Democratic members of Congress who saw Florida’s new immigration detention centre, Alligator Alcatraz, said they witnessed dozens of people in metal enclosures, bugs and mosquitos in bunk areas, indoor temperatures above 80 degrees and people screaming for help.Republicans who also toured the facility tell a different story, describing the space as safe, clean and well-run. The federal Homeland Security Department, which oversees immigration detention, has called characterisations of inadequate conditions at the state-run Alligator Alcatraz “false”.
Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem was asked about Democrats’ accounts during a July 13 interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press”. She said the Florida-run facility is “held to the highest levels of what the federal government requires for detention facilities”.
“Our detention centres at the federal level are held to a higher standard than most local or state centres and even federal prisons,” Noem said. “The standards are extremely high.”
White House border tsar Tom Homan also touted the nation’s immigration detention standards as being a cut above those for prisons and jails.
When a reporter asked Homan about a 75-year-old Cuban man who had been living in the US for 60 years before he died in detention in Miami in June, Homan defended federal facilities.
“People die in ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] custody,” he said, before saying ICE has “the highest detention standards in the industry. I’ll compare an …
