Raúl Suárez Herrero, a 59-year-old Cuban who lived for nearly five decades in the United States, reported to NBC News and Noticias Telemundo that he spent over 15 hours locked inside a metal cage the size of a phone booth at the Alligator Alcatraz immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades.
Suárez, who arrived in the United States at the age of 12 and was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in July 2025 during a routine appointment, provided his testimony from Mexico, where he was deported.
According to what he reported to the program "Ahora 360" from Noticias Telemundo, the incident occurred when he began to pray aloud for a fellow who suffered an epileptic seizure while they were waiting to be registered at the center. "I asked God for the young man's life," he explained.
El caso de Raúl Suárez es uno de los muchos que reflejan la realidad migratoria que enfrentan los cubanos en EE.UU. hoy. Sigue toda la actualidad sobre detenciones, deportaciones y derechos migratorios en nuestra sección de
Two guards would have picked him up, asked him where he was from, and upon his response of "Cuba," they dragged him to the small metal cell, which measured 7 feet 9 inches high and 4 feet 3 inches square, located in the recreation area of the center, right in the Florida swamp.
"They took me there, and I spent more than 15 hours inside that little place," he declared to Telemundo, specifying that he was locked in around 1:00 p.m. and was not let out until 5:00 a.m. the next day.
Inside the space, he couldn't lie down, didn't receive any food, endured the mosquitoes, and spent the night awake for fear of snakes. "I had to be careful because there were snakes on the ground and you can't see them. You can't fall asleep because they could get into the cage," he stated.
In a phone conversation with NBC News, she summed up her experience in one phrase: "I feel like I was in hell."
The testimony comes days after the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security published a report confirming the use of those cages following an unannounced visit in January 2026, describing them as "highly unconventional" and in violation of humane treatment standards.
The organization issued 10 recommendations, including discontinuing the use of metal enclosures, but the administration did not address any of them.
According to records from the center itself, 79 people were confined in those facilities between July 2025 and January 2026, with an average recorded time of just 59 minutes.
The staff described the cages as "areas of calm" and insisted that no one remained there for more than two hours. Suárez rejected this outright: "Everyone lied," he said, denying that the confinement was voluntary.
The DHS labeled the accusations of inhumane conditions as "categorically false." The spokesperson for Governor Ron DeSantis, Alex Lafranconi, described the cages as confinement areas for "violent criminal aliens" and even claimed that "we would make them smaller if we could."
Alligator Alcatraz, built in eight days with state emergency powers and capacity for up to 5,000 detainees, permanently closed in June 2026 after processing nearly 21,000 deportations and accumulating a total cost exceeding 1.2 billion dollars.
Amnesty International documented in December 2025 that up to 32 people were crammed into a single cage, with non-potable water and constant lighting, and classified the use of small cages as torture.
Almost 60% of those arrested had no prior criminal convictions, and the Cuban community was one of the hardest hit groups: between January 2025 and March 2026, 4,353 Cubans were deported to Mexico, making it the largest national group among those expelled to that country.
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