Mother Jones illustration; Andrew Caballero/AFP/Getty, Al Diaz/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service/Getty

Earlier this month, Florida Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat from Orlando, joined several state lawmakers on a tour inside Alligator Alcatraz. When Eskamani entered a large white tent where detainees are separated into chain-link fenced areas, each containing 32 beds and three toilets, the men began chanting “Libertad!”—which means liberty in Spanish.

Eskamani and the other lawmakers, who had sued Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis after previously being denied access to the facility, were not allowed to speak to detainees. Florida Division of Emergency Management director Kevin Guthrie, who guided the tour, said the facility was housing about 900 immigrants and would be able to accommodate up to 4,000 by the end of August, Eskamani says.

State Sen. Shevrin Jones, a Democrat from Miami-Dade County, was also there and recalls that someone with a thermometer showed that the temperature at the entrance of one of the tents was 81 degrees. He noticed that one of the detainees was bare-chested, with his shirt wrapped around his head.

Jones, whose office is in touch with some families, read me a text he received from a detainee’s wife. She wrote that one of the men in her husband’s cell was using the toilet when guards had ordered the men to stand by their beds for a head count. Guards began to yell at him. In another text, she wrote, “He told me that [the guards] all flip their badges over so that you can’t read their names.” The text continued, “The mosquitoes are getting worse, and they don’t spray them with bug spray.”

In the days since the tour, Eskamani says she has heard reports from detainees’ loved ones of rampant mosquitoes swarming the tents, as well as leaks after summer rainstorms. “In a weather situation, not even a hurricane, just a general rainy day in Florida,” Eskamani says, “this facility is not one that is sustainable.” 

Hastily erected on a remote airfield by Big Cypress National Preserve, and predicted to cost $450 million per year to run, Alligator Alcatraz has been unusually controversial even within the........

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