Lawyers say immigrants battling medical emergencies and disease at Alligator Alcatraz: ‘I don’t want to die in here’

James Liddell
Fri, August 15, 2025 
THE INDEPENDENT, UK

A respiratory disease allegedly sweeping through Alligator Alcatraz has prompted multiple affidavits in support of a class-action lawsuit against the remote Florida immigrant detention center.

Lawyers and migrants being held inside the Everglades facility have reported a trend of negligence and worsening conditions, including a mystery illness, possibly Covid-19, running rampant through the camp.

Eric Lee, an attorney for former detainee Luis Manuel Rivas Velásquez, filed a complaint on Wednesday against Alligator Alcatraz, accusing it of being a “petri dish for disease.”

Last Thursday, Velásquez, a 38-year-old Venezuelan influencer, told Lee that he fell seriously ill with breathing problems. After allegedly being denied medical care for 48 hours, at one point, the detainee collapsed and became unresponsive.

In the filings, Lee said that Velásquez was taken to Miami’s Kendall regional medical center and diagnosed with a respiratory infection before being briefly returned to the Florida camp and then transferred to another facility in El Paso, Texas.

The Department of Homeland Security denied that any disease is running rampant at Alligator Alcatraz (Getty)

The Department of Homeland released a statement on Thursday and said that Velásquez “fainted and was taken to the hospital out of precaution.”

Along with reporting respiratory symptoms, the plaintiff said that conditions at the facility had deteriorated significantly, with more detainees falling ill.

Lee told the Guardian on Tuesday that “multiple detainees” have informed him that the “vast majority” of those held in the camp have become sick.

“There are people who are losing breath,” he said. “There are people who are walking around coughing on one another.”

Protesters at the jail gates say they have recorded several instances of ambulances arriving and leaving.

However, the DHS said in its statement that there is “no widespread disease circulating at Alligator Alcatraz” and “no cases of COVID and no cases of Tuberculosis.”

In an earlier statement to the Miami New Times, Stephanie Hartman, a department spokesperson, did not answer questions about a possible outbreak.

“Detainees have access to a 24/7, fully staffed medical facility with a pharmacy on site,” she said.

President Donald Trump toured the freshly opened immigrant detention facility on July 1 (AFP via Getty Images)

After being transferred to the El Paso facility, Velásquez reportedly called Lee and said that his condition was worsening.

“I don’t want to die in here,” he told Lee on the phone call before abruptly being cut off, according to the filing.

In a separate filing, detainees and attorneys alleged that Alligator Alcatraz had poor sanitation, limited access to legal counsel, and overcrowded tented housing.

Plaintiffs portrayed the site as lacking “adequate medical infrastructure” with hundreds of migrants “crammed into close quarters in extreme heat and humidity, with poor ventilation and limited access to hygiene.”

According to the filing, detainees have been left in their bunks without testing or treatment. It also accuses immigration officials of erecting “an unconstitutional barrier between detainees and their counsel.”

Federal judges have recently intervened in other detention settings to order improved conditions after lawyers documented unsafe and unsanitary environments.

Separately, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Mary Williams last Thursday temporarily halted any further construction of Alligator Alcatraz after two days of testimony about the environmental impact of the site.

In response, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said that “operations at Alligator Alcatraz are ongoing and deportations are continuing.”

Father Frank's protest and prayer: Alligator Alcatraz Mass opposes immigration

 crackdown

Valentina Palm and Hannah Phillips, 

Palm Beach Post
Sun, August 17, 2025 

OCHOPEE — This week, Angelica Maldonado faced her first day of high school without her father, Rufino.

Authorities detained the 51-year-old Mexican immigrant Aug. 10 and are holding him at Alligator Alcatraz.

On Aug. 16, 14-year-old Angelica joined more than 100 people for a Mass outside the immigrant detention facility, led by the Rev. Frank O'Loughlin. For the 83-year-old O'Loughlin, founder of the Guatemalan-Maya Center in Lake Worth Beach, and the teenager, the service was both a protest of today's conditions and a prayer for a better tomorrow.

“We are not just fighting for the future,” O'Loughlin said. “You are proclaiming this kingdom of death will end and the reign of God will shine forth among us.”

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The Mass was part of O’Loughlin's 60th jubilee celebration as a priest. He has spent his years serving immigrants and migrant workers across Florida and is known to many as "Father Frank." O’Loughlin said he brought people like Angelica to the shadows of the detention center to rally against the reported conditions of the people detained there.

"I am here to protest to have my dad back with me and my family again,” Angelica said as she stood outside the detention center built in the Everglades, an hour from her family's home in Homestead.

“My dad has always been there for me on the first day of school,” she said, breaking into tears. “This is cruel what they are doing to people. They are ripping families apart.”

"I miss my father,” said Angelica, hugging her younger brother.

The Rev. Frank O'Loughlin, 'Father Frank' to much of South Florida and the founder of the Guatemalan-Maya Center in Lake Worth Beach, celebrates Mass outside the immigrant detention center in Ochopee known as Alligator Alcatraz on Aug. 16, 2025.More

Most of those who traveled to the service, which took place on a hot day at a buggy crossroad on the Tamiami Trail midway between Naples and Miami, came from South Florida, but others came from far away to take part. They said they did it to honor O'Loughlin.

Jerry Kay, 78, flew in from California days earlier.

“He’s much more frail than when I knew him 50 years ago,” Kay said of O'Loughlin. “But when he takes to the pulpit, he’s got more strength than most people I know."
About 100 gathered in summer heat for Mass at Alligator Alcatraz

The staff of the Guatemalan-Maya Center — which over the past 30 years has become a key point of services for new arrivals from Central and South America — arrived hours early to erect a large white tent in front of Alligator Alcatraz’s entryway. The facility itself wasn’t visible from the road, but its sign stood opposite the pulpit.

Between the two, organizers arranged rows of folding chairs on a plastic sheet, welcoming newcomers with bug spray and water bottles. With 30 minutes to go before the start of the Mass, the tent began to fill in earnest.

"While we gather together to celebrate Father Frank’s diamond jubilee, we remember all the parents who fled violent regimes only to be met with further oppression here,” said Mariana Blanco, the center's director.

Mariana Blanco, Director of the Guatemalan-Mayan Center, places Father Frank O'Loughlin's signature Guatemalan drape before his Mass on Aug. 16, 2025 held outside Alligator Alcatraz detention center in the Florida Everglades.

Attendees’ cars lined either side of the two-way road. Some were dressed for church and others only to withstand the heat. Those who arrived early enough to get a seat in the tent sat shoulder to shoulder, a swamp to their right and the detention center at their backs.

O'Loughlin appeared next, along with a swarm of friends and followers, some to ask for a photo, others to clip a microphone to his lapel, to put spray bug repellent down his back or to give him a cold cup of water and aim a portable fan, equipped with a mister, at the octogenarian.

He accepted the help warmly.

Those who stood outside the tent did so with mud on their shoes. They raised their hands in prayer, then kept them up to block the sun. When a young woman — called to the lectern to speak about those inside the detention center walls — began to cry, others wiped their faces too, from tears or sweat or both.

Worshippers traveled from as far as 175 miles away to Ochopee on Aug. 16, 2025, for the Rev. Frank O'Loughlin's Mass outside the immigrant detention center called Alligator Alcatraz. O'Loughlin celebrated Mass to protest President Trump's treatment of immigrants.More

If they weren’t fanning themselves or shielding their eyes, they were clasping hands with strangers. They prayed aloud, sometimes in unison, during a Mass that was as much a sermon as a show of solidarity with those inside the detention center.

“Shall we ever permit anybody to call them aliens?” O’Loughlin asked, to a resounding “No.”


“If you start calling them illegal, the next stop is calling them criminal," he said.

Again and again, the priest returned to the language of the biblical book of Exodus. He reminded the crowd that God once freed his people from Egypt, calling on his own congregation to see today’s migrants as modern-day Israelites. Communion itself, he said, was born of slavery’s escape: the unleavened bread of “the runaway slaves” who struck out into the desert for freedom.

To accept the sacrament was not only to savor one’s own deliverance, he said, but also to accept the responsibility to liberate others.

"Thank you, Father Frank," someone shouted as O'Loughlin wound up his remarks. The crowd erupted in laughter and clapped in a standing ovation.

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Many who atttended Mass said they opposed ICE separation of families

The Aug. 16 service, a blend of prayer and policy talk, drew parishioners, immigrant advocates and families from across Florida.

One couple, Hilario and Maria Barajas, both 75, left their home in Auburndale at 5 a.m. to attend. They picked fields across the country their entire lives and first protested along with O'Loughlin 45 years ago. He even baptized their son.

This time, they came to rally against the detentions at Alligator Alcatraz.

“We are against all this separation of families,” said Maria. “And of people being deported for no other reason than being here to make a better life for their children.”

 Stones and Rachel McGerman drove from Lake Worth Beach to join the Mass. Both said they are concerned with reports of authorities detaining day laborers in their city and across Palm Beach County.

"The terror that these families are in on C Street, this is our home,” McGerman said. "I also know it would mean a lot to the people who are being detained across the street to know that there are people here praying for them.”

Also from Lake Worth Beach, Karim Salcedo, a teacher at the Guatemelan-Maya Center, brushed tears off her cheeks throughout the ceremony. She said she has learned the father of one of her voluntary pre-K education students is also detained at Alligator Alcatraz.

"I can visualize her dad in there,” Salcedo said, her voice thinning out. “Many of them came here looking for freedom and liberty and now they are locked up in there without hope.”

Salcedo said O’Loughlin’s Mass gave her hope.

"This Mass, it was like the grace of God shining in a moment of darkness,” Salcedo said.

The Rev. Frank O'Loughlin smiles at one of about 100 people who gathered outside the detention center known as Alligator Alcatraz for Mass on Aug. 16. O'Loughlin, known as 'Father Frank' to many, held the Mass to protest the treatment of immigrants in the U.S.More

Maria Garcia, a Naples resident, celebrated her 30th birthday by holding a banner along the busy road in from Alligator Alcatraz holding a sign that read “Silence is compliance.”

“Don’t ever think it's not going to be you,” Garcia said. “Because by the time it is you, there is not going to be enough people to speak up.”

“Our rights are getting chipped away day by day,” she added. “So wake up and speak up.”

Valentina Palm and Hannah Phillips are reporters for The Palm Beach Post. Reach them at vpalm@pbpost.com and hphillips@pbpost.com.