After ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ DHS Watchdog Raises Alarm About Future Oversight - Newsweek

The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) own watchdog has raised serious concerns about conditions at the now-closed immigrant detention facility in Florida known as "Alligator Alcatraz," and that issues may be repeated at the state's other major ICE site.

In a lengthy report issued Friday, DHS' Office of Inspector General (OIG) detailed how some immigrants at the temporary site were held in phone-booth-sized boxes for up to two hours at a time, there was severe overcrowding, and federal and state agencies were not clear enough on who was responsible.

"It is torture, locking people up outside in the middle of the Florida summer, in a cage, exposed to the elements, exposed to the mosquitoes in an inhospitable environment like the Everglades," Thomas Kennedy of the Florida Immigration Coalition told Newsweek Monday. "It is torturous."

While Alligator Alcatraz, located in the Everglades, closed earlier in the summer, the OIG warned similar issues could be repeated at a site known as Deportation Depot, which is also being run in partnership between ICE and Florida authorities.

“Alligator Alcatraz was consistent with the same federal detention standards employed by previous administrations, including Biden and Obama," a DHS spokesperson told Newsweek Monday. "All detainee facilities are clean, and any allegations of inhumane conditions or excessive use of force are FALSE."

Newsweek reached out to the Florida Division of Emergency Management for comment Monday morning.

The report details an unannounced inspection the OIG conducted in January 2026. At the time, at least 1,800 people were likely detained in the soft-sided facility, which was a state-run site operated on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Inspectors found the site severely overcrowded. Detention standards required 75 square feet per detainee, but in reality they had closer to 28. In other words, housing units designed for 32 immigrants should have held only 11.

Photos from inside the facility showed the structures built to house immigrants, many of whom were set for deportation - metal cages with bunk beds inside temporary white tents.

The report also detailed how at least 79 detainees were placed in metal enclosures measuring around 18 square feet between July 2025 and January 2026. The phone-booth-esque structures were branded "unprecedented" by inspectors, who said they were used to hold immigrants between one and two hours at a time, mostly when they failed to obey a command from officers.

"This was a torture device," Kennedy said. "It constituted solitary confinement with people exposed to the elements in the middle of a swamp."

Whatever the reason for using them, inspectors said they posed serious health and well-being concerns.

"It was so gray as to whose place this is…and which standards to follow," one official told inspectors behind the report, referring to the uncertainty over whether it was federal or state policies the site should be sticking to.

DHS argued that it was not responsible for the standards at the site because it was Florida-run, the OIG said, but inspectors pushed back. The office said ICE must maintain some oversight because its staff was at Alligator Alcatraz, agency tours were given at the facility, and ICE handbooks were given to detainees.

"I don't want to be like, the I told you so guy, but we actually filed a lawsuit over this," Kennedy said, referencing a case that "focuses on the state’s expansive and unlawful use of 287(g) agreements to assert independent state control over immigration detainees, which is still at issue after yesterday’s court ruling ending transfers of people to the facility," according to the ACLU. "The fact that Alligator Alcatraz had no federal legal agreements signed, giving it authority to detain immigrants, no 287(g), no IGSA. It basically was a state managed detention facility, largely independent of the federal government. It was run by the Florida Department of Emergency Management and it was done that way to avoid accountability, to avoid standards, etc."

The issue highlights the government's 287(g) program, which allows state and local authorities, including police and sheriff departments, to partner with DHS to deliver immigration services, including detention.

Florida, in particular, has embraced the 287(g) program, with Governor Ron DeSantis as a high-profile figurehead of the effort in his state.

Many law enforcement agencies have joined in, while another major detention facility known as Deportation Depot, or Baker Correctional Institution, in northern Florida, remains open. The OIG said this site in particular meant its concerns had not ended with Alligator Alcatraz's closure.

"ICE’s own documentation lists contractually obligated standards for Baker as 'N/A' (as we found for FSSF) and Baker has not been internally inspected by ICE’s Office of Detention Oversight nor was it scheduled for inspection in FY 2026 or FY 2027," the report read.

Newsweek asked Kennedy whether the FLIC believed the OIG report would lead to accountability for ICE and Florida officials, and he replied, "Of course not."

"It's going to be zero accountability," he said. "None of the vendors that were there providing security, working security roles are going to be held accountable, none of the guards, none of the mismanagement of funds. I mean, they spent more than a billion dollars of Florida emergency funds to operate this facility. No one's going to be held accountable for that."

Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Samantha Beech and Gray R. Thomas