Florida’s Atrocity by Design

How DeSantis and Republicans Engineered a Humanitarian Disaster in Broad Daylight

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Aug 05, 2025

Florida’s sprawling immigration detention system—the country’s largest jailer of migrants—didn’t descend into a humanitarian crisis by accident. It’s the result of deliberately cruel policies, rampant abuse of emergency powers, and a systematic dismantling of human rights and public oversight. Under Governor DeSantis and a MAGA Republican legislature, Florida is a national test site for racist anti-immigrant warfare—a legacy built on dehumanization, calculated cruelty, and open contempt for the rule of law.

A Human Rights Catastrophe

Since Trump’s return, Florida officials moved with shocking speed to outpace even federal enforcement—constructing new detention sites and deputizing local police to round up migrants at record levels. The most infamous facility, known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” is a razor-wired tent compound built to imprison up to 5,000 people deep in the Everglades. Its creation bypassed environmental protections, bulldozed indigenous lands, and ignored furious local opposition.

Facilities like Alligator Alcatraz, Krome North Service Processing Center, and Broward Transitional Center now cage human beings at well over their legal capacities. Krome, meant to hold no more than 611 people, ballooned to 1,800 in 2025. Detainees sleep on concrete floors, packed into poorly ventilated, sweltering cells, denied even the most basic medical care. At Alligator Alcatraz, people endure nonstop artificial lighting, spoiled meals infested with maggots, water shortages, and tents repeatedly flooded by storms.

Led by DeSantis and empowered by a 2023 emergency order, Florida Republicans funneled $750 million in state and federal funds into a detention expansion spree. They suspended environmental reviews, seized land without transparency, and handed out lucrative prison contracts behind closed doors. With Trump’s authoritarian support, ICE’s 287(g) program deputized Florida law enforcement—turning state and local police into enforcers of an anti-immigrant dragnet. The result: a staggering 249% spike in the population at Krome since January 2025.

Systematic Assault on Oversight and Rights

Florida’s detention empire isn’t just inhumane—it’s shrouded in secrecy, shielded from accountability, and intentionally hostile to legal protections. The DeSantis administration uses unprecedented lengths to block in-person legal visits and confidential attorney communications at Alligator Alcatraz. Congressional Democrats are denied access. Florida even dismantled its own Office of Immigration Ombudsman and Civil Rights, while endorsing new ICE rules requiring a 72-hour notice for facility visits, giving officials time to hide the worst abuses.

Local leaders say they’re being deliberately kept in the dark. Officials in Miami-Dade and Collier counties reported new facilities appearing overnight—built without permits, with wetlands razed and tribal lands desecrated.

Human Cost: Death, Neglect, Desperation

The price of these policies is measured in preventable deaths, chronic medical neglect, and psychological trauma. Since January 2025, at least five people have died in ICE custody in Florida—half of the nationwide total. Among them: Maksym Chernayak, 44, who died after being denied critical medication; Genry Ruiz Guillen, 29, who perished inside the walls of Krome; and Isidro Perez, 75, whose repeated pleas for help were ignored until a fatal heart attack silenced him.

Inside these facilities, the pattern is chilling: diabetics left without insulin, asthmatics denied inhalers, kidney patients refused dialysis. At Broward Transitional Center, emergency calls to ambulances doubled. Legal aid is nonexistent, translation services are denied, and Spanish-speaking detainees cannot communicate with staff about basic needs.

Sexual and physical abuse is rampant in Florida’s privatized detention centers. At Baker County Detention Center, a federal lawsuit details horrifying sexual harassment. At Glades, contractors deleted surveillance footage that could have exposed abuse. These are not isolated cases—they are the norm. 200 allegations of sexual abuse in Florida ICE facilities have been documented since 2007, underscoring a culture of impunity.

Desperation has reached a boiling point. At Alligator Alcatraz, more than a dozen detainees launched a hunger strike—now entering its third week—to protest rotting food, sleeplessness under constant lights, and abusive guards. Multiple individuals have been hospitalized. Republicans continue to deny that any hunger strike is even occurring.

Political and Financial Motives

Florida’s barbaric system isn’t about public safety—it’s a cold-blooded political machine. DeSantis promotes these facilities as crown jewels of his administration, earning him lavish media attention, the approval of Trump, and a windfall of campaign cash. Most Florida detainees—90%—are interned in for-profit prisons run by giants like GEO Group and CoreCivic. These companies reap enormous profits from human misery—and in return, they pump political donations back into the system that sustains them.

Now, Florida is lobbying for hundreds of millions in federal reimbursements—while GOP policymakers push to expand the national immigration detention budget tenfold.

A Chasm of Accountability

Lawsuits, federal investigations, and public fury continue to mount. The ACLU has sued over unconstitutional restrictions on legal access. Indigenous and environmental advocates are in court over the destruction of sacred land and protected ecosystems. Democratic lawmakers are demanding oversight—but face a wall of secrecy, obstruction, and contempt from Florida officials.

Trump and DeSantis didn’t just allow this—they engineered it. Every flooded tent, every death, every abuse is a stain on their legacy and a challenge to our democracy. If we fail to dismantle this system now, we’ll inherit something far worse than broken policies—we’ll inherit a broken republic.