The whereabouts of around 1,200 men detained at Alligator Alcatraz could not be determined, according to a new report from the Miami Herald. Those men may still be getting processed, being transferred or about to be deported.
Detainees’ location unclear
The Herald obtained the names of those detainees from two rosters.
They reported that around 800 show no record on ICE’s online database. More than 450 had no location listed and instructed the searcher to “Call ICE for details.”
Some of those detainees may have been deported despite not having final orders of removal from a judge, according to the Herald.
Some of those detainees may have chosen to abandon their pending immigration cases and voluntarily leave the facility, which has been described as a “concentration camp.”
“It became a game of chicken to see who’s going to blink first, to see if the client’s going to say ‘I don’t want to be detained in these conditions, just send me back,’” Alex Solomiany, a Miami immigration attorney, told the Herald.
Some of those detainees could remain at Alligator Alcatraz, which operates differently from most immigrant detention centers. That facility is state-run, so detainees don’t often appear in the databases run by federal agencies.
Florida also does not keep a system to search for detainees.
Despite that, The Herald reports it doesn’t account for all the detainees with no record because of the number of detainees.
That number dropped below 400 men last month after a court ruling halted operations at the facility.
Alligator Alcatraz operations
Alligator Alcatraz has been the subject of several lawsuits.
A judge allowed the facility to remain open in a case brought on by environmental groups. They filed suit over concerns about the facility’s impact on protected wildlife in the wetlands.
The judge ruled the facility falls under state jurisdiction, not federal. That prevents plaintiffs from challenging Alligator Alcatraz in federal court.
Florida then requested federal funds for the facility just one week later.
The ACLU recently filed a new suit challenging Florida’s authority to detain people at the facility.
“This facility has already become a disaster in the first few weeks of its operations, with mounting reports of disease, wrongful removals, and people being denied all kinds of basic rights,” Spencer Amdur, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and lead counsel, said in a statement. “This is exactly why Congress did not allow states to set up their own immigration facilities. The government needs to follow the law when people’s lives and liberties are at stake. It’s time for this failed experiment to end.”
The Trump administration has expressed that the facility is an important part of its immigration enforcement plan.
