“It’s a type of torture,” one detainee at Alligator Alcatraz, the newly built “temporary” migrant detention center in the heart of the swampy Florida Everglades, recently told CNN of conditions inside the facility. Another detainee, named Gonzalo Almanza Valdes, told the outlet, “People are having a hard time living here because, like, they’re starving.”
From the outside it’s hard to imagine just how strenuous the conditions are at Alligator Alcatraz, particularly when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's administration has at times blocked access to the facility. Detainees there have reported more mosquitoes than water in the showers, worm-infested food, sewage flooding, overcrowded tent-cells without running water, and a lack of proper medical care. It’s even harder to imagine how a minor would manage to survive inside the facility’s tented walls.
According to a bombshell joint report from the Miami Herald and the Tampa Bay Times, the minor was identified as a 15-year-old Mexican national named Alexis, who was a passenger in a vehicle that was pulled over by Florida Highway Patrol. He was traveling with a group of friends to visit Tampa when, according to state officials, he told officers he was of adult age. Those in the car were subsequently transferred to federal immigration authorities on July 1.
State officials recently told the Miami Herald that “minors are not held at Alligator Alcatraz,” but it wasn’t initially clear if children and teens would find themselves there anyway or what measures are being taken to ensure they don’t, thus adding to a list of public criticism since the site’s conception. This confusion has been due, in part, to a draft operational plan for the $450 million Everglades facility, obtained by the Miami Herald, which stated that “minors shall be separated from unrelated adults at all times and seated in an area near officers and under close supervision.” It also said that “snacks and water shall be given to minors,” pregnant women, and detainees with medical conditions.
The State of Florida later acknowledged that Alexis had been detained at Alligator Alcatraz, before he was removed on July 4, when he disclosed that he was, in fact, a minor. At the time of the Herald/Times report’s release, Alexis was being held at a shelter for migrant children under the custody of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement.
There have been no reports that the 15-year-old has a criminal background, as is the case with many detainees in Alligator Alcatraz, the Herald/Times found. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the facility would house “the worst of the worst.”
“He was put in a cage with 30 other grown adult men, being forced to use one of the three communal toilets in front of them, and was subject to the inhumane conditions of this facility,” Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost (D), the youngest member of Congress, tells Teen Vogue in a statement. Frost is also one of several Florida lawmakers to have seen Alligator Alcatraz in a guided tour. “[Alexis's] father didn’t know where his teenage son was for three days. And it was only after persistent questions from reporters that state officials even acknowledged this reckless error.”
The reports of the 15-year-old detainee have shaken some young people, especially those of Latin American descent and others with pending immigration status. Additional reports of young adults, some only 21 years old, facing worrisome disciplinary action within the tented walls of Alligator Alcatraz have also raised eyebrows. Many detainees have yet to be given access to legal counsel, while others have reportedly had their court hearings canceled without explanation.
“This Alligator Alcatraz thing is just ridiculous," William Guerrero, a 23-year-old from Orlando of Mexican heritage, tells Teen Vogue. "And [it seems] unethical to the degree of detaining a minor just to put numbers down. If it happens once, it’s going to happen again.”
“I do find myself thinking twice about where I go and what I do,” says Steven, a Colombian immigrant in Miami who, due to safety concerns, asked to be identified by only his first name. “I have to make sure I’m on my best behavior when driving so I don’t get pulled over. I just don’t want to be in any situation where I suddenly find myself in a place like Alligator Alcatraz, or even a country that I have no place being, like El Salvador.”
“This inhumane internment camp is no place for adults, let alone teenagers,” Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who viewed Alligator Alcatraz up close during the same guided tour as Frost, tells Teen Vogue in a separate statement. She notes the Everglades’ extreme heat and lack of proper nutrition as points of concern. “ICE didn’t even bother to verify Alexis’s age because they throw everyone they can into the facility without due process. Who knows if he’s the only minor who’s been locked up there? ...ICE doesn’t care who they lock up, even a teenager, so long as they have brown skin and a Spanish-sounding name.”
Teen Vogue has reached out to the offices of Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier and Governor DeSantis for comment on this case, but has yet to receive an answer.
Teen Vogue has also reached out to Florida Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, one of the Republican lawmakers who toured Alligator Alcatraz, for comment, but has not yet received a reply. Salazar is now cosponsoring a new bill called “The Dignity Act,” which would grant undocumented migrants legal status if they have been living and working in the US for several years, but would not grant them citizenship.
Florida's newly appointed chief financial officer, and former Republican state senator, Blaise Ingoglia claimed he saw a different side of Alligator Alcatraz during the same tour referred to above, arguing that Democratic “rhetoric” about the facility didn’t “match” his own observations. At one point, Ingoglia even joked that he heard some of the detainees shout “Vote Trump!” as he viewed the facility.
While the question of whether or not more minors have been detained at Alligator Alcatraz remains unresolved, the Trump administration has been coming up with new ways to deport teen migrants from across the country.
According to new reports from July 23, two US officials told CBS News that Customs and Border Protection was directed to give unaccompanied migrant teens age 14 or older the option of self-deporting before transferring them to government-run shelters. This is a significant departure from a long-standing immigration rule that previously required unaccompanied minors not from Canada or Mexico to be transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which would house them in shelters until they turn 18 or are placed with a sponsor. Only children from Mexico and Canada were previously allowed to self-deport due to protections from the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which provided special legal protections for minors not from neighboring countries.
Part of this change could be made, according to DHS, after the passing of President Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” opened up more funds and threatened some of the safeguards currently in place to protect children who are at heightened risk of trafficking.
In another alarming incident, an 18-year-old US citizen was violently arrested in Riviera Beach in May during a traffic stop. On the way to his landscaping job, Kenny Laynez was in the vehicle with his mother and two co-workers, when officers pulled them over. Despite telling ICE agents that he was a citizen, he was told, “You’ve got no rights here.”
During the same arrest, Laynez captured on video an alarming exchange between some of the ICE agents, with one telling his co-worker, “They’re starting to resist more now,” as the other replied, “We’re going to end up shooting some of them.”
As for Alligator Alcatraz, Florida lawmakers like Frost and Wasserman Schultz are sponsoring new bills to shut down the site, which, advocates say, holds more than 1,000 migrants. Meanwhile other officials, including Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine-Cava, have yet to be granted access to even tour the site.
Lawmakers and advocates continue to push for the shutdown of Alligator Alcatraz as plans for a new migrant detention facility, near Jacksonville, have also been circulating; it appears, though, that the DeSantis administration is slowing down on those plans for now.
Further to his statement to Teen Vogue on the detention of a 15-year-old at Alligator Alcatraz, Frost adds, “This isn’t a one-off incident. It’s a symptom of cruel immigration policies designed to dehumanize and terrorize. This is a sick game of hunting, kidnapping, harming, and discarding human beings. And we’re fighting like hell to put an end to it.”
