Above photo: Protest against Trump’s new ICE detention center, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz”. Craig Birchfield.
The US Department of Defense has awarded a contract to Acquisition Logistics LLC to build a sprawling short-term ICE detention center with a capacity of 5,000 detainees.
The US Department of Defense has awarded a contract worth USD 1.26 billion to the Virginia-based company Acquisition Logistics LLC to build a sprawling short-term ICE detention center in the Fort Bliss army base in El Paso, Texas. The center is set to have a capacity of 5,000 detainees which would make it the largest immigrant detention center in the country.
The facility, much like the newly-minted “Alligator Alcatraz”, will be composed entirely of tents and temporary structures, raising the alarm about potential conditions of detention in the scorching dry heat of western Texas.
The reports emerging from detainees in the new detention facility in the Florida Everglades describe the perils of being so exposed to the elements. “We are in a cage of metal bars with the lights on 24 hours a day, and the mosquitoes seem like elephants,” said “Alligator Alcatraz” detainee Leamsy Izquierdo, a Cuban musician and US permanent resident, in a phone conversation with his partner.
“At a time when funding for education, housing, healthcare, and other essential social services is being cut, this administration is funneling millions of dollars to fuel its cruel, inhumane, and anti-immigrant agenda, one that continues tearing families, destabilizing communities, and dividing our nation,” said Fernando Garcia, the executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights (BNHR), in a statement.
This week, Human Rights Watch released a report documenting abuses at three Florida immigrant detention centers. Detainees interviewed for this report detailed horrific treatment in these facilities, including being shackled in buses for extended period of time without access to food, water, or working toilets, crammed into freezing, overcrowded holding cells, or forced to sleep on cold concrete floors under the constant glare of fluorescent lights.
One detainee described being forced to wait hours for lunch, then, alongside other detainees, being made to eat with his hands shackled behind his back. “We had to bend over and eat off the chairs with our mouths, like dogs,” he said.
