Hundreds of people who were once detained at the troubled immigration jail in the Florida Everglades, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” have disappeared. Democracy Now! speaks with Shirsho Dasgupta, a Miami Herald reporter who found that, as of late August, about two-thirds of the 1,800 immigrants who were held there in July have gone missing from ICE’s online database, with their families and attorneys unable to locate them. Earlier this month, a federal appeals court ruled the jail could continue to operate despite reports of abuse.
“What we’re seeing at Alligator Alcatraz is basically a new model of immigration detention, where a state-run facility is operating as an extrajudicial black site, completely outside of the previous models of immigration detention in this country. And it’s making what was already a terrible system somehow even worse,” says Thomas Kennedy, policy analyst at the Florida Immigrant Coalition.
It’s operating on top of a federal airstrip (yes, located in the middle of the Everglades) that was used as a staging ground for CIA extraordinary renditions.
That airstrip has ALWAYS been used for doing what they’re doing now—they’ve just scaled up operations. It’s ALWAYS been a ‘disappearing people’ center. Seriously.
The government started construction on it forever ago (it was initially supposed to be a 39 square mile international airport) but construction halted and they decided to just keep it for classified CIA/FBI/military activities. Source: am Floridian and also “Wilderness on the Edge: A History of Everglades National Park” by Robert W. Blythe.
We’ve always been the baddies. :( :(
Not great, but I assumed they were feeding them to the alligators
Well, I dunno about always, but things certainly have gone down hill after WWII. But, I feel the Native Americans would disagree with me.
We have sometimes been a force for good but we have never, and can never, atone for the genocide and slavery this nation is built on. That specter of cruelty haunts us and manifests in many ways. The loss of indigenous peoples. The failure of Reconstruction. Constant meddling in foreign governments. Every fight for equal rights and fair treatment is an echo of the foundation of an inherently unjust country.
not just “slavery.” There was also genocide.