“Alligator Alcatraz” Prisoners Face Dangerous Health Risks, Leaked Call Reveals

When Luis Manuel Rivas Velásquez collapsed in his unit at Florida’s controversial “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant detention center and was taken to the hospital on Aug. 5, detainees pounded on the metal bars of their cages and shouted for help. One detainee who witnessed what happened shared details of the incident in a phone call with his fiancée, along with allegations of abuse at the facility. Prism obtained a recording of their conversation from Thomas Kennedy, a consultant with the Florida Immigrant Coalition who received it from the fiancée.

“Now another person fell to the floor. They fell there, they fainted. I think they lost consciousness, I don’t know,” the detainee says in Spanish, recounting Rivas Velásquez’s collapse.

“They didn’t even know what to do because they don’t know how to revive anyone,” the detainee says about the guards’ response “I don’t know if that person died or not. We are very nervous here because we don’t know where we are locked up. Where are we?”

In an email to Prism, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said that Rivas Velásquez was taken to the hospital out of precaution. In another emailed statement, McLaughlin said he is alive in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in El Paso, Texas.

“Why does the media have an obsession with this criminal illegal alien with a rap sheet that includes robbery in Miami?” McLaughlin said.

According to one of Rivas Velasquez’s attorneys, Eric Lee, Rivas Velásquez is now being held in El Paso Enhanced Hardened Facility, where his health continues to deteriorate.

In the audio recording reviewed by Prism, screams can be heard in the background of the call, as the detainee described chaos erupting in the detention facility.

“The whole cell is revolting, the whole cell,” the detainee tells his fiancée. “Listen, they’re all going crazy, everything. Wow, it’s chaos because they’re not in control, they don’t know how to work with a prisoner, with a detainee, and supposedly we’re detainees. We’re not detainees, we’re prisoners. They have us here imprisoned and abusing us in every way.”

Prism is not naming the detainee or his fiancée — both of whom declined to be interviewed for this story — to protect their safety. But public health experts and immigrant rights advocates say the incident is symptomatic of deeper structural problems inside “Alligator Alcatraz,” the remote, state-run facility built on protected wetlands in the Everglades, which is now the subject of multiple federal lawsuits over its legality, environmental impact, and human rights record.

“This place is an extrajudicial black site operating under no legal framework or jurisdiction that we know of,” Kennedy told Prism.

Kennedy also described the events surrounding Rivas Velásquez’s collapse: Detainees reported the man had been asking for his heart medication before falling to the floor.

“The guy collapsed. It created a commotion with the other detainees, which you can hear in the audio,” Kennedy said. “They spent about two minutes trying to revive him, and then they just dragged him away.”

“The media is desperate for allegations of inhumane conditions at this facility to be true, so they can slow down President Trump’s partnerships with States to turbocharge efforts to remove the worst of the worst,” DHS’s Office of Public Affairs said in a press release. The press office also refuted allegations of worsening conditions and what DHS referred to as “Alligator Alcatraz hoaxes.”

Poor Conditions

At the start of the recording obtained by Prism, the detainee begins detailing to his fiancée the abuses he’s witnessed.

“A lot of abuse, too much abuse,” he says, describing an attack by guards on another detainee. “There was a lot of abuse in the dining room, with handcuffs, beatings. They stepped on his head, about six guards fell on him, they pushed us, they kicked us. It’s a lot of abuse, what we’re enduring here in Alligator.”

DHS did not answer Prism’s questions about these allegations.

Federal judges ordered the state and federal governments to produce legal agreements authorizing the facility’s operation. On Aug. 7, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams ordered a two-week halt to construction at the site, ruling that no industrial lighting, paving, filling, excavating, fencing, or structures could be added. The order, part of an ongoing preliminary injunction hearing, does not limit immigration enforcement activities at the facility, which already holds hundreds of detainees and can detain up to 3,000 people in temporary tent structures.

Multiple lawsuits are now in play, including an American Civil Liberties Union case focused on attorney access, a Friends of the Everglades environmental suit that the Miccosukee tribe joined last month seeking an injunction, and potential habeas and civil damages cases. A federal judge is expected to rule on the injunction on Aug. 21. Kennedy said he believes the environmental case may offer the strongest chance to halt operations entirely until the government completes an environmental impact assessment.

The facility was built under a January 2023 emergency order from Gov. Ron DeSantis, citing a border crisis, despite Florida not sharing a land border with Mexico or Canada and experiencing fewer people moving into the state than previous years. Opponents of the facility say that the order has been used to bypass environmental reviews, permitting requirements, and competitive bidding, enabling politically connected contractors to secure millions in state funds.

Dr. Armen Henderson, the founder and executive director of health care and disaster relief nonprofit Dade County Street Response, said the combination of Florida’s extreme summer climate, the detention facility’s tent-based infrastructure, and the lack of on-site medical capacity creates dangerous and predictable health risks.

“Heat and humidity increase exacerbate chronic medical conditions,” Henderson told Prism. “If people have things like COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease], asthma, or other lung problems, then they’re going to be more short of breath, and they’re going to require hospitalization more often.”

The close, crowded quarters also increase the risk of spreading contagious illnesses, Henderson said, far more than when a sick person risks passing on a virus or a cold to other people in their household.

“If you’ve got 37 people living in the same place, that definitely puts people at more of a risk,” he said.

Flooding around the tents has also attracted swarms of mosquitos, raising the threat of mosquito-borne illnesses, he continued, and intermittent power outages can disrupt air conditioning, creating conditions ripe for mold buildup and poor air quality.

“When you have water that’s accumulating in and around the tent and it’s not well-insulated, this causes a mold buildup,” Henderson said. “So the longer that people stay there, the air quality is really, really bad, I’m sure. So it makes for a melting pot of really bad conditions.”

Health Care Risks

DHS did not respond to Prism’s request inquiring whether “Alligator Alcatraz” has a standing contract with a major hospital like Jackson Memorial.

Henderson warned that in the case of a heart attack, for example, there’s a brief critical window before permanent heart damage occurs. Without knowing where detainees are sent for care, and with minimally qualified staff potentially delaying recognition or treatment of serious conditions, detainees face heightened risks of losing heart, lung, or brain function.

“We’re talking about minutes that can be life or death for individuals who have exacerbation of acute medical or chronic conditions, especially when it comes to the brain or the heart,” Henderson said. “I doubt that they’re getting the standard of care that they actually deserve.”

Kennedy, the immigration consultant, said he’s heard several accounts of medical neglect from detainees and their families. According to accounts from detained clients, there is a medical tent with limited resources, and detainees are chained and rendered immobile, Kennedy said.

“There’s basically no medicine. There’s a complete lack of medicine and medical supplies, even though, so far, [Florida] spent $290 million in no-bid contracts through public funds,” said Kennedy. “But I don’t know what the money’s going to because there’s no medicine. What I’ve heard that detainees get when they have a medical complaint is, at best, an aspirin. And that’s if they really complain.” In one instance, a Cuban detainee returned from hospital surgery for a severe hemorrhoid, only to be denied pain medication and develop an infection.

Kennedy said detainees are often shackled in the medical tent, where there are no phones available to them. He suspected that the tent is sometimes used as a form of retaliation to isolate those who speak to the media.

Henderson also raised concerns about the ambulance company that appears to be providing services for the facility and questioned whether its staff are qualified to provide adequate care given its ties to a landlord who evicted residents from Li’l Abner Mobile Home Park in Sweetwater, Florida. According to reporting from the Miami New Times, National Health Transport (NHT)’s president and CEO Raul F. Rodriguez also owns Li’l Abner, and his development firm, CREI Holdings, has evicted hundreds of Li’l Abner residents to make way for new housing, sparking protests and a class-action lawsuit.

NHT has active contracts with Florida’s Division of Emergency Management — the lead agency overseeing construction and operations of the facility — but neither the company nor state officials have disclosed how many detainees have been hospitalized or where they are treated. Videos captured by a local environmental activist show NHT ambulances leaving the facility, and while officials have downplayed reported medical emergencies, DHS acknowledged in an emailed statement at least one detainee had been sent to a hospital in July.

Henderson also warned that the facility lacks an evacuation plan for hurricanes, meaning that detainees could be unsafe during a storm in tents that have not been hurricane-proofed. FDEM released a heavily redacted 33-page draft “Continuity of Operations Plan” plan on Aug. 1, outlining hurricane evacuation procedures. The plan redacted key details including alternate detention facilities. The DeSantis administration has defended “Alligator Alcatraz’s” storm readiness, saying it can withstand up to Category 2 force winds, but stronger winds would require evacuation.

“I don’t even think these places should exist, so let me just start there,” Henderson said. “But since they do exist, then they should have some sort of contract with a reputable medical institution in which the people there are not directly benefiting from whatever services that are being provided.”

The facility’s very design invites medical crises, Henderson said.

“This could have been avoided,” Henderson said. “You’re putting people at harm’s risk when you don’t have to. This place should be shut down as soon as possible.”

For Kennedy, it’s a matter of deliberate opacity. The location itself — paved over sensitive wetlands decades ago — is emblematic of the site’s unsustainability. “Alligator Alcatraz” sits on the former Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, a single-runway airstrip deep inside Big Cypress National Preserve. The site was originally built in the late 1960s as part of a now-defunct plan for a massive international airport in the Everglades, but the project was scrapped over environmental concerns. The airstrip remained as a rarely used training facility for pilots until the state repurposed it under DeSantis’ 2023 emergency order.

“That airport should have never been there in the first place,” Kennedy said. “They should have unpaved it a long time ago. I would like for this facility to be shut down, and hopefully in the future, we just don’t even have an airport there at all. And more immediately, I would like for a judge to issue a [temporary restraining order] and the place to at least cease operations there until we figure out what the fuck is happening.”

Prism is an independent and nonprofit newsroom led by journalists of color. We report from the ground up and at the intersections of injustice.