The Department of Homeland Security's inspector general released a report on September 14, 2026, dated September 11, on its unannounced January inspection of the Florida detention site known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” formally the Florida Soft-Sided Facility. It found that between July 17, 2025, and January 18, 2026, the facility confined 79 detainees in small metal enclosures, “each offering about 18 square feet of floor space,” for periods “ranging from several minutes to nearly 2 hours.” The average stay was 59 minutes and 27 seconds. The inspector general wrote that the “Use of these small metal enclosures for any reason is unprecedented among ICE facilities inspected by OIG.”
Florida ran the facility, but the people held there were ICE detainees, and the report says federal standards applied: “Even if the State of Florida operated FSSF under its 287(g) authority, the facility housed ICE detainees and therefore ICE detention standards would apply.” FEMA obligated $608.4 million to Florida's Division of Emergency Management for the facility on September 30, 2025, and disbursed $58.3 million on May 15, 2026. Trump personally toured the site with Gov. Ron DeSantis in the summer of 2025.
The report found other problems. At maximum capacity, housing units provided 28 square feet per detainee, against a required minimum of 75. Facility staff could not clearly identify which detention standards they followed; one official said it was “so gray as to whose place this is…and which standards to follow.” Documentation for one detainee who spent 26 minutes in an enclosure said he “Failed to comply with a lawful command,” which the inspector general said suggests the enclosures may have been used as a disciplinary tool. “The use of such restrictive spaces is highly unconventional and does not align with standards for humane treatment,” the report says.
DHS said, “Alligator Alcatraz was consistent with the same federal detention standards employed by previous administrations, including Biden and Obama.” DeSantis's communications director, Alex Lanfranconi, said, “While it adheres to all federal standards for criminal confinement, we'd make it even smaller if we could.” DeSantis said, “The goal was not to apply those standards but to exceed those standards.” DHS did not address the report's 10 recommendations, which the inspector general closed administratively because the facility ceased operations on June 15, 2026.
Update (September 17, 2026): a former detainee gave the first personal account of being held in one of the enclosures, and it conflicts with the facility's own records. Raúl Suárez Herrero, 59, who was born in Cuba, came to the United States at 12 and was deported to Mexico in February 2026, told NBC News and Noticias Telemundo that guards forced him into one of the metal enclosures for more than 15 hours after he prayed aloud for a detainee having a seizure. He said he was kicked hard enough to injure his leg, received no medical evaluation, and could not have left on his own. “I feel like I was in hell,” he said. “They took me there and I spent more than 15 hours inside in that little hole.” He described the conditions: “I had to be careful because on the ground there were snakes and you don't see them. You can't fall asleep because they can come into the cage.”
This is a single-sourced allegation. NBC News and Noticias Telemundo share a parent company, so they are effectively one newsroom, and no record corroborates the 15-hour figure. It contradicts the facility records the inspector general reviewed, which show an average stay of 59 minutes and 27 seconds and none longer than two hours. The inspector general said it could not confirm or refute either ICE's account or the detainees' allegations.
DHS called claims of inhumane conditions “categorically false” and allegations of excessive force “FALSE,” saying “No detainees were being beaten or abused.” A spokesman for Gov. Ron DeSantis described the enclosures as confinement for “violent criminal aliens who have proven they cannot remain peaceful,” and added, “we'd make them smaller, if we could.”
NBC also reported a dispute about the report's recommendations: DHS said the inspector general indicated all recommendations were administratively closed, while the inspector general said the administration did not address its 10 recommendations, including that it “discontinue the use of the small metal enclosures to hold detainees for any reason or amount of time.”