Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) said Tuesday on CNN’s “The Lead” that the newly constructed immigrant-detention center in the Everglades, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” needed to be “shut the hell down.”
Host Jake Tapper said, “Over the weekend, you and a delegation of lawmakers toured the immigration detention center that Governor DeSantis calls Alligator Alcatraz. Immediately after you toured it, you called for it to be shut down. What did you see?”
Wasserman Schultz said, “Well, what we saw were humans caged. I mean, 32 detainees per cage, eight cages inside a tent, wall to wall people. But, you know, like, this is an hour and a half into the Everglades, Jake, in the middle of a swamp with no infrastructure, so everything has to be trucked in. $450 million a year, double the amount of funding for detainees normally. The whole point of this is the stunt, the spectacle and the abuse.”
She added, “The purpose of this, of this setup, is to have the cruelty be the point. I mean, they told us that every single person in there was at the end of their criminal procedure and were in the final stages of deportation. Imagine my shock when I woke up Sunday morning to one of my hometown papers, The Miami Herald, to find that most of the people have had no due process, aren’t aren’t actually convicted of anything, and that essentially they are, you know, warehousing people in cages just for the spectacle and the distraction. It’s an outrage, it’s inhumane, and this place needs to be shut the hell down.”
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