Detained migrants, attorneys file lawsuit for legal rights at Alligator Alcatraz

Devoun Cetoute, Miami Herald on Jul 16, 2025

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Immigration lawyers who say they have exhausted all efforts to try to speak with the detained immigrants in Alligator Alcatraz are now looking to the federal courts to aid them in a newly filed lawsuit.

Detainees, who’ve described unsanitary and inhospitable conditions, are asking a federal judge to compel the Everglades detention center to provide adequate legal access that reportedly has not existed since its opening. This is the third lawsuit filed against the facility — with previous legal complaints focusing on environmental issues and politicians’ access.

On Wednesday, four detained migrants and the law groups representing them filed the proposed class-action suit in the U.S. Southern District Court of Florida against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, ICE, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other high-ranking federal and state officials overseeing immigration.

They allege the authorities behind Alligator Alcatraz have blocked detainees from access to legal counsel and that no protocol exists for them to have confidential attorney-client conversations — a violation of the First and Fifth Amendments.

The Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times recently spoke with seven attorneys with clients in the facility who made the same claims. One attorney involved in the lawsuit compared Alligator Alcatraz to a “black hole,” as immigrants vanish from federal immigration databases and lose the ability to contact their legal counsel.

The lawsuit states that the only way detainees can reach the outside world is through infrequent access to collect pay phone calls that are monitored, recorded and last about five minutes.

Attorneys report they can’t find phone numbers, email addresses or instructions on how to arrange contact with their clients in the facility, and those that are available lead to bounced-back messages and dead ends, the lawsuit said.

Driving to the facility also only leads to lawyers being barred by security officers and told to wait in their cars for hours, to eventually be told they will have to go home without seeing their clients.

“In the absence of any publicly available information or protocols regarding legal access at the facility, attorneys have gone to significant lengths to contact their retained and prospective clients, to no avail,” the lawsuit reads.

Not only is communicating with their clients a seemingly losing battle, but the suit alleges authorities have made it “virtually impossible” for migrants to contest their detention with immigration courts, as no instructions on how to do so have been given to attorneys.

Detained with no cause

While the lawsuit seeks to represent all migrants held currently or in the future at Alligator Alcatraz, four detainees have named themselves in the fight to gain access to legal services. Aside from recounting their legal issues, they said that they were unknowingly shipped away to the facility with no provocation.

One migrant, identified only as C.M., is described as a non-citizen employed as a landscaper with a valid work permit, no criminal convictions and a pending application for asylum. On July 6, he was detained by law enforcement on his way to work and taken directly to Alligator Alcatraz, the complaint states.

Another migrant, identified as J.M.C., is described as a non-citizen with no criminal history and a pending petition to be granted a green card due to his marriage to a U.S. citizen. On July 8, the lawsuit says, he went to a Customs and Border Protection office to obtain a form to continue with his citizenship effort, but was detained and taken to Alligator Alcatraz instead.

Plea for court intervention

The four detained migrants and their counsel are asking the federal courts to order Alligator Alcatraz to implement protocols that are “a universal practice at every other immigration facility in the United States.”

They want all detainees to be given clear instructions on the process of making free and confidential legal calls, and a system in place for those calls to be made without being monitored and recorded.

Apart from legal access, DHS and the State of Florida are also requested to update their databases with the location of detainees held at Alligator Alcatraz within 24 hours of their transfer.

In addition, the suit would also see a federal judge declare that DHS and Florida entities violated the First and Fifth Amendment rights of detained migrants at Alligator Alcatraz.