Migrants in US Locked in Tiny Cages That Guards Called ‘Calming Areas’

A notorious detention centre in Florida kept immigrants in cramped metal enclosures that posed “significant risks” to their health and safety, a report by a US government watchdog has found. 

The cages – which had only 1.6 sq metres of floor space – were referred to by guards at the ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ facility as “calming areas”. 

Detainees were placed inside for periods ranging from a few minutes to a couple of hours, investigators from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general’s office found. 

Their report said “the use of such restrictive spaces is highly unconventional and does not align with standards for humane treatment”.

Amnesty International found earlier this year people held at the South Florida Detention Facility, as it’s officially known, y were “arbitrarily detained” in “unsanitary conditions” where sewage flowed into sleeping areas. 

This month, two guards were arrested following allegations they had struck a detainee. They face misdemeanor battery charges and have pleaded not guilty.

The facility – which got its name when president Donald Trump joked that it was so remote detainees would need to “learn how to outrun an alligator” – was closed in June, despite becoming a focal point of the administration’s anti-refugee policy. 

The previous year, a judge ruled that the site had to close and no new inmates could be taken there, as the centre was causing “irreparable harm” to the surrounding environment and endangered species.

Last month, the New York Times reported that three people had died in an ICE detention centre in New Jersey, with immigration lawyers reporting that sick detainees, including cancer patients, were denied access to vital medicine.