Recommended Reading: Yes, It’s A Concentration Camp
Editor’s note: a semi-regular feature, Recommended Reading shares links to, and offers casual commentary on, two or more related news articles in a simple rundown blog. Want more? Click here to subscribe to NIDC today.
By Any Other Name
With sincere apologies to Rustin Spencer Cohle, I must confess that I’m starting to think that when it comes to American political discourse, time really is a flat circle. Just over six years ago I published an article about the semantics of the term concentration camp, and how obscene it was to be debating language selection while the Trump administration was cruelly separating migrant families and arguing that children in cages don’t need things like soap. Today, two whole US presidential elections later, and after reports from detainees that Florida is torturing migrant prisoners in remotely located cages, I am discouraged by the alarming countercurrent in the American discourse, pushing back against the idea that “Alligator Alcatraz” is an “actual” concentration camp.
Of course, some of this discourse is simply fascist ideological flak, designed to protect a Trump regime engaging in a slow motion ethnic cleansing project to “re-whiten” American. Some of it is also the result of “enlightened centrists” whistling past the graveyard, hoping that if they don’t speak the truth out loud then they won’t have to risk anything by opposing fascism. Finally, some of this pushback is even coming from cynical folks on the left who know enough about the American carceral industrial complex to confidently (and to be fair, correctly) state America had “concentration camps” long before Trump ever laid eyes on the White House.
If I’m being honest I think this whole debate is a repugnant and cowardly stalling tactic, designed to create space for Americans to ignore the reality that our government is currently kidnapping brown people and tossing them in cages under conditions that amount to torture, with a reckless disregard for human life. As an informed observer who knows the history of concentration camps in the Pig Empire, I feel pretty comfortable saying that “Alligator Alcatraz” is indeed a concentration camp on American soil. Rather than engaging in a semantic argument about the term concentration camp however, I thought it might be better to just talk about the horrifying conditions recently observed inside the remote facility in the Florida Everglades instead, and let readers make their own judgements. To accomplish that I want to share two stories about the same highly-controlled visit by three Florida Democratic Party representatives, that each focus on different aspects of why I think the term concentration camp is an accurate description of the facility, and disputing the characterization borders on fascist apologia.
To start with, I’d like to take a look at this July 14th piece in The Guardian about the Democrats’ visit, penned by Richard Luscombe. While the primary focus of this article is on the dubious legality of how Governor Ron DeSantis is operating his new American Dachau, the author also exposes a number of alarming facts about who is being held there, and the efforts Florida officials are undertaking to keep everything about the camp secret from the prying eyes of both the media, and opposition party politicians.
Hundreds of detainees with no criminal charges sent to Trump’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’
“The notorious new “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration jail in the Florida Everglades contains hundreds of detainees with no criminal records or charges, it was disclosed on Sunday, as lawmakers decried “inhumane” conditions inside after touring the facility.
Donald Trump has insisted that the remote camp in swamp land populated by pythons and alligators was reserved for immigrants who were “deranged psychopaths” and “some of the most vicious people on the planet” awaiting deportation.
But at least one detainee shouted out to politicians during Saturday’s visit that he was a US citizen, the Democratic Florida congressman Maxwell Frost said. And the Miami Herald obtained and published a list of 700 people held in cages showing that at least 250 had committed no offense other than a civil immigration violation.”
To be clear, I don’t want to downplay the apparent criminality of a DeSantis regime desperate to impress Swine Emperor Trump by hastily building him an alligator-themed concentration camp named “Alcatraz.” Between the complete disregard for the environmental impact of the facility, and the hot potato financing schemes behind it that likely mean Florida taxpayers are going to get screwed, this is a legitimately scandalous boondoggle of a project, completely aside from the fact that its a goddamn concentration camp for migrants. Our focus here however is on the inhabitants and operations of “Alligator Alcatraz” and what they can tell us about what kind of facility this really is.
To that end let’s briefly touch on the important revelations in this article. First of all immigration officials at “Alligator Alcatraz” are purposely obscuring the numbers and identities of detainees in the camp. GOP politicians in Florida are also lying about who runs the camp; although ICE itself is clearly running the facility, DeSantis and his minions are pretending the state is operating “Alligator Alcatraz” because if it was a federal facility, they’ve be legally required to allow opposition (Democrat) oversight of the camp. Please keep in mind that this is in addition to the migrant cages being located in a remote area in the Florida Everglades, far away from the prying eyes of both the media and politicians with the legal power to conduct oversight on the camp. Furthermore, Trump and regime officials who are justifying keeping migrants in appalling conditions that amount to a concentration camp by saying only the worst types of criminals are being held there, are once again lying; as I’ve stated before, hundreds of people in the camp are simply in the US without permission, which as the article notes is a civil violation, not a criminal charge – let alone a violent one.
So, can you think of a perfectly innocent reason a fascist government might have for building a semi-secret migrant cage complex, demonizing all the brown inhabitants as violent criminals even though many of them have committed no crimes, and actively working to hide what is actually going on inside “Alligator Alcatraz” from media, regulators, and opposition officials? Yeah, me neither.
Alright, we’ve established that the DeSantis regime and ICE itself are certainly acting like they’re running a concentration camp and committing horrendous human rights violations. Now let’s turn to this July 13th, 2025 Common Dreams article by Stephen Prager, to examine the conditions our three Democrat legislators were allowed to see, despite the DeSantis regime’s best efforts to hide occupied cages from them:
‘This Is an Internment Camp’: Lawmakers Horrified by Inhumane Conditions in ‘Alligator Alcatraz’
“Wasserman-Schultz described it as an “internment camp” where detainees are “essentially packed into cages.”
“Wall-to-wall humans. 32 detainees per cage,” she said. This, she noted, is unusual for immigration facilities, like the nearby Krome detention center in Miami-Dade County, where detainees are allowed to roam freely between buildings.
“The only thing inside those cages are their bunk beds,” she said. She later noted that in the unused dorm they toured there were already “bugs all over the mattresses that had not yet been used.”
“There are three tiny toilet units that have a sink attached to it,” she said. “They get their drinking water, and they brush their teeth where they poop, in the same unit,” she continued.”
I think the important thing to remember here as you read the testimony of Reps. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Jared Moskowitz, and Maxwell Frost is that this is almost certainly only the tip of the iceberg. As the article notes, no outside media organizations have been given access to the facility, and the Democrat lawmakers were simply taken on a guided tour by regime-friendly officials. They were not allowed to meet with detainees, access the camp’s medical facilities, or see full cages with migrant prisoners. Which means when these folks describe overcrowded housing conditions, evidence of flooding, bug infested bedding, inadequate toilet facilities, oppressive heat, and starvation rations, this is only the portion of their inhumane ethnonationlist project Trump, DeSantis, and the American Gestapo are willing to expose to the public eye.
Given that reality, I think the debate over whether or not “Alligator Alcatraz” officially qualifies as a “real” concentration camp is both farcical and insulting. However you feel about longtime DNC minion Debbie Wasserman-Schultz as a politician, it is inarguable that she’s objectively describing a type of concentration camp. With dozens of brown bodies packed into small cages, inadequate access to washroom facilities and water, purposely reduced caloric counts inadequate for the preservation of healthy adults, exposure to elements and insects; what else would you call what we’re doing in the Florida swamp besides running a concentration camp? It’s not an accident Wasserman-Schultz references America’s dark history with the term “interment camps” but I think she’s still being too generous to the Trump regime here; this is a camp of cages for cruelly concentrating migrants without any concern for their wellbeing at all – a concentration camp, to be precise.
Folks, the Trump regime is currently enacting a slow motion ethnic cleansing project to whiten the demographics of a fascist America molded in their own horrible nazi image. This is not the time for debates about terminology, and we no longer have the luxury of sophistry. “Alligator Alcatraz” is a concentration camp for brown people, built on American soil. And disingenuous word games about migrant cage complexes in alligator infested swamplands, aren’t going to stop the nightmare we’re all speeding towards now.
– Nina Illingworth
Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.
You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, and on Mastodon.
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