“They are beating us! They are mistreating us! Please help us!” he screamed into the phone. The pleas of the unknown man imprisoned in Florida’s Alligator Alcatraz were nearly drowned out by the sound of the emergency alarm blaring throughout the facility.
On August 28, the Miami-based Spanish-language news channel Noticias 23 Univision had its phone ringing off the hook with panicked calls from people imprisoned at the facility.
“There are helicopters above us, and a lot of people are bleeding,” said another prisoner. “Everyone here has been beaten up. Many people have bled,” cried a third.
When asked why the guards had attacked them in this way, it was explained, “People started shouting because a relative had died and they started shouting for freedom.”
Just one week prior, a U.S. district judge ruled that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center would be prohibited from bringing in new prisoners and would have to shut down completely within 60 days. One week later, as if in response to this judge’s ruling, prisoners were being brutalized by prison guards. By the time the beatings stopped and the tear gas lifted, at least four prisoners had been seriously injured, with many others left bruised and bludgeoned.
“Alligator Alcatraz is a death camp.”
The South Florida Detention Facility, nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz due to its remote location deep in the Florida Everglades, had been recently sued by the Miccosukee Tribe of Florida (as well as several environmental groups), stating that the ICE facility violated environmental laws and was a danger to local wildlife.
In addition to this lawsuit, what led to the judge’s ruling was the many gut-wrenching stories of the inhumane conditions suffered by prisoners. Since it hauled in its first shipment of prisoners—all of whom had committed no crime aside from existing on this land—Alligator Alcatraz has been regularly exposed for the atrocities committed on those confined within their walls.
Prisoners have been denied access to phones, denied bond hearings and even denied access to legal counsel, with many of their attorneys being intercepted by military personnel and turned away at the prison’s entrance. Water has been filthy and mixed with waste, food has contained maggots and medical care has been virtually nonexistent.
In one harrowing story, Luis Velásquez, a man detained in the facility, began to experience difficulty breathing. Prison guards dismissed his concerns. It was only after he collapsed and lied unconscious for a full 30 minutes that prison guards responded and allowed him to be seen briefly at a hospital before throwing him back into the prison.
Abuse has come via the food, isolation, lack of medical care, as well as the baton of the prison guard. Vicious prison guard beatings have been rampant throughout the facility. One prisoner described what he’d witnessed: “So much abuse… yesterday in the dining hall, he [a prisoner] was handcuffed… they [prison guards] stepped on his head, six guards jumped on him… they kicked all of us… so much abuse we are enduring here in Alligator… so much abuse here I cannot take it.”
What’s further indicative of the abuse imposed on these prisoners is the fact that the prison itself sits on a dangerous area of land with no real protection against hurricanes or the floods that usually accompany them. In an August 2025 Spear article, “Alligator Alcatraz is an intensified assault on the colonized by crisis-ridden U.S. State,” Spear Staff Writer MQ wrote: “In Hurricane-Prone Florida, Alligator Alcatraz is a death camp… They claim it was built in eight days to withstand a category two hurricane. But the FEMA tents and trailers aren’t built for hurricanes… Florida doesn’t typically evacuate prisons during hurricanes”.
In the case of a severe hurricane, which is typical for the region, we can only imagine the horrors that the prisoners would have to endure once abandoned by the prison guards. Under these conditions, who could be expected not to resist?
Alligator Alcatraz is an arm of the State
Alligator Alcatraz is not unlike any other ICE detention facility, and ICE detention facilities are not unlike any other prison on this land. The prison is a part of a structure called “the State.”
Whenever you have a society that is split between the “haves” and the “have-nots,” the rich and the poor, the oppressor and the oppressed, the State is a tool in the hands of the oppressor that is used to keep the oppressed people oppressed through violence or the threat of violence.
Throughout human history, the State has played this same fundamental role but has looked a little different under different systems. Under this current system, we are dealing with the colonial State.
Colonialism is the domination of one people by another people for the purpose of political, social and economic domination of that people. Europe’s colonial attack on Africa, theft of its natural resources, enslavement of African people and genocide of the Indigenous people of this land they call America led to the establishment of this system of colonial-capitalism (a system in which a small group of people control all of the wealth and resources of the world).
Through this process, Europe became extremely wealthy and powerful at the expense of all the African and non-European people of the world. In order to keep the wealth, power and resources of the world in the hands the “the haves” (the colonizer) and out of the hands of the “have nots” (the colonized), the State was enforced to use every means necessary to keep the colonized and oppressed people of the world out of power and away from their stolen resources.
So how does the State do this? It takes the form of the police shooting us in the street, it takes the form of the courts that sentence us on bogus charges as well as the jails where they trap us in order to further abuse and exploit us. These are the various tools used by the State to keep us down and oppressed.
Picture the State like a Swiss Army knife with each individual blade meant to cut us in different ways. This is why the Africans and Indigenous people, in not only Alligator Alcatraz but all of these prisons, are tormented in this way. The daily, brutal and unending abuse of colonized people is a requirement in order to keep the stolen wealth, resources and power in the hands of “the haves”—the colonizer. It’s a requirement in order to prevent the “have-nots” from rising up, shouting for freedom and taking back what’s ours.
Sic the alligators on the colonizer
When speaking on the construction of the prison, U.S. president Donald Trump gloated, “We have a lot of bodyguards and police officers in the form of alligators… the Everglades will keep them [prisoners] where they are supposed to be.”
We call on Donald Trump and Florida governor Ron Desantis to check themselves into Alligator Alcatraz because it is they who are the illegal immigrants. In 1492, the land we’ve been told to call America was known as Turtle Island and was home to over 100 million native, Indigenous people. The Indigenous peoples of this land had vibrant societies, robust economies, established laws, regulations and ways of living.
One day, white people arrived on ships and set foot on this land completely uninvited. There were no ICE processing facilities for the colonizer. Only the gun.
There were no court proceedings or adherence to any official immigration processes set by the Indigenous people. There was only the gun.
By the year 1700, 55 million Indigenous people had been coldly, cruelly, bloodily wiped off the face of the earth.
Committing genocide was the immigration process that the colonizer went through to become a naturalized citizen. The colonizer put their flag down, renamed this land “America,” said that they were in charge and anybody who opposed this was gunned down.
This is the process through which America came into existence—through the near extinction of the Indigenous people and the slave labor of African people dragged over to this land and forced to work at gunpoint. This is the process through which European settlers—”illegal immigrants”—became Americans.
Spear Staff Writer MQ wrote, “This [Alligator Alcatraz] must be understood in the context of 500 years of colonial land theft. What’s illegitimate is not just the land grab, but the U.S. itself.”
Throughout the past 500 years, the colonizer has never stopped stealing. And through the colonial State, the U.S. deploys troops all around the world to further loot resources from different colonized countries in order to further enrich itself and build up this capitalist system at the expense of colonized people. In fact, the only reason that so-called illegal immigrants even come here is to get access to resources that have been stolen from them in their countries.
Just as this era of slavery, theft, exploitation and genocide has its basis in the beginning of colonial-capitalism, we will only resolve these issues by bringing about the end of colonial-capitalism.
The only way we do this is by building the anti-colonial African Revolution. Since this whole barbaric system was built on top of the enslavement of Africa and African people, only the freedom and liberation of Africa will send this system toppling down.
The only illegal immigrant on this land is the colonizer. The only illegal immigrants on this land are the people who forced their way onto this land through theft and murder.
We say throw Trump and DeSantis into Alligator Alcatraz, and let them contend with the gators. Lock them up and throw away the key. The Everglades will keep them where they’re supposed to be.
Down with the Colonial State!
Up with the Anti-colonial Revolution!
Join the African People’s Socialist Party TODAY at apspuhuru.org
Let’s take back what’s ours!
