By Nick Valencia | January 5, 2025
FLORIDA EVERGLADES— For detainees who enter the detention site known as Alligator Alcatraz, antagonizing and humiliation have come to be expected.
In a series of conversations with Nick Valencia News, a source with direct interactions with detainees at the facility alleges that the abuse is not sporadic, but structured. The whistleblower spoke to us on a condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.
“For some of these guys, the mission is to make things as uncomfortable as possible while they’re in our custody,” the source said about the guards.
They said some of the guards appear to want detainees to break.
“They are thriving for these detainees to get out of hand, so they can rough them up. And I totally don’t agree with that.”
“Some of these people haven’t done anything wrong, and they have families and businesses, and you’re treating them like shit,” the source said about the actions of some of the guards.
The worst physical abuse the source witnessed involved a detainee who did not immediately rise when ordered.
“The guy said, ‘sir, I’m still eating.’ And then you slam his food, and then slam him to the ground and cuff him. That’s wrong.”
The source emphasized that the approach by guards is the problem, not the detainees.
“The approach is everything.”
They described an environment built to escalate tension. Something as basic as refusing to use the bathroom becomes an excuse to force a confrontation, the source said.
In a single week, certain detention officers send “four and five people to the hole,” they said.
When the source raised concerns to a colleague, they were brushed aside.
“I’m like, this is not right… Why are they antagonizing?” the source said. “[The detainees] are going through a process. They’re not trying to put up a fight.”
The Human Cost Inside
The source singled out a pair of Latino detention officers: a wife and her husband, as being among the worst offenders in the rank and file of corrections officers.
“She’ll snap off and run her mouth at the detainees, and then he’ll step in. He comes running over, jumping in their face and then wants to take them down and put them in the hole.”
The source said the couple should not even be working in the same ward. The abusive culture is not confined to a few rogue actors.
“Oh yeah, man, it’s beyond the two of them.”
Racism is something that runs rampant throughout the facility, according to the source.
In one incident, another Latino corrections officer called a detainee a racial slur, according to the source who witnessed the incident.
At first, a lieutenant calmly instructed the detainee to get up and put his hands behind his back, the source said. But then, a Latino officer stepped in.
“Get up. Put your hands behind your back,” the officer said, according to the source.
“You don’t have to talk to us that way,” the detainee replied.
“Then he says these words… ‘Nigga fucker.’
The officer’s response stunned everyone.
The source said when they reported the incident, the response they received was not expected.
“I said… ‘He needs to be gone. He called the detainee ‘nigga fucker.’’ What kind of professionalism is that? That’s derogatory, that’s a termination offense.”
Instead, the source said the officer was merely spoken to. “We brought him in and talked,” the source said they were told.
Retaliation for Not Participating
For months, whistleblowers from inside the detention site have described a place built on secrecy, and political utility.
What they have now begun to describe is something even darker: a culture of humiliation and antagonism so routine that those who resist it are marked as disloyal.
The source said that when they questioned the treatment of detainees, they were pulled aside by someone “of high authority.”
“He says… ‘I’m hearing complaints that you guys are not with what we have going on here.’”
Inside Alligator Alcatraz, compassion among the corrections officers is treated as disloyalty. Those who dare come forward do so going against the tide of what the source describes as a deeply entrenched culture of abuse.
“If you don’t go along with them, you’re on the dark side. They will shut you down until they get you out,” the source said. “They fear for their jobs, Nick.”
Meanwhile, the contractor running the site, CRS, remains fully active at Alligator Alcatraz despite prior misconduct documented by NVN. According to the source, CRS intake workers, have been instructed to “ignore what they see.”
“They’ve been told… ‘turn your heads.’ If they don’t go along with the program, they get transferred.”
The source says the warden is aware of the hostile environment. But consequences, they say, are minimal and racism is pervasive.
“As far as I know, yes, it has to be reported to him,” the source said, about the warden.
For the Trump administration, Alligator Alcatraz has served as a promotional showpiece: a symbol of hardline immigration enforcement rather than a functional detention process. When NVN visited the site, tourists posed cheerfully beneath the new ALLIGATOR ALCATRAZ signs, as if the Everglades detention site were a roadside attraction.
Inside, the human rights violations continue to stack up, with many detainees held well past the periods they were told to expect.
“Some of them have been here like 60 days. They were only supposed to be here 20 or 30,” the source added.
When asked what lawmakers need to understand, the whistleblower didn’t hesitate.
“They need to get the bad ones out of here. You can do your program, but treat them like human beings.”
