Former ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Corrections Officer Describes ‘Inhumane’ Conditions: Like ‘An Oversized Kennel’

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

A woman who worked at the ICE detention facility in the Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz” says that the conditions there are miserable and “inhumane,” comparing the areas where detainees are kept to “an oversized kennel.”

Alligator Alcatraz has been extremely controversial after multiple reports of abuses of detainees, hundreds of millions of dollars in lucrative contracts going to GOP donors and other allies of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, lack of audits and other Florida law-mandated transparency, environmental harm to a national park’s fragile ecosystem, and impact on local Miccosukee and Seminole ceremonial sites and tribal lands.

The facility flooded after a summer thunderstorm on its opening day, shortly after President Donald Trump, DeSantis, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and other government officials and media toured the site. According to the National Weather Service in Miami, the storm brought an inch-and-a-half of rain.

When the Miami Herald filed a public records request for the facility’s hurricane plan last month, a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Emergency Management replied that there were “no responsive records to this request.”

On Wednesday, NBC6 Miami’s Hatzel Vela interviewed “Lindsey,” a former employee at Alligator Alcatraz, who asked to be identified only by her first name “because she worries about her family’s privacy and possible online harassment.”

“It’s inhumane, the way that they’re keeping their residents,” said Lindsey, who provided NBC6 paperwork showing she had started work on July 6, her state certification as a corrections officer, and her contract with GardaWorld Federal Services, a security company that was awarded a contract worth nearly $38 million for staffing at the ICE facility.

A LinkedIn post by GardaWorld showed they were hiring for these jobs a month ago, NBC6 reported, offering $26 per hour.

She told NBC6 that she knew the job was for Alligator Alcatraz when she applied, and had been told she would be living in a shared trailer on site, but said the conditions were rougher than she had expected, for both the detainees and staff.

“When I got there, it was overwhelming,” she said. “I thought it would get better. But it just never did.”

“We had to use the porta-johns,” she added. “We didn’t have hot water half the time. Our bathrooms were backed up.”

Lindsey described the area where detainees are held as looking like “an oversized kennel” with crowded and miserable conditions:

She says each tent had eight large cages, which hold 35 to 38 inmates, which means each tent holds close to 300 detainees.

“They have no sunlight. There’s no clock in there. They don’t even know what time of the day it is,” Lindsey said. “They have no access to showers. They shower every other day or every four days.”

She added: “The bathrooms are backed up because you got so many people using them.”

On rainy days, she said, water pours into the tents. She described the conditions as miserable, not to forget — the constant battle with mosquitos.

She expressed sympathy for the detainees, noting that many of them weren’t criminals and criticizing the conditions at the facility.

“These people are still human,” she said. “They pulled them from their livelihood. They’re scared. They don’t speak our language.”

According to Lindsey, she caught Covid about a week on the job and had to isolate, and then was fired, telling NBC6 she was accused of “altering medical paperwork submitted to the company” — an accusation she denies.

“I was fired. And yeah, I’m pissed off,” she told NBC6. “But more so than ever, like, they’re doing wrong.”

She added that she has not yet been paid for her work.

GardaWorld did not answer NBC6’s requests for comment and referred the station to state government authorities. FDEM has previously denied poor conditions at the facility.

Thomas Kennedy, a policy analyst with the Florida Immigrant Coalition and a staunch critic of Alligator Alcatraz, has documented multiple ambulances leaving the facility over the past few days.

Watch the video above, via NBC6 Miami.