Venezuelan Interior Minister and wanted drug lord Diosdado Cabello claimed on Wednesday that the illegal migrant detention center at Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, commonly known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” is a “concentration camp” and evidence of the United States’ “racism and supremacism.”
Cabello, who leads the Venezuelan socialist regime’s repressive apparatus and is wanted by U.S. authorities on multiple narco-terrorism charges, levied his accusations during the latest broadcast of his weekly socialist show Hitting with the Mallet. According to Cabello, who condemned the facility as a “concentration camp,” the purported objective of the detention center is to “wipe out people who do not share the same line of thinking as the fascist extremists,” asserting that “there are no human rights in the United States.”
“So they built a prison right now with protection from supposed alligators and snakes, so that anyone who escapes will be caught outside. Part of the movie,” Cabello said. “Those who are taken there will be taken without having committed any crime, they are going to be locked up in a concentration camp of the new fascism, the new Nazism.”
“Neo-fascism is trying to impose this model, to eliminate any form that is not part of the group to which they belong,” he continued. “It’s racism, racism, believing oneself to be superior, supremacism, believing oneself to be superior. Anyone who isn’t like me, from my social class, with my skin color.”
The interior minister, one of the highest-ranking members of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), further posited that America was building the detention center without sufficient criticism, claiming there would be “countless” protests if the Venezuelan socialist regime ran a similar facility.
Cabello reportedly questioned the Venezuelan opposition for not “pronouncing itself” as opposed to Alligator Alcatraz or the “mistreatment and persecution” of Venezuelans in the United States allegedly committed by President Donald Trump’s administration. Cabello claimed that the opposition is “muzzled” and “would be sanctioned” if they criticized the United States, unlike the PSUV, where “we are free and we can stand in a corner and say whatever we want. Our conscience does not depend on them.”
In reality, Venezuela’s socialist regime has an extensive track record of committing human rights abuses against its own people and running torture facilities for political dissidents. Last year, socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro and Cabello led a brutal persecution campaign against Venezuelans after Maduro held a fraudulent presidential election in July 2024 that left at least 25 dead, hundreds injured, and more than 2,400 detained arbitrarily according to the United Nations. Among those persecuted were dozens of minors, some of whom were subjected to torture.
Cabello himself is credited with the creation of Operation Tun Tun (“Knock Knock”), a dissident crackdown campaign first launched in 2017. Cabello relaunched Operation Knock Knock in 2024 to hunt dissidents who protest or publish social media content against the socialist regime. The operation, which takes its name from a Venezuelan Christmas song, features mass arrests and security officers forcing dissidents to film humiliating public “apologies” to Maduro and his cronies.
The Maduro regime also operates several torture and detention centers for its political prisoners. The regime’s largest and most infamous center is the Helicoide (“the Helix”), an unfinished facility in Caracas that began construction in the 1950s during the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez. It was originally conceived of as the world’s first drive-thru mall.
In 2024, the Maduro regime commissioned a 1,000-person-capacity basketball stadium on the upper area of the Helix. The stadium, which now serves as the home venue for a local basketball team, is located right above the torture and detention centers.
La Tumba (“The Tomb”) is another of the Maduro regime’s infamous detention centers. An underground detention facility, The Tomb is located on the basement floors of a tall building originally intended to serve as the offices of the Caracas subway, but which now serves as the headquarters of the socialist regime’s Bolivarian Intelligence Service (SEBIN).
Dissidents detained in The Tomb in the past denounced that they were thrown in extremely small white and gray cells with concrete beds and placed under 24/7 surveillance. The prisoners were then subjected to a series of psychological tortures and sensory deprivation techniques known as “white torture.”
Last year, as part of the brutal dissident crackdown following the sham July 2024 presidential election, Maduro had two emptied prison centers repurposed into “re-education centers” for anti-socialists. One of the two “re-education centers” is located at the Tocorón prison, which served as the main headquarters of the Tren de Aragua terrorist organization. Tocorón was “raided” and emptied by the Maduro regime in 2023.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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