“Everyone should be very pissed off”: Maxwell Frost sounds the alarm after visiting “Alligator Alcatraz”
By Michael Jones
The work-life harmony I strive for would have to wait another weekend.
I spent most of Saturday in a holding pattern as Rep. Maxwell Frost’s office pushed back the start time—then moved it up before delaying it again—for a virtual press call following his tour of the Everglades immigration detention center, known as “Alligator Alcatraz.” I was one of several reporters standing by to hear what the Florida congressman had to say after visiting the site alongside members of the state’s Democratic delegation.
Once Frost got on the line, he didn’t mince words. He described what he saw inside as “heartbreaking”: detainees packed 32 to a cage, drinking water from toilet spigots, sweating through the heat, swarmed by mosquitoes, and surviving on little more than a sandwich and chips. Access to the medical area was off-limits. So were one-on-one conversations with detainees. And yet, Frost said, even that sanitized version of the tour was damning.
Now, he’s weighing what comes next.
Frost, the first Gen Z member to be elected to Congress, told me he’s considering amendments to the 2026 Homeland Security bill—or possibly introducing standalone legislation—to constrain how the Trump administration uses federal funds and state partnerships to expand detention. He also plans to coordinate with Rep. Robert Garcia, the new top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, to hold shadow hearings to expose conditions at the Everglades facility and others like it.
It’s the latest example of how Democrats are trying to respond to the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration crackdown—one that leans heavily on punitive enforcement, mass deportation operations, and detention centers like this one. For lawmakers like Frost, the fight is about more than one facility. It’s about making what’s happening behind the fences visible and figuring out how to act, even in the minority.
“We’re going to do everything we can, because what I saw today, like I said before, broke my heart,” Frost told me. “And everyone should be very pissed off about the fact that our money is being used for an internment camp in the middle of the Everglades.”
The remote facility, whose nickname nods to both the surrounding alligator-infested swampland and the original Alcatraz, the infamous island prison off the coast of San Francisco, opened in early July after months of fast-tracked construction under Governor Ron DeSantis’s “State Shield” initiative, which uses state emergency management funds to detain immigrants on behalf of federal authorities.
The 5,000-bed complex is a cluster of climate-controlled tents and concrete holding blocks surrounded by electrified fencing, surveillance towers, and a wide canal teeming with alligators. Since opening, ICE has transferred at least 700 detainees to the site, most of them asylum seekers, recent border crossers, or individuals moved from overcrowded local jails through expanded 287(g) agreements.
State officials have touted the facility as a secure, efficient answer to rising unauthorized migration. But immigrant rights advocates, attorneys, and several members of Congress say the site—accessible only by a single flood-prone road—is functionally cut off from legal counsel and plagued by unsanitary conditions. Detainees have reported spoiled food, a lack of clean drinking water at night, and limited medical care.
The Everglades facility is part of President Trump’s second-term push to expand immigration detention capacity and empower states like Florida and Texas to carry out federal immigration enforcement on their terms. The policy has created friction within the Democratic Party, which broadly opposes mass detention and family separation but remains divided over how to challenge Trump’s hardline agenda without reinforcing GOP attacks that paint Democrats as weak on border security. While progressives have called for defunding ICE and shuttering large-scale detention centers altogether, party leaders have focused instead on defending asylum protections and due-process rights.
Yet even as “Alligator Alcatraz” advances under a hardline agenda, public opinion is rapidly moving in a pro-immigrant direction. A new Gallup poll conducted in June finds that a record 79 percent of Americans now view immigration as a positive, up from 64 percent last year, while only 30 percent favor reducing immigration, nearly half the proportion in mid-2024. Support for mass deportations has also dropped to 38 percent, and backing for citizenship pathways for undocumented immigrants is up to 78 percent. The shift transcends party lines: Republican favorability jumped to 64 percent, signaling a widening disconnect between the aggressive federal‑state detention push and broader public attitudes.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told me on Monday afternoon that he hadn’t had a chance to talk to Frost or the other members of the Florida delegation who visited the detention. However, he pointed to the growing opposition against the president’s immigration policies as proof that his administration has overreached.
“Donald Trump promised to target violent felons. But instead he’s going after law-abiding immigrant families, children, raiding schools, raiding graduations, raiding churches and raiding hospitals and medical facilities,” Jeffries said. “And the American people are rejecting the cruelty of it all. It’s another failed promise by Donald Trump.”
Meanwhile, Reps. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) and María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) will reintroduce the bipartisan DIGNITY Act this afternoon, reviving their longshot attempt to jumpstart comprehensive immigration reform in a deeply polarized Congress. The legislation, first introduced in 2023, outlines an eight-year earned pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, strengthens border security measures, and modernizes the asylum system. Escobar says the DIGNITY Act offers a legislative contrast to the current crackdown. However, it bears noting that the odds of its passage remain slim in a Republican-controlled House increasingly aligned with Trump’s hardline base.
Federal law empowers members of Congress to conduct oversight of federal detention facilities, an authority Rep. Frost intends to keep exercising.
“We are within our bounds. I could show up tomorrow, I could show up the next day, and they have to let me into the facility,” he told me. “I will be back to this facility at a time and a date of my own choosing. I don’t need permission from anyone to go into that facility, which is [one] where they get their direction from ICE.”
Michael Jones is an independent Capitol Hill correspondent and contributor for COURIER. He is the author of Once Upon a Hill, a newsletter about Congressional politics.
