Civil rights organizations allege abuse, neglect at Florida’s ‘Deportation Depot’

Immigration admin October 8, 2026 0 Comments

Civil rights organizations allege abuse, neglect at Florida’s ‘Deportation Depot’

In April, immigrants detained at a North Florida facility known as “Deportation Depot” staged a protest for clean water by refusing to return inside after recreation time.

Officers instead met them with pepper spray and beatings and detained several in “segregation cells,” according to a demand letter civil rights groups sent to Florida and federal officials Thursday.

“Some detained people fainted while others sustained significant injuries from being beaten,” the organizations wrote.

The state-run immigration facility is located inside an old prison that closed in 2021, Baker Correctional Institution in Sanderson, located about 45 miles west of Jacksonville and 15 minutes from the Lake City Airport. It was built as the counterpart to “Alligator Alcatraz,” a now-closed detention facility in the Florida Everglades mired with reports of abuse, also run by the state through contractors.

Now, Baker Correctional Institution, or “Deportation Depot,” is inundated with complaints of medical neglect, insufficient food and water, life-threatening heat and physical abuse, lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Americans for Immigrant Justice allege in the demand letter.

The organizations say the conditions violate the United States Constitution and national detention standards and are calling for immediate changes or the closure of the facility, and for the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General to conduct an inspection. The letter is based on interviews with family members, attorneys or individuals themselves for over 25 former and current detainees, lawyers told the Miami Herald.

The Florida Department of Emergency Management and DHS representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the letter, but officials have routinely denied poor conditions at detention centers across Florida. A spokesperson for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called the allegations “fake.”

“Seriously — how many times are you guys going to report on fake allegations?” Alex Lanfranconi, director of communications for the governor, said in an email.

Amy Godshall, an immigrants’ rights staff attorney at the ACLU of Florida, said in an emailed statement that “Florida has no business running immigration detention facilities.”

“In the state’s last attempt [at Alligator Alcatraz], it created a torturous facility that harmed thousands of people and families, endangered the Florida Everglades, yielded several lawsuits, and cost Florida taxpayers over a billion dollars.

“The conditions at BCI are just as dangerous,” she said, “and so is the harm it’s inflicting upon thousands of people. It must be shut down now.”

For much of 2025 and 2026, DeSantis’ office repeatedly denied reports that men at Alligator Alcatraz were held in small outdoor cages as a punishment. After the DHS’s Office of Inspector General published photos of the cages in September, his office confirmed their use and said that they would have made them “even smaller” if they could. Experts told the Herald that the use of such cages as punishment could violate international laws against torture and degrading treatment.

Last year, DeSantis said the facility in North Florida can hold a maximum of 1,300 people, but an old notice about the prison states that its maximum is 1,165. Detainees are held in dorms of 50 bunk beds for 100 people, spaced at a maximum of 2 feet apart, according to the letter. Photos published by Fox News show the inside of the building when it opened. The building itself has deteriorated after the prison closed five years ago, lawyers say. Rain soaks through the broken windows, they wrote, leaving it infested with mold and vermin.

“If this facility will not operate in compliance with the 2026 ICE National Detention Standards and the Constitution,” the organizations wrote, “ICE should immediately end its use of BCI as an immigration detention facility.”

Family visitation is prohibited, as is keeping photos of loved ones, according to the letter. Detainees go outside once or twice a week for an hour, attorneys say, despite national standards that require at least one hour a day, for a minimum of five days a week. Officers reportedly leave the lights on overnight as punishment. One man told the organizations that was like “torture” through sleep deprivation. Solitary confinement is frequently used as a punishment, and officers hurl verbal abuse and threats of physical abuse at detainees, attorneys wrote.

Godshall said the ACLU has been receiving complaints about the facility for months, prompting the organizations to launch an investigation.

“We started getting a flood of reports of horrible conditions, civil rights abuses,” she said. “Frankly, it sounded like intentionally punitive and torturous conditions, so that people would agree to deportation.”

Detainees described at least one other incident in which pepper spray was deployed against them by officers, after asking officers to not remove a jug of clean water. One detainee said men were placed in the “segregation cells” and could not wash off the pepper spray for three days, according to the letter.

Among the most severe of the accusations in the letter is that of dangerous medical neglect.

“What people detained at BCI describe is a system for getting medical treatment that is so slow, inconsistent, and capricious that detained people find themselves at the whims and mercy of staff members to get help,” lawyers wrote.

One man told the lawyers that he developed a “severely painful, golf-sized lump” in his throat less than two weeks after arriving at BCI. A doctor diagnosed him with an aggressive fungal infection and prescribed him medication — but he said he did not receive it for over a week, and then later the facility stopped giving it to him. He only saw a doctor 39 days later, the letter says.

Another man who developed severe headaches and swelling and pain in his legs said he was told he could only get Tylenol, which never came. Ten days later, he fainted and struck his head against the concrete floor, the lawyers say. Staff took so long to respond to the cell, another detainee ended up performing CPR, the letter states. A CT scan at the hospital revealed three hemorrhages in his brain and a fractured skull. He was sent back to BCI, had more seizures, and was sent again to the hospital.

“He now suffers from vertigo, can barely walk, and has been diagnosed with brain damage,” lawyers wrote. “Shortly after he received a wheelchair, a Facility officer took it away from him. He says that staff fail to regularly provide him with his vertigo medication, which he needs just to get out of bed.”

Marisol Dominguez-Ruiz, staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project, said that “abuses at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’” are now “proliferating at the Baker Correctional Institution.”

“Once again, ICE is violating federal law and its own standards,” she wrote in a statement. “It’s time for the facility to be shut down for good.”

This story was originally published October 8, 2026 at 1:08 PM.