Life inside the notorious “Alkatraz Algatra” in their last days

When her son was taken under the arrest of immigration, Janes Fernandez was afraid of the worst. Then she received a call from him inside, “Alkatraz”.

“We had no idea where he was until he called us,” Janes told the BBC. “He said,” Mom, they took me to the crocodile facility. “So said it.”

The temporary immigration retention center built in Florida Everglades has quickly become a polarizing symbol of President Donald Trump’s immigration policy.

Now, just two months after its opening, the Ministry of Interior Security (DHS) has said it will exclude it in accordance with the judge’s orders. The process is already underway – the border kings Tom Homan told the BBC during a press conference that only about 50% of the detainees remain.

The BBC talk to the families of two prisoners who have been moved in the last month, who say their loved ones have disappeared into the system when they were most vulnerable.

This includes the son of Janes Michael Borrego Fernandez, who says he was left to bleed while he was in serious pain after a medical incident before being moved to another facility. It is part of a ongoing court case claiming prisoners has been denied their lawyers personally.

Built for eight days in late June in Everglades, the protected wetlands known for its alligators, the detention of South Florida has quickly become one of the most famous immigration centers in the United States.

Entitled “Alligator Alcatraz”, the facility was built to accommodate about 3,000 people but has never been in capacity, even when the number of people detained in immigration detention in the United States reached a record 59,000 by mid -August.

Although it was open, it was a lightning for America’s debate about Trump’s repression of illegal immigration. Some came to visit the center to protest while others stopped to take proud selfies with the aligator alkatraz sign outside.

When the facility was opened for the first time, the Republican Florida Party ordered alligator Alcatraz Merchandise: T -shirts, hats and coolers of beer.

“People are fired by the idea that we are finally closing the border and sending people who are illegal here who commit crimes outside the country,” said Florida chairman GOP, Evan Power.

“We have laws to follow,” Jack Lombardi, a Republican voter in Florida, told the BBC. “And you are a guest with us. (…) The facts are that you came illegally to this country. You have entered here unwanted here.”

There are controversial reports inside. After visiting the legislators in July, Republicans said it was a well -managed, safe and purely facility. However, the Democrats defined the conditions as measured, crowded and unhygienic.

Now, Judge ordered a preliminary order to close it within 60 daysWhile they hear a case claiming that the government did not follow a protocol when it built the facility. Although the government is attractive to this decision, DHS has said it will obey the judge’s order.

“I do not agree with the judge who made the decision,” Homan told the media on Thursday. “I got off there. I went into the detention areas. I saw a clean, well -maintained facility.”

Michael Fernandez moved to the United States from Cuba in 2019 and received a temporary political asylum, his mother said.

After being caught in a hot pipe construction in 2021, a judge ordered its removal. In June, he pleaded guilty to a great theft to avoid prison, though he said he had no idea that the company he worked for was a client fraud. His lawyer also says that Michael was not aware of the order to remove him.

In January, he withdrew from the police while driving his niece to school. Until June, he was in custody of US customs and immigration officials (ICE) and moved to the Florida detention center.

Michael was at Alcatraz Algaerazo less than a week when Janes received a call from some of the men detained with him.

“I was told that Michael woke up covered with blood,” she said. Michael had developed hemorrhoids at Stage 4 – the strongest type, she said. He was transferred to hospital and underwent colon surgery.

Back to the facility, Michael talks to his mother briefly, watching phone calls. “He couldn’t even stay on the phone for more than a few seconds because she was experiencing so much pain,” she said. He told her he had an infection. “He felt he would get a heart attack,” Janes said. “And they returned him to the hospital.”

Michael told her that he was not given a pain medicine and one night was handcuffed at night in a way that he could not sleep with her face as required after his surgery.

Yaneisy says Michael told her that they did not let him bathe or give him a change of underwear when his pants were covered with blood and feces.

“It’s not hygienic. They left him there like a dog, like someone who was thrown away,” she added.

Michael’s case is already part of a case against the Trump administration, which claims that the detainees do not have appropriate access to the legal council through confidential meetings with personalities with their lawyers. DHS told the BBC that there was a physical space for lawyers to meet their clients.

The trial continues. It was moved to another facility on August 1st.

DHS told the BBC in a statement: “These claims about Michael Borrego Fernandez are false.” They said Ice was providing him with “appropriate medical help and medicines”.

The Florida Emergency Management Department has said that detainees have access to “24/7 medical care, which includes a pharmacy, as well as clean, operating hygiene facilities and can plan both personal and virtual appointments with lawyers.”

Michin Gonzalez, Michael’s lawyer, says that while the immigration retention centers are supposed to be no -punitive – a place to observe immigrants facing deportation – the conditions within these facilities are “degrading and deadly”.

“And the Everglades internment camp even more,” he said.

Yaneisy is not the only one who had a loved one to get sick seriously while being inside the Alligator Alcatraz.

When Gladis’s husband Marco Alvarez Bravo, 38 years old, was arrested and taken to the detention facility, it was her oldest nightmare.

Then he disappeared more than a week.

It all started more than a month ago when Marco left her home in Talahasi, Florida to visit a client to give an assessment of construction work. Just outside their apartment, the ice agents pulled it out.

“I ask the officers, why do you accept it?” Gladys recalled. “He has a legitimate pending status. (…) He is not a criminal.”

Marco arrived in the United States from Chile seven years ago. He joined the country of a tourist visa, which he is over and then applied for political asylum. Gladys, a US citizen who met him at the same time, said this claim was still and was allowed to stay in the country while waiting for a solution. They married 11 days before the arrest.

In response to the BBC, DHS claims that Marco is a “well -known member of the South America theft Group.” Gladys said her husband had no criminal record.

As he was taken, Gladys was worried about her husband’s safety.

Marco has a genetic heart condition called Wolf-Parcanson-White Syndrome, Gladys said, which causes the heart to beat abnormally quickly. He had undergone a medical procedure for treating his illness in April this year and was taking daily heart medicines. Gladys told the BBC that after the procedure, he also became infected with the pneumonia he was still suffering from when he was arrested.

Initially, Gladys had no idea where he was taken, as he did not appear in the Lie Locator database, an official online database that shows where people are behaving.

Gunther Sanabria, an immigration lawyer who represented customers at Alligator Alcatraz, said it was common for people detained by ICE not to appear in the official locator system.

“We make people here cry every week,” he said, “because they do not know where their family members are and they went to work this morning and they were taken. “

But Marco’s calls from the Florida Retention Center soothe Gladys.

On August 14, he called to tell her that he had a rupture in his kidney, which had affected his spine.

The next day, another man who was acting with Marco called her to tell her that her husband was in a wheelchair and was taken to a hospital in Florida Kendall.

It was the last thing she has heard for more than a week. She checked the ice locator daily, but couldn’t find his name.

It was eight days before she knew what had happened.

“I can’t believe this is actually happening,” she said. “Where is my husband?”

DHS told the BBC that Marco was receiving medical attention but did not answer a specific question about where he was currently taking place. In a statement to the BBC, they said, “He is alert and at any time he can call his family.”

Finally, she received a call from Marco on August 22. He returned to Alcatraz Aligator. But after days, they were preparing to move it again. Neither Marco nor Gladys knew where.

“I am very nervous, very confused by everything that happens and my nerves are a complete wreck,” she said.

As of this week, it seems that Marco has been moved to the 35 -mile Crom detention facility.

While the judge’s decision to close the facility struck the Trump administration, in several countries led by Republican Republicans, including a second Florida facility called “depot depot” and another in Indiana, which internal security employees called “Speedway Slammer”.

Looking at the future, Homan said that while Alkatraz’s Alligator was a “big transitional facility”, he doesn’t see it as a long -term solution.

“I think ICE needs more bricks and mortar (facilities),” he told reporters. “Now we have the money to build infrastructure … Permanent facilities.”

With additional reporting from Bernd Debusmann JR