MIAMI — To ensure detainees at its immigration detention camp in the Everglades can communicate with their attorneys, the state of Florida is relying on a contractor that has been repeatedly accused of rubber-stamping inspections at federal facilities.

A sealed court document filed in a lawsuit alleging Alligator Alcatraz detainees are being detained without proper access to legal services shows the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis has entrusted those crucial provisions to the Nakamoto Group, a Maryland company with a history of complaints from detainees, federal inspectors and Congress about its inspections of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers.

The lawsuit was filed against the federal and state governments, which have operational oversight of the facility. The Nakamoto Group is not a named defendant in the case.

One 2018 report by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General found that the Nakamoto Group’s inspection reports misrepresented the work done for their evaluations, and that the facilities’ conditions did not match what government inspectors observed during their own visits. In the report, ICE officials described the Nakamoto Group’s audits to OIG inspectors as “useless” and “very, very, very difficult to fail.”

The findings raise questions about the DeSantis administration’s vetting of vendors at Alligator Alcatraz, a hastily erected complex open once again after an appeals court overturned a judge’s order shutting the site down. They also provide some context for the legal-access issues being brought by lawyers

Mark Saunders, a Nakamoto Group vice president, stated in a now-sealed August brief supporting the state that the contractor manages in-person and video meetings between attorneys and detainees, which he reported are proceeding smoothly. However, lawyers continue to claim in a September amended complaint that immigrants held at the state facility by ICE are being kept without adequate access to their lawyers and the courts, in violation of their constitutional rights.

“Access to counsel at Alligator Alcatraz is dramatically more restrictive than at other immigration facilities and runs afoul of the requirements that” ICE has in place at other detention centers, the lawyers said in the amended complaint.

Saunders told the Miami Herald in an email that the inspector general allegations against the company, as well as a 2021 American Civil Liberties Union report alleging widespread problems with the company’s work, had already been “rebutted and proven false.”

“The fact that anyone references them at all shows significant bias,” he wrote. “Due to that fact, don’t contact me or the company again. You will not be responded to.”

To learn more about the company’s history, the Herald reviewed congressional hearings, federal agency reports, court documents and dozens of emails from lawyers trying to meet their clients at Alligator Alcatraz. The Herald also spoke with lawyers who together have represented more than 20 clients detained at Alligator Alcatraz since the first detainees arrived at the site on July 2.

It is unclear whether the state directly contracted the Nakamoto Group or if it is a subcontractor.

The Florida Division of Emergency Management did not respond to requests for comment.

Questions about Nakamoto’s work

Following the 2018 inspector general report, Democratic senators, including Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders, sent a letter to the Nakamoto Group requesting that the company explain its contract with ICE and address the issues identified by the OIG report. The Nakamoto Group disputed the findings of the report, labeling them a “misrepresentation” and “erroneous.”

During a House Homeland Security Committee hearing in September 2019, which evaluated whether DHS was properly overseeing ICE detention facilities, Jennifer Nakamoto, the founder and president of the Nakamoto Group, said that her grandparents were detained in a Japanese American internment camp in Arizona. Nakamoto stated the company operated with fewer than 15 full-time employees and 45 part-time employees. In her opening statement to the committee, she said that she had been personally targeted due to her involvement with DHS and “for the purpose of discrediting ICE.”

“Nevertheless, some have chosen to ignore the facts and continue to reference disproven allegations for their political purposes and to further their agenda against ICE,” Nakamoto stated.

The inspections conducted by the Nakamoto Group are pre-announced and sometimes occur at different times from those of the OIG inspectors, which are not announced in advance. These factors could have contributed to the discrepancies between what OIG inspectors found and the Nakamoto Group. At one facility cited by the OIG, the Nakamoto Group inspection occurred five months after federal inspectors had visited the site.

The federal inspectors stood by their report and findings in a 2019 letter to Democratic Sen. Warren.

In September 2020, the House Homeland Security Committee, which had a Democratic majority at the time, released a report assessing conditions at ICE detention facilities. The report found the Nakamoto Group to be “ill-equipped to conduct inspections on behalf of ICE.”

The committee, in the report, also questioned ICE’s judgment in continuing to contract with the Nakamoto Group.

“Evidence suggests that Nakamoto does a poor job of conducting inspections and fails to operate in a manner that would best identify deficiencies,” the House committee report stated.

The company has also been named as a defendant in six lawsuits from inmates in other federal correctional facilities accusing the Nakamoto Group of negligence and failing to conduct thorough Prison Rape Elimination Act audits as part of its contracts with the Bureau of Prisons.

In one of those lawsuits, a group of female inmates detained at the Florida Correctional Institution in Tallahassee accused the facility’s physician assistant in 2021 of sexually assaulting numerous female prisoners during pelvic, anal and breast exams.

“Systemic deficiencies in Nakamoto’s inspections of FCI Tallahassee in failing to identify and address clear signs of endemic sexual abuse at the facility was a proximate cause of injuries suffered by Plaintiffs,” the lawsuit alleged.

Court documents indicate that the group reached a settlement with the Nakamoto Group in 2022 and the case was dismissed. The court documents do not reveal the details of the settlement.

An ACLU analysis, which reviewed 88 inspection reports by the Nakamoto Group in 2021, found that the contractor continued to face similar inspection challenges due to issues such as insufficient staffing, failing to conduct proper detainee interviews and pre-announcing inspections. The ACLU is also a party in the lawsuit brought against the state and federal governments regarding legal access at Alligator Alcatraz.

Lawyers still battling for access at Alligator Alcatraz

Attorneys told the Herald that there was almost no way for them to communicate with any of their clients who were detained at the site when it opened in July on the airstrip of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in the Big Cypress National Preserve.

Their clients often did not appear in an online ICE database that helps families and attorneys find where detainees are being held. And ICE field office officials were unable to confirm if their client was detained at Alligator Alcatraz. The only way attorneys knew their client was detained at the site was because a family member informed them following a phone call from one of the phones located inside cells at the facility.

The August declaration and attached emails, which range from July through Aug. 4, submitted by Saunders from the Nakamoto Group as evidence that lawyers could meet with their clients, offer a behind-the-scenes look at some of the confusion lawyers faced.

Saunders said the inbox that attorneys use to schedule visits became operational on July 10 and received no emails during that period since opening. The lawyers the Herald spoke with said that was because it was not known what the process was, nor was it known that the inbox even existed.

For a lawyer to meet with their client at the facility, they must email the inbox, which Saunders said is monitored by three staff members. Lawyers can only visit during their scheduled time period and must submit documents in advance, verifying that they are representing their clients.

This process of attorney access differs from that of standard ICE detention centers, such as the Krome North Service Processing Center and the Broward Transitional Center. Lawyers told the Herald at Krome that they do not need to schedule an appointment to visit a detainee; they can simply show up during visitation hours and present their bar number and identification.

Saunders stated in the legal brief that these restrictions at Alligator Alcatraz were implemented for the safety of the facility staff and its detainees.

Attorneys were initially barred from visiting the site in person, but they could request a video conference instead. The first video conference meeting was held on July 15, according to Saunders.

The emails also highlight a limitation in the process set up by the state. In some instances, after initially setting an appointment, lawyers received emails stating that their client had already been moved from the site before their scheduled visit.

“This email is to inform you that the detainee (redacted personal information) was released to ICE and is no longer at Florida Soft Sided Facility (AA). This Zoom appointment has been cancelled on our end,” said an August email sent from a facility staffer to an attorney.

These obstacles are part of what is being argued in court in the case against the state and federal governments, filed by civil rights lawyers who are alleging that, since the site opened, the First Amendment rights of the detainees have been violated.

The lawyers are now asking Judge Sheri Polster Chappell of the Middle District of Florida to grant a preliminary injunction that would allow lawyers to meet with their clients without scheduled appointments, provide detainees at the facility with information about attorney-client meeting guidelines in English, Spanish, and Creole, and request that ICE update its online locator system within 24 hours of a detainees’ arrival at the facility.

In a status update last Friday, the civil rights lawyers highlighted a ruling in a similar case in the Southern District of New York, where detainees held at ICE’s 26 Federal Plaza Facility accused the government of violating their First Amendment rights. The federal judge in that case agreed with the detainees and ordered the government to allow lawyers to have phone calls with their clients within six hours of a request, permit free outgoing calls to lawyers within 24 hours of detention, and ensure that the ICE locator system accurately reflects the detainee’s location.

The state and federal governments have maintained that access by attorneys has improved at Alligator Alcatraz. They stated that the issues highlighted occurred because it took time to build the necessary infrastructure for these meetings. However, now, attorneys can access their clients both in person and via video conferencing.

Magdalena Cuprys, a lawyer at the Serving Immigrant law firm who has had multiple clients at the facility since its opening, said that at the start, when she tried to meet a client, the appointment inbox was not functioning, there was a long response time and she was not allowed in.

Cuprys stated that since then, access to attorneys remains a problem, especially for detainees who need to speak with pro bono lawyers. Lawyers cannot simply show up at any time during visitation hours to see their clients and must provide proof that they are authorized to represent the client.

However, she added that she has seen improvements at the site in terms of holding confidential in-person meetings with her clients. During her last visit on Sept. 1, she stated that she was able to meet with her client in a separate tent equipped with a security camera, located away from another tent she described as a waiting area.

“I felt like it was significantly improved,” Cuprys emphasized. “And you know, if I compare it to, let’s say, BTC or Krome, I feel like it was very similar.”

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