A chilling report has suggested that nearly two-thirds of the 1,800 men brought to Florida’s new immigration detention center, branded “Alligator Alcatraz,” could not be found in federal databases.
Families and attorneys have claimed that they’ve lost track of loved ones, with numerous detainees reportedly disappearing from official records.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, however, has claimed that none of the detention center’s detainees are unaccounted for.
Families are left without answers as detainees vanish from records
Image credits: WPLG Local 10
News about Alligator Alcatraz’s missing detainees was initially reported by the Miami Herald, which obtained two detainee rosters from July and August.
By checking them against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) databases, the Herald alleged that a good portion of the center’s detainees seemed to be missing.
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Reporters reportedly found that around 800 detainees had no records at all, while another 450 were listed only with the vague instruction to “Call ICE for details.”
This meant that the whereabouts of nearly 1,200 men, or about two-thirds of those brought to the facility in July, could not be determined by late August.
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The center, built in just eight days and officially run by Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, does not maintain a public detainee database. This has reportedly resulted in attorneys and family members being left in the dark.
“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,’” Miami immigration attorney Alex Solomiany told the Herald.
Image credits: CBS Miami
Some men, like a 53-year-old Guatemalan who had lived in the U.S. since 2001, reportedly vanished from court dockets after being detained. His lawyer said he was mistakenly deported to Guatemala instead of being transferred to another detention center, according to The Mirror.
In another case, Cuban national Michael Borrego Fernandez was deported to Mexico despite recovering from surgery. His family described the silence around his case as “psychological torture.”
Conflicting accounts of Alligator Alcatraz are fueling confusion and mistrust
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The U.S. Department of Homeland Security pushed back on the Herald’s reporting. In a statement to Snopes, which asked about the matter, the agency argued that all of its detainees on the site are accounted for.
“FALSE. No one is unaccounted, including at Alligator Alcatraz, in ICE’s online detention locator system. This is yet another hoax about the facility,” the U.S. DHS stated.
Image credits: CBS Miami
Attorneys and human rights advocates, however, claimed otherwise. Court filings from the American Civil Liberties Union have argued that the detention center has violated detainees’ constitutional rights by making it nearly impossible for lawyers to contact their clients.
Families, for their part, have also claimed that they’ve been left in limbo. Records reviewed by the Herald even suggested that the vast majority of detainees didn’t have final orders of removal before they entered Alligator Alcatraz.
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Snopes concluded that while it could not independently verify every name on the Herald’s lists, real-life cases like Borrego Fernandez’s have shown that detainees have indeed gone missing from the system or been deported without notice.
The fact-checking website suggested that this may mean that the missing detainees in ICE’s system have either been deported or sent to unknown facilities without their family’s or attorney’s knowledge.
Online, many speculated that the missing detainees have indeed been deported from the United States
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“It’s a temporary stay before being flown to their home country,” one commenter stated.
“It’s called; they got sent back to their country. No one is ‘missing,’” wrote another.
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“The reality is that this facility is to detain, process, then either deport or release. The planes leave from the airstrip on the premises. There’s zero reason that they should all still be there. It’s not a prison,” another commenter stated.
Others, however, remained aghast at the missing records of the facility’s detainees.
“There’s no record. Deported people have a record; they go before a judge (you ever heard of due process) these people have been wiped from the database base, and there is no record of where they went. It happened in Germany, too! Learn your history,” one commenter stated.
“Over a thousand unaccounted for, from a single facility, within the first 60 days of operations. Think about that. Really, really think about that,” another wrote.
Netizens shared their thoughts on Alligator Alcatraz’s missing roster on social media
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