Detainees at Florida’s notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration jail said guards were denying them food and fresh water on Thursday until they signed documents presented to them in English that they did not understand.
In an audio recording of a telephone call to an immigration advocacy group heard by the Guardian, more than half a dozen detainees alleged that the water given to them over the last three days was “rotten” and containing mosquito larvae, in an apparent attempt to pressure them to sign.
During the call, all the detainees identified themselves by name and the section and cage number they are being held in. The Guardian is withholding those details because of the men’s stated fear of reprisals.
“They took all the water, and they don’t want to give us water,” one detainee said in the call to a representative of the Workers Circle, an advocacy group that has acted as a liaison between detainees and their families.


