Reports of Uprising at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’
Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, Everglades, FL – According to reporting by Noticias 23/Univision, an uprising took place on or around Thursday, August 28 at the notorious immigrant detention center called ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ by some and the ‘Everglades Concentration Camp’ by others. The site has drawn widespread condemnation due to severe human rights and environmental violations and is in the process of closing.
Noticias 23/Univison reports that three detainees contacted them by phone and that alarms could be heard in the background of calls from the facility. At least four people detained at the rapidly-constructed detention camp, ordered shut down by a federal judge on Wednesday, have been reportedly injured in the uprising. The number of guards injured is currently unknown.
Guards reportedly used tear gas and indiscriminate beatings to regain control of the facility when an unknown number of suffering captives began to revolt, presumably to attempt to escape. Detainees who contacted the Miami-Fort Lauderdale Spanish-language news outlet said that they could hear fire alarms as well as the sound of helicopters circling the facility.
The Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM), tasked with running the facility, denies that any such events took place and did not respond to requests for comment according to Noticias 23/Univision. However, details reported in this incident are consistent with an earlier August 6 report by NBC 6 South Florida, in which detainees calling the news station reported general chaos, mass beatings by guards, and the likely death of an injured or sick person seen laying on the floor “dying” with no medical care available. The FDEM replied to NBC 6’s inquiry for their earlier story by insisting “these claims are false.” Detainees at the camp went on hunger strike in July stretching into August but the Department of Homeland Security repeatedly insisted this was not happening.
According to Noticias 23/Univision’s August 28 report, statements made by detainees who reached their reporters by telephone included the following. Quotes in Spanish reported by Noticias 23/Univision have been rush translated into English and may contain minor errors:
“They started yelling because a person had received news that a relative had died, and then they began shouting for freedom. At that moment, a prison team entered and started beating everyone. Right now everything is chaotic, and there’s a helicopter above. They’ve beaten everyone here, a lot of people have bled. Brother, tear gas. We are immigrants, we are not criminals, we are not murderers.”
“There are helicopters overhead and a lot of people bleeding.”
“They are beating us, they are mistreating us.”
(Through tears): “We are being mistreated, we are being beaten. It’s the emergency alarm, please help us.”
Statements reportedly made by detainees to Noticias 23/Univision
Another August 28 report by Noticias Univision Orlando cites warnings by ‘Ana’, the wife of a man being abused in the detention camp, that her husband has the coronavirus and is packed tightly into a cell crammed with many other detained people.
Solidarity South Florida, a network “of anarchist organizers in South Florida” that runs a webpage tracking contractors tied to ‘Alligator Alcatraz’, issued a statement on Mastodon:
“Anarchists in South Florida stand in full solidarity with those fighting for liberation inside the concentration camps. From Operation Al-Aqsa Flood to the Everglades Concentration Camp, the Auschwitz Prisoner Rebellion to Attica Prison Riot, liberating concentration camps by any means necessary is the only course of action left to the disappeared.
As the courts begin to place roadblocks to this concentration camp’s expansion and some operations, the cracks in the Empire are beginning to widen. May they continue to grow as revolutionaries take bold action on the inside and outside to end mass deportation, incarceration, borders, and this Empire.”
Solidarity South Florida
This developing story was first reported by Noticias 23/Univision in Spanish and Jacob Crosse at wsws.org first reported it in English, citing the original Spanish reporting.
Title image via SovNat/Wikimedia Commons.
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