Hundreds Missing From ICE Database at Alligator Alcatraz As Families Call It "Psychological Torture"

At Florida’s notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” detention site, chaos and suffering replaced due process, creating what one attorney called “an alternate system where the normal rules don’t apply.” For many, this meant vanishing into a system that defied accountability. A Guatemalan man was mistakenly deported before his bond hearing, echoing the wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Families were left searching desperately, as in the case of a 35-year-old Cuban man whose whereabouts were unknown for over a week. By August, the Miami Herald reported that two-thirds of July’s 1,800 detainees could not be tracked in ICE’s database. Around 800 had no record at all, while 450 were listed only with the vague instruction to “Call ICE for details.”

Attorneys said these “disappearances” often pressured detainees to give up their cases just to escape brutal conditions. Miami lawyer Alex Solomiany explained, “It became a game of chicken… to see if the client’s going to say ‘I don’t want to be detained in these conditions just send me back.’” One of his clients, a Guatemalan house painter who had lived in the U.S. since 2001, was accidentally deported while awaiting a hearing. His family, fearful of retaliation, withheld his name. Such “errors” were blamed on the rushed construction of the site in just over a week, but for detained families, the harm was permanent.

The suffering extended beyond paperwork mistakes. Cuban detainee Michael Borrego Fernandez endured emergency surgery while shackled to a hospital bed. After being moved to another facility, his family lost contact for more than a week. His mother described the ordeal: “This is like psychological torture. Where’s the humanity?” ICE told them he was in California, but he had in fact been deported thousands of miles away to Mexico. For loved ones, the trauma of uncertainty and sudden loss was unbearable.

Attorneys warn that even those who survive Alligator Alcatraz’s cages carry its mark. As immigration lawyer Zachary Perez put it, “They’ve all suffered some pretty bad results just from being tagged with the Alligator Alcatraz label.” The site, briefly shuttered by court order and then reopened, continues to symbolize a system where families are torn apart, records vanish, and human dignity is disregarded.

Link: Miami Herald