Florida’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Kept Detainees in Tiny Outdoor Cages
Turns out that notorious immigration jail in the Everglades was literally locking human beings into 4-foot outdoor metal boxes under the sweltering sun.
Inspectors finally released their findings on the now-shuttered facility, officially dubbed the "Florida Soft-Sided Facility" because calling it what it actually was would sound entirely too dystopian.
Federal watchdogs found 79 people had been shoved into outdoor metal cages measuring barely 4.25 feet on each side, leaving them locked out there for up to two hours at a stretch. That works out to 18 square feet of space — less than half the absolute minimum that ICE requires under its own national rules.
Inspectors noted that locking people in tiny outdoor metal enclosures like that is completely unprecedented across the entire federal detention system.
When confronted with the findings, Governor Ron DeSantis claimed he hadn't read the report, while his communications director went full comic-book villain and publicly announced that Florida would make the cages "even smaller if we could."
Nothing screams peak governance quite like state officials bragging that federal dog kennel standards were still too generous.
Source: The New York Times
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