"Dangerous and unlawful conditions" inside the state-managed immigration detention camp in the Everglades pose serious health implications for hundreds of detainees, says a group of health professionals, immigrant advocates and family members of those being held.
"This isn't a detention facility — it's a public health experiment gone horribly wrong," said Sebastian Caicedo, Miami-Dade regional director at Florida Rising. "People are being exposed to viruses, sewage, and extreme trauma. It's state-sponsored cruelty, and it has to stop."
Caicedo was among several medical professionals who appeared at a protest and press conference Tuesday morning outside the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, the site of the detention center Gov. Ron DeSantis and other state officials call "Alligator Alcatraz."
"The internment camp is an atrocity in our community," said Tessa Petit, the co-executive director, of the Florida Immigration Coalition, one of the most influential statewide immigrant advocacy groups.
"The conditions under which people are detained raise major medical concerns," she said, raising questions about facility's toilets and sink systems and high temperatures inside the "cages" where detainees are being housed.
"This kind of treatment to human beings is not the American way," Petit said.
"This is a public health crisis unfolding in our own backyard," said Armen Henderson, executive director at Dade County Street Response.
During the press conference, one woman, whose husband is among those immigrants detained, held up her cellphone so the crowd could hear her husband talk about the poor conditions inside the facility.
"This place is a cage," she said in tears. "It's for dogs, and they don't deserve to be here no matter what."
The organizers, citing a Yale School of Public Health study, said the area around the detention center is "swarming with over 7 billion mosquitoes, many carrying dangerous viruses including Everglades virus, West Nile, Zika and dengue."
Organizers say at least six detainees have been hospitalized, but they did not indicate their medical conditions.
READ MORE: 'They chained me to the ground': Detainees at Alligator Alcatraz allege harsh punishment by guards
The Florida Immigration Coalition and its partners ticked off a list of demands. They want the detention camp immediately closed down.
They want emergency health screenings and care for all current and recently released detainees; ongoing medical monitoring for workers and contractors; and, full legal access for detainees and independent inspections of conditions.
The sprawling "Alligator Alcatraz" facility was designed to house thousands of suspected undocumented immigrants and went up in a matter of days, opening at the start of this month. President Donald Trump and top administration officials toured it July 1.
DeSantis used an executive order, originally signed by the Republican governor in 2023 and extended since then, to accelerate construction and allow the state to seize county-owned land in what critics have called an abuse of power.
The order granted the state sweeping authority to suspend "any statute, rule or order" seen as slowing the response to the immigration "emergency."
Known as the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, the airstrip is about 45 miles west of downtown Miami. It is within Collier County but is owned and managed by neighboring Miami-Dade.
To DeSantis and other state officials, building the facility in the remote Everglades and naming it after a notorious federal prison were meant as deterrents.
Environmental groups have filed a federal lawsuit, arguing that the state illegally bypassed federal and state laws in building the facility.
A class-action federal lawsuit filed last week alleges that people held there are being prevented from having access to lawyers and "effectively have no way to contest their detention."
The lawsuit also alleges that lawyers have been barred from entering the facility and that officials have "made it virtually impossible for detainees, or their counsel, to file documents required to contest their detention with the immigration court."
The lawsuit was filed by attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans for Immigrant Justice.
In a related lawsuit, five Democrat state lawmakers who were at one point denied access to the immigration detention center. alleged DeSantis overstepped his authority in blocking legislative oversight of the facility.
The lawmakers argue that DeSantis and Kevin Guthrie, director of Florida's Emergency Management Division, unlawfully restricted the Legislature's independence as a co-equal branch of government in denying them access to the facility on July 3. Under Florida law, legislators are among officials who can visit all state correctional institutions "at their pleasure."
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