A federal judge ruled on Friday that officials at Florida’s state-run immigration jail, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz”, must give attorneys better access to their detained clients.
The order by federal judge Sheri Polster Chappell, from the middle district of Florida, said facility officials must provide access to confidential, private, free and unmonitored outgoing legal telephone calls from people detained in the facility. Polster Chappell also ruled that attorneys are allowed to make unannounced visits to see their clients, bypassing the facility’s pre-scheduling requirement.
The state of Florida opened the detention center in summer 2025 to detain undocumented immigrants caught within the state. Since its opening, the facility has faced severe criticisms of the treatment of detainees.
Amnesty International, the human rights group, published a report in December detailing conditions inside, finding that “people arbitrarily detained in ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ are being held in inhuman and unsanitary conditions, including overflowing toilets with fecal matter seeping into where people are sleeping, limited access to showers, exposure to insects without protective measures, lights on 24 hours a day, poor quality food and water, and lack of privacy”.