{"id":282772,"date":"2026-05-24T13:33:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T13:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/282772\/"},"modified":"2026-05-24T13:33:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T13:33:10","slug":"human-cages-and-overflowing-toilets-at-1m-a-day-the-brutal-legacy-of-ron-desantiss-alligator-alcatraz-jail-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/282772\/","title":{"rendered":"Human cages and overflowing toilets at $1m a day: the brutal legacy of Ron DeSantis\u2019s \u2018Alligator Alcatraz\u2019 jail | Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

It took three days for Arianne Betancourt\u2019s joy at the release of her father from months of detention in Florida<\/a>\u2019s notorious so-called \u201cAlligator Alcatraz\u201d immigration<\/a> jail<\/a> to fully evaporate.<\/p>\n

At first, she was able to overlook his shockingly gaunt appearance and weight loss, hesitant movements and moments of slurred speech. The tonic of being back in her Miami apartment, she thought, would surely hasten his return to health.<\/p>\n

That was on Thursday. By Sunday, however, Justo Betancourt was in the emergency room, with doctors suspecting he had suffered a series of mini strokes, during his detention and since his release. They were unable to perform an MRI scan on his brain to confirm the diagnosis because of the electronic monitoring tag affixed to his ankle.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he had a headache, if he didn\u2019t feel good, if his glucose was high, they\u2019d just tell him to drink more water,\u201d Arianne Betancourt said of his guards\u2019 reaction to her diabetic father\u2019s requests for medical help and his twice-daily insulin injections.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m furious at the condition he\u2019s in now. He\u2019s not the same person he was before they took him in there, and I don\u2019t know if he\u2019ll ever be the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

The detention center, hastily constructed last summer on a disused airstrip adjacent to fragile wetlands and Native American ancestral tribal lands in the mosquito-infested Florida Everglades, will close next month. It was condemned as \u201ca failed experiment in human suffering<\/a>\u201d by critics, and still costs Florida taxpayers more than $1m a day<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Justo Betancourt, a former detainee at the notorious \u2018Alligator Alcatraz\u2019 immigration jail, in an emergency room in Miami. Photograph: Betancourt family<\/p>\n

Its imminent shuttering follows lawsuits<\/a> from environmental groups; protests<\/a> from immigration advocates; unannounced visits by Democratic politicians who called conditions inside the facility \u201cinhumane<\/a>\u201d; and a 2025 Amnesty International report<\/a> highlighting commonplace physical abuse of detainees and human and legal rights violations.<\/p>\n

Beyond that, there are the individual human stories such as Betancourt\u2019s that will endure after the jail\u2019s closure, and become part of the legacy of Ron DeSantis<\/a>, Florida\u2019s hard-right governor, who will be termed out of office in January.<\/p>\n

DeSantis, a champion of the remote tented camp surrounded by alligators and Burmese pythons, celebrated that 22,000 detainees, all slated for deportation, were kept in metal cages during the nine months of the jail\u2019s existence.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did not create the Four Seasons [hotel]. That\u2019s not the intent of this,\u201d he said<\/a> last year.<\/p>\n

The experience of Betancourt, a Cuban national with decades-old drug convictions that were previously not considered a barrier to his continued presence in the US, is largely typical of those who have been held there.<\/p>\n

He was taken during a routine immigration appointment in October and shuffled around detention centers in Miami and Texas, before ending up at the Florida<\/a> facility.<\/p>\n

Before a judge issued a writ of habeas corpus<\/a> last week, concluding there was no reasonable prospect of the government deporting him to his homeland, Betancourt spent four and a half months in the Everglades jail. His daughter said he was traumatized by his own treatment and what he witnessed others experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s so much worse than I think most people imagine,\u201d she said. \u201cGuys in there [are] not getting food, all they know is being locked in a cage for months, then they\u2019re dumped in a country where they have no family, nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Florida division of emergency management, which runs the jail using a combination of state employees, military personnel and private contractors, has denied<\/a> any mistreatment or deprivation. The homeland security department has called reports \u201choaxes<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

But other former detainees have described conditions inside as \u201chell\u201d<\/a>, with cramped and dirty cages, no privacy for showers, overflowing toilets<\/a>, lights on 24 hours a day, malfunctioning air conditioning, and tiny food portions sometimes infested with worms or maggots.<\/p>\n

Advocates say their exposure of the jail\u2019s conditions and its cost has turned the tide of public opinion and hastened its demise.<\/p>\n

DeSantis, who is also reportedly mulling another run for the US presidency, already appears to be distancing himself from the jail he once supported.<\/p>\n

A police car guards the gates of the detention center during a Mother\u2019s Day vigil demanding the facility be shut down, on 10 May. Photograph: Crist\u00f3bal Herrera\/EPA<\/p>\n

\u201cIdeally, I wouldn\u2019t want to be involved in this business at all,\u201d DeSantis said at a press conference last week, in comments starkly at odds with his initial enthusiasm<\/a> and eagerness for opening and operating the jail on behalf of the US Department of Homeland Security.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew it was going to be temporary.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a subsequent media event, he said: \u201cIf we shut the lights out on it tomorrow, we will be able to say it served its purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n

That perceived indifference to human suffering dismays opponents of the detention center, who have staged vigils<\/a> outside its gates every Sunday since August, a month after it opened.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf in saying Alligator Alcatraz has \u2018served its purpose\u2019, Governor DeSantis means it has stirred the moral conscience of the nation, I would agree,\u201d said Tony Fisher, minister of the Unitarian Universalist congregation of Greater Naples.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has also laid bare the moral depravity of our state and federal administrations. The goal is not to close just one detention center, but all of them. The end is to elect people of either party who can show they have compassion for their fellow human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some political analysts believe DeSantis miscalculated when he went all in on the detention center, and invited Donald Trump<\/a> to tour it with him last July, months after the governor\u2019s unsuccessful challenge for the Republican presidential nomination.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to be quite the political positive that it looked like it would be at one time,\u201d said Aubrey Jewett, a professor of political science at the University of Central Florida.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen he first pushed it, the average American was still supporting cracking down on illegal immigration. It seemed a clear win for DeSantis, his way of regaining national exposure on this big issue that Republicans cared a lot about, and getting back into Trump\u2019s good graces after challenging Trump and losing and really being an outcast from Trump world.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the longer term, maybe not. Overall, public opinion has turned against aggressive immigration enforcement, the average American thinks President Trump has gone too far, and Alligator Alcatraz might be held up as a prime example. DeSantis pushed something really expensive, in an environmentally sensitive area, and with a reputation for not providing even basic civil rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

People attend a vigil at the entrance of the detention center. Photograph: Marco Bello\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Yet, as Jewett acknowledges, DeSantis is not completely backing away. He told reporters last week that far from soaking about $1bn from Florida\u2019s emergency preparedness fund, the jail had actually saved taxpayers money by not having to fund the \u201cstaggering cost\u201d of providing healthcare and education to deported criminals.<\/p>\n

His assertion is at odds with an NBC investigation<\/a> in December that found only one-quarter of the center\u2019s detainees had a criminal conviction, and less than half were facing criminal charges.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s defending this, but that doesn\u2019t necessarily make it factually correct,\u201d Jewett said. \u201cSome of the studies have shown the majority of people held in Alligator Alcatraz were not criminals, and other studies that have looked more broadly at the economic cost of immigration have been mixed on whether immigrants, illegal immigrants in particular, cost money or help the American economy by working hard and paying tax, and paying into social security and Medicare that they\u2019ll never collect.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Arianne Betancourt said she was optimistic her father would no longer be deported, he was still in the hospital on Thursday facing a long journey back to health. His ankle tag had been removed, she said, and doctors could finally evaluate neurological problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad is only 54, and when he went in there he was sick but he was still sturdy, at least mentally,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd he came out like this. It\u2019s just the reality of so many [people in the detention center].\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It took three days for Arianne Betancourt\u2019s joy at the release of her father from months of detention…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-282772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282772","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=282772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}