump administration, which claims that detainees don’t have proper access to legal counsel through confidential in-person meetings with their lawyers. The DHS told the BBC that there is a physical space for lawyers to meet with their clients.

The lawsuit is ongoing. He was moved to a different facility on 1 August.

The DHS told the BBC in a statement: “These claims about Michael Borrego Fernandez are FALSE.” They said that ICE provided him “with proper medical care and medications”.

The Florida Division of Emergency Management said that detainees have access to “24/7 medical care that includes a pharmacy, as well as clean, working facilities for hygiene and can schedule both in-person and virtual appointments with attorneys”.

Mich Gonzalez, Michael’s lawyer, says that while immigration detention centers are supposed to be non-punitive – a place to supervise immigrants who are facing deportation – the conditions inside these facilities are “degrading and deadly”.

“And the Everglades internment camp even more so,” he said.

Yaneisy is not the only one who has had a loved one get seriously sick while inside “Alligator Alcatraz”.

When Gladys’s husband Marco Alvarez Bravo, 38, was arrested and taken to the detention facility, it was her worst nightmare.

Then he disappeared for over a week.

It all began over a month ago when Marco left his home in Tallahassee, Florida, to visit a client to give an estimate for a construction job. Just outside their apartment, ICE agents pulled him over.

“I ask the officers, why are you taking him?” Gladys recalled. “He has a legal pending status. […] He’s not a criminal.”

Marco arrived in the US from Chile seven years ago. He entered the country on a tourist visa, which he overstayed, and then applied for political asylum. Gladys, a US citizen who met him through friends around the same time, said this claim is ongoing and he was allowed to stay in the country while waiting for a decision. They got married 11 days before the arrest.

In a response to the BBC, the DHS alleged Marco was “a known member of a South American Theft Group”. Gladys said that her husband has no criminal record.

As soon as he was taken away, Gladys was worried for her husband’s safety.

Marco has a genetic heart condition called Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, Gladys said, which causes the heart to beat abnormally fast. He had undergone a medical procedure to treat his illness in April this year, and was taking daily heart medication. Gladys told the BBC that following the procedure he also contracted pneumonia, which he was still suffering from when he was arrested.

Initially, Gladys had no idea where he was taken because he didn’t show up on the ICE locator database, an official online database that shows where people are being held.

Gunther Sanabria, an immigration lawyer who has represented clients inside “Alligator Alcatraz”, said it has become commonplace for people detained by ICE not to show up in the official locator system.

“We get people here crying every week,” he said, “because they don’t know where their family members are, and they went to work that morning and they were taken away.”

But Marco’s calls from inside the Florida detention centre reassured Gladys.

On 14 August, he called to tell her that he had a rupture in his kidney which had affected his spine.

The next day, another man who was being held alongside Marco called her to say that her husband was in a wheelchair and had been taken to Florida Kendall hospital.

That was the last she heard for over a week. She checked daily on the ICE locator, but could not find his name.

It took eight days before she knew what had happened.

“I cannot believe that this is actually happening,” she said. “Where’s my husband?”

The DHS told the BBC that Marco was receiving medical care, but did not respond to a specific question about where he was currently being held. In a statement to the BBC they said: “He is alert and can at any time call his family.”

Finally, she received a call from Marco on 22 August. He was back in “Alligator Alcatraz”. But within days they were preparing to move him again. Neither Marco nor Gladys knew where to.

“I’m very nervous, very confused about everything that’s going on and my nerves are a total wreck,” she said.

As of this week, Marco appears to have been moved to the Krome detention facility 35 miles way.

While the judge’s decision to shut down the facility marked a blow to the Trump administration, other temporary facilities are being built in several Republican-led states, including a second facility in Florida dubbed “Deportation Depot” and another in Indiana that homeland security officials have named the “Speedway Slammer”.

Looking to the future, Homan said that while “Alligator Alcatraz” was a “great transitional facility”, he did not see it as a long-term solution.

“I do think ICE needs more brick-and-mortar [facilities],” he told reporters. “We’ve got the money now to build infrastructure… permanent facilities.”

With additional reporting by Bernd Debusmann Jr