ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Guards severely beat and pepper-sprayed detainees at a state-run immigration detention center known as \u201cAlligator Alcatraz\u201d in the Florida Everglades this month, according to a lawyer for two detainees.<\/p>\n
The guards targeted Katherine Blankenship\u2019s clients and other detainees at the facility after they complained about not having phone access on April 2, Blankenship said in a court declaration.<\/p>\n
The phones, which weren\u2019t functioning, are the primary way for detainees to communicate with family and their attorneys while in the detention center. The guards began taunting the detainees, who were in a cell, then became \u201cmore aggressive and were yelling and threatening to enter the cage,\u201d Blankenship wrote.<\/p>\n
When one detainee approached a guard, he was punched in the face. The guards then started beating other detainees in the cell. One of Blankenship\u2019s clients was punched in the right eye, thrown to the floor and beaten by several guards. He was kicked in the head and his shoulder and arm were injured. A guard put his knee on the detainee\u2019s neck while restraining him, according to the attorney\u2019s declaration, which included a photo made during a video call almost a week later showing the detainee with a bruised eye.<\/p>\n
Get Starting Point<\/p>\n
A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe officers beat several people during this incident and broke another detained individual\u2019s wrist,\u201d Blankenship wrote. The detainee whose wrist was broken is not one of her clients.<\/p>\n
Phone service was restored the next day without any explanation for why it was cut off.<\/p>\n
The Florida Department of Emergency Management didn\u2019t respond to questions emailed Wednesday about the incident.<\/p>\n
Blankenship\u2019s declaration was included in a court filing accusing state and federal officials of failing to comply with a federal judge\u2019s preliminary injunction last month ordering detention center officials to provide access to timely, free, confidential, unmonitored and unrecorded outgoing legal calls. U.S. District Judge Sheri Polster Chappell in Fort Myers, Florida also said facility officials must provide at least one operable telephone for every 25 people held in the facility.<\/p>\n
The judge\u2019s order came in a response to a lawsuit that claimed detainees\u2019 First Amendment rights were being violated.<\/p>\n
State officials have denied restricting detainees\u2019 access to their attorneys and cited security and staffing reasons for any challenges. Federal officials who also are defendants denied that detainees\u2019 First Amendment rights were violated.<\/p>\n
The Everglades facility was built last summer at a remote airstrip by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis\u2019 administration to support President Donald Trump\u2019s immigration policies. Florida also has built a second immigration detention center in north Florida.<\/p>\n
During a visit last week to the detention center, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat, said she wasn\u2019t given the chance to talk to detainees. She described conditions at the detention center as \u201cinhumane.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way the detainees are housed is cruel and unnecessary,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Gisela Salomon in Miami contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Guards severely beat and pepper-sprayed detainees at a state-run immigration detention center known as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1107,28,30,29,477,1837,1841,99,1840,1110],"class_list":{"0":"post-232920","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-courts","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-florida-headlines","11":"tag-florida-news","12":"tag-general-news","13":"tag-immigrant-detention","14":"tag-immigration","15":"tag-politics","16":"tag-prisons","17":"tag-u-s-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}