Amnesty International today released a new report documenting cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment at two immigration detention centers in Florida: The Everglades Detention Facility (“Alligator Alcatraz”) and the Krome North Service Processing Center (Krome).

The report, Torture and enforced disappearances in the Sunshine State: Human rights violations at “Alligator Alcatraz” and Krome in Florida, reveals human rights violations that, in some cases amount to torture, occurring at Krome and “Alligator Alcatraz” within an increasingly hostile anti-immigrant climate in Florida under Governor Ron DeSantis, whose administration has intensified criminalization and mass detention of migrants and people seeking safety. Findings were gathered during a September 2025 research mission.

“These findings confirm a deliberate system built to punish, dehumanize, and hide the suffering of people in detention,” said Ana Piquer, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for the Americas. “Immigration enforcement cannot operate outside the rule of law or exempt itself from human rights standards. What we are seeing in Florida should alarm the entire region.”

The research concluded that people arbitrarily detained in “Alligator Alcatraz” are living in inhuman and unsanitary conditions including overflowing toilets with fecal matter seeping into where people are sleeping, limited access to showers, exposure to insects without protective measures, lights on 24 hours a day, poor quality food and water, and lack of privacy – including cameras above the toilets.

People interviewed shared that access to medical care is inconsistent, inadequate, or denied all together, placing individuals at serious risk of physical and mental harm. People reported being always shackled when they were outside their cage. Other treatment those detained have endured amounts to torture, including being put in the “box”,described as a 2×2 foot cage-like structure people are put in as punishment – sometimes for hours at a time exposed to the elements with hardly any water – with their hands and feet attached to restraints on the ground. [Continue reading…]