U.S. Democratic representatives characterized the state-run immigrant detention center in the Everglades as a cruel and wasteful political stunt following a guided tour Saturday.
Members of Congress and state legislators who visited the site described seeing bugs on mattresses, toilets, and showers that lacked privacy, small food portions, and temperatures between 83 and 85 degrees in the air-conditioned areas.
“There are really disturbing, vile conditions, and this place needs to be shut the hell down,” said South Florida U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of the detention center at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport.
The South Florida Democrat said 32 men slept in each of the cages with bed bunks and three sinks attached to the toilets. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced hundreds of people started arriving on July 2.
Photos show new paving in Everglades detention center environmental groups seek to stop
Democrats labeled the tour as sanitized because they couldn’t speak to any of the detainees or staff. Detainees have told the Miami Herald and CBS News that they hadn’t been able to shower, the toilets didn’t flush, and that the food had maggots.
Anna Eskamani, a state representative from Orlando, said Kevin Guthrie, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, led the tour. The agency is in charge of the site.
“It was just incredibly dystopian, and a lot of lack of clarity on what rules and procedures are actually being followed as it pertains to those being detained, as it pertains to what their status is,” Eskamani said in a phone interview with Florida Phoenix.
Eskamani is one of five Democrats in the Florida Legislature suing the state after they weren’t allowed to enter the detention center on July 3. FDEM invited Congress members and state lawmakers on Wednesday for the tour Saturday, when U.S. representatives said they were already planning on conducting an oversight visit.
Meanwhile, Kristi Noem, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, defended conditions at the detention center during a press conference in Tampa on Saturday, saying it was held to the same standards as federal facilities. However, she sidestepped specific questions about the site because it is state-run.
“Any issues that were there have been addressed,” she said. “It’s a fantastic resource for us to be able to utilize in order for a detention facility to repatriate people back home to their home countries.”
Governors in five Republican states have told Noem they want to build detention centers like the one in the Everglades, Noem said. She refused to say which governors expressed interest.
Spring Hill Republican Sen. Baise Ingoglia, an ally of Gov. Ron DeSantis, also visited on Saturday. The senator, possibly in line as DeSantis’ pick as chief financial officer, wrote on X that Democrats’ rhetoric about the detention center didn’t match reality.
“I actually laid down in one of the beds and it was really comfortable, Ingoglia wrote. “So, any complaints about squalor conditions is nothing more than bullsh*t and political theater.”
“Alligator Alcatraz” is the name Florida’s Republican leadership has given to the camp.
Despite the poor conditions Democrats described, South Florida Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz said the detention center shouldn’t be compared to a concentration camp. Moskowitz served as the head of FDEM for two years under DeSantis.
“Listen, it is as bad as it can be, but it is not a concentration camp, and people should not use Holocaust references to describe what’s going on behind us,” he told reporters following the tour.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.
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sucmup
DeSantis concentration camp.
Wednesday, July 16, 2025 Report this
Cat L
Alligator Auschwitz is more like. This is deplorable and I'm disgusted that it's a thing.
Wednesday, July 16, 2025 Report this
pdsinc
As a US MARINE, I served two years in Viet Nam. The description of The resort in the Everglades sounds much better than the conditions which we lived in while proudly serving our country. Keep in mind that the detainees being held in the glades are criminals. They broke the law when they stepped across the border.
Wednesday, July 16, 2025 Report this
san.gander
Fleeing appalling conditions for a better life requires two things - absolute certainty that life will never get better for you or your children if you stay, and perhaps you will die if you don't move; and the courage to leave the familiarity of all you have ever known: family, friends, culture, language, foods, climate, all - for the uncertain, and perhaps, again you will die, but you try for a maybe better, safer life without everyday nagging fear in another place. It makes us all immigrants. How dare we treat these people as criminals! It is our task to find a better solution than criminalizing humans trying to live. For those so-called Christian folk - it is your God given task to find a humane path - and what is happening now is NOT that!
Wednesday, July 16, 2025 Report this
sandy
These don't sound much worse than being in a real state prison. In a state prison do they have privacy in a shower? Aren't sinks and toilets somewhat connected in state prisons? What temperatures are state prisons kept at? Bugs are an issue but they are all over the south. Even having my house sprayed every three months I still have invested in Zevo and Raid to catch the ones that still show up.
Wednesday, July 16, 2025 Report this