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Families from France, Illinois, and Miami were dialing 911 as a last resort because it was the only number they could turn to: the detention center known as Alligator Alcatraz does not have a functioning direct contact number, and the emergency calls received by the Collier County police are simply redirected to the center for internal handling.
The Miami Herald reviewed more than 130 incident reports and 911 calls over a period of 328 days —from the summer of 2025 to mid-May 2026— obtained through a public records request.
The recorded conversations reveal a pattern of desperation and opacity in the daily operations of the controversial detention center located in the Florida Everglades.
"I just need someone to make sure he gets antibiotics or something. There's no phone number for this place. I just need someone to help me," pleaded a woman identified as Jessica to the 911 operator, whose fiancé had gone two days without receiving medical attention.
Jessica reported that Esvin Rodezno, a 29-year-old detainee, was experiencing fatigue, a sore throat, and a rash that spread to his head and arm, and that the medical staff at the facility had responded to him, "You're not dying."
When Jessica asked the Collier County agent if he thought the center would take her case seriously, the answer was definitive: "I don't work for them."
Another woman from Miami-Dade called 911 to report a heart emergency: "A security guard called me today to tell me that the father of my children suffered a cardiac arrest and doesn't feel his arm."
Among the most disturbing cases is that of a man identified as Emess, who called from France in March 2026 to report that his 30-year-old brother from Ivory Coast, who was detained, threatened to harm himself and had given him the code to his phone to say goodbye with the words: "He is dead. He committed suicide."
El Herald was unable to confirm the rumors regarding attempts to take one's own life or deaths within the center.
The number publicly listed as the contact for Alligator Alcatraz actually belongs to the Krome North Processing Center, in the southern part of Miami-Dade County, leaving families without a direct means of communication.
Since its opening, the complaints against the center have been constant: prohibited family visits, lawyers facing difficulties in gaining access, and scarce information about internal conditions.
Amnesty International documented in December 2025 "a routine denial of access to medical care," noting that "the staff at the facility systematically ignored individuals expressing pain or illness" and that the conditions were designed to make confinement "unbearable."
The Department of Homeland Security rejected those criticisms and stated that its centers provide "comprehensive medical services," describing them as "the best medical care that many immigrants have received in their entire lives."
Among the approximately 1,400 detainees housed at the center —far below its designed capacity of between 3,000 and 5,000 people— between 700 and 800 were Cuban, and about 70% of them did not have a final deportation order.
Florida announced plans to close the center due to its operating cost of approximately one million dollars per day, and the state urged the federal government for a reimbursement of 608 million dollars for the expenses accumulated since its opening in July 2025.
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