Debbie Wasserman Schultz describes inhumane conditions after Alligator Alcatraz tour

During a surprise visit by U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz to Alligator Alcatraz, she found 32 men kept together and forced to share three toilets.

“There’s a small little wall that blocks the toilet, but if you are using the facility, then you are having to do that in front of the 31 other people that are in your cage,” Wasserman Schultz said.

The sights upset, but did not surprise, the Weston Democrat in her second trip to the controversial immigration detainment center. Opened last year by Florida to help President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda, the makeshift tents set up at a Collier County airport site have drawn intense scrutiny over both public costs and questionable conditions.

On this trip, Wasserman Schultz said officials let her tour the individual cages. She described the unsanitary conditions to press during an audio conference following the three-hour tour.

“I was able to see the toilets. They are very dirty. They have hardened water stains on them. But in addition to that, they had bowel movement residue and urine around the toilets,” she said. “The sinks were very dirty, and the sinks are right above the toilets. So the places in the detention center, which are cages, are a very dirty, grimy, not-private-at-all place to essentially imprison and warehouse humans.”

The last time Wasserman Schultz visited was with a group of elected officials after leaders had advance warning. While Democrats in Florida’s congressional delegation initially wanted to conduct an unannounced visit, the timing leaked. The state had several days’ warning and invited other officials on the same day.

“We really felt that visit was whitewashed,” she said.

But after courts made clear that any detention facilities would be open to surprise visits by members of Congress conducting oversight, Wasserman Schultz wanted to show up unexpected Thursday.

She did say the staff running Alligator Alcatraz accommodated her in a timely fashion. Within 15 minutes of her arrival, her personal tour of the facility began, though she was not allowed to bring a camera and her own staff could not accompany her.

But she was alarmed by conditions at the venue. That included frustration with a lack of nutritional value to any food given to detainees. Lunches provided included a small turkey sandwich, a bag of chips and a Nutri-Grain bar, she said.

“I don’t know what man would be sustained through the day from that kind of a lunch,” she said.

Dinners included a small protein, 4 ounces of beans or vegetables, some rice and another snack bar. The meals were shipped in boxes. At the time of Wasserman Schultz’s April 9 tour, those meals were prepared on March 28, based on dates on the boxes.

Wasserman Schultz said she wasn’t allowed to meet with inmates, even though she already had privacy release forms from several. She overhead incarcerated individuals in the cages shouting in Spanish for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to release them.

At the time of her visit, the center housed 1,500 detainees. Of those, she said 360 were older than age 55 and 59 were under age 22. All were adult men, and most were Hispanic.

“I did see one Asian male, and I don’t even actually recall seeing any Black males,” she said.

She also said nearly every staff member who dealt with her worked as contractors for the state of Florida. Wasserman Schultz met with the facility director and the incident commander, both employees of Florida’s Department of Emergency Management, but every other employee worked for a contractor.

“Nearly every single activity that takes place at this facility, now that I’ve been there twice, is handled by contractors,” she said. “There is obviously hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts that have been let to dozens and dozens of companies, from the wastewater to the entire village set up for the people who live there, that work there. There’s about 900 personnel that are working and living on the property.”

She saw hundreds of recreational vehicles on site to house workers.

But Wasserman Schultz said that while ICE employees were at the site, and contractors informed her they had a daily presence despite this being a state-run facility, no federal employees would talk to the Congresswoman.

The site does have an indoor recreation area, where some detainees played soccer during Wasserman Schultz’s visit. She also confirmed there were privacy areas where those kept at the facility could communicate privately with lawyers.

But she saw no phones that would be made available to detainees, nor any sign they had access to paper and pencil to take notes during communications. In a common area, there is a handbook providing directions on how to contact legal representation.

She remains concerned, as another hurricane season approaches, about the basic conditions of housing any large population in tents in South Florida.

“The best thing about my oversight visit today was that I was able to get into the facility without any problem, and I was able, I was shown every place that I asked to see,” she said.

“The most disappointing and disturbing parts of my oversight visit were how inhumane the conditions clearly are, how inhumane and unnecessary it is to be housing people in large tents in cages in the middle of the Everglades.”