Hundreds of detainees at a newly opened detention center in the Florida Everglades don’t have underlying criminal records, according to a Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times investigation published Sunday.
Despite the Trump administration and Florida officials’ claims that the detention center, which they’ve gleefully dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” is holding hardened criminals and violent gang members, the Herald and Times obtained a list of roughly 700 detainees being held there. The news outlets found more than 250 people who were listed as having only immigration violations, but no criminal convictions or pending charges in the U.S.
Those numbers track with how President Donald Trump’s mass deportation program is being generally carried out around the country. According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention data from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, nearly half of people in ICE custody across the country in late June did not have a criminal conviction or pending criminal charges and were only being held for immigration violations. Similarly, The City published data today showing that roughly half of immigrants arrested in and around New York City this year had no criminal history.
To hit the administration’s huge quotas for immigration arrests, detentions, and removals, ICE has necessarily had to target non-criminals, including migrants who legally entered the country through temporary parole and asylum programs for refugees.
The nephew of one man on the list told the Herald and Times that his uncle, Denis Alcides Solis Morales, entered the country from Nicaragua legally under a humanitarian parole program in 2023 and had a pending asylum case. Morales was sent to the detention center following a traffic stop. The list obtained by the news outlets does not list any criminal convictions or pending charges against Morales.
“That place is supposedly for the worst criminals in the U.S.,” Walter Jara, Morales’ nephew, told the Herald and Times.
That’s what Trump promised when he visited the hastily constructed detention center on July 1 with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. “Very soon, this facility will house some of the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet,” Trump said.
A spokesperson for Florida Attorney General James Uthmeir called detainees “deranged psychopaths.”
The Florida GOP is even selling merchandise for “Alligator Alcatraz,” which describes the camp as a “one-way ticket to regret for criminals who’ll wish they self-deported.”
The Trump administration did not dispute the veracity of the list obtained by the news outlets but said it didn’t count crimes committed outside the country.
“Many of the individuals that are counted as ‘non-criminals’ are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters and more; they just don’t have a rap sheet in the U.S.,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told the Herald and Times in a statement. “Further, every single one of these individuals committed a crime when they came into this country illegally. It is not an accurate description to say they are ‘non-criminals.'”
McLaughlin’s last statement is factually incorrect. The Trump administration is dismissing asylum cases against migrants who entered the country with the permission of the U.S. government, and then it’s branding them as criminals—in many cases after arresting them outside of court hearings and immigration appointments.
It’s also important to note that the list published by the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times was not public. The federal government and State of Florida have refused to release public information on the detainees being held in “Alligator Alcatraz,” and have only begrudgingly admitted local, state, and federal lawmakers to tour the facility.
Secret prisons have no place in America, and if the Trump and DeSantis administrations are confident enough in the popularity of their mass deportation propaganda to sell hats advertising their new prison camp, they should have no problem with a little transparency.
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