President Trump said the detention facility would house, quote, some of the most vicious people on the planet.

But a recent investigation by the Miami Herald and the Tampa Bay times found that several hundred detainees had no criminal record.

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a class action lawsuit against the Trump administration and Florida officials on behalf of the hundreds of people who have been detained in the Everglades facility.

That suit claims that constitutional rights are being ignored via a lack of access to legal counsel and violations of due process.

That includes 35 year old Michael Borrego.

He is one of the people at the center of the ACLU lawsuit.

It's, like mini.

The home videos of me child Borrego in South Florida show a doting father to his two year old daughter, Athena.

Perego left Cuba in 2019, legally entering the U.S. at the Mexican border.

But Reagan's mom, Yancey Fernandez, says her son, just like her, was fleeing political persecution in Cuba.

She finds it hard to believe he now lives in fear of the U.S. government.

He was sent to Alligator Alcatraz just days after it opened.

There isn't a prison.

That's a concentration camp.

That's a center that is torturing him.

Fernandez believes his detention there has made him sick.

We spoke to his lawyer, Mitch Gonzalez.

He woke up in a pool of his own blood, and he had no ability to call his lawyers to report what was going on whatsoever.

His only option was to beg for help from officials who really do not see him as human.

The detained men in his same cage made enough of a fuss.

They took him in an ambulance to a hospital.

Borrego had hemorrhoid surgery and two days later was sent back to the facility, where his wound became infected.

He was in excruciating pain.

He suffered another emergency, where he soiled himself, was again covered in blood, and was denied by officials.

A change of clothing.

This is degrading and inhumane treatment.

Gonzales says he's not just concerned about his client's safety.

People have reported not being allowed to shower for several days on end.

People have reported finding worms in their food.

People have reported flooding of the toilets, resulting in feces and urine all over the floor.

Gonzalez says Borrego should have never ended up here, that he had a strong case for residency after he was granted humanitarian parole.

But Gonzalez says like many immigrants, Borrego lacked adequate legal counsel.

And when Gonzalez had a run in with the law while employed for a pool company, that changed everything.

He was working for an employer that, unbeknownst to him, was running a major fraud scheme.

Gonzalez says Borrego was too afraid to risk time in jail, so he said yes to a plea agreement.

And this is something that is very common in the US justice system.

You know, people take plea agreements for things that they did not do or certainly did not intentionally do all the time in order to avoid the trauma of being separated by prolonged imprisonment from their families.

Borrego pleaded guilty to grand theft in 2020 for a second degree felony and conspiracy to commit grand theft.

But then Borrego was cited for driving with an expired license.

He immediately took steps to notify his probation officer.

His probation officer reassured him he could come in and that they would resolve the matter without it escalating further.

Instead, he was apprehended.

On Monday, more than two weeks after Borrego had arrived at the facility, his attorney had still not been able to have a confidential call with him.

The last time that someone from our legal team went to visit, they were frankly told and flatly told, by an officer standing guard outside the gates that there would be no in-person legal visits at that facility.

And that is truly, truly shocking to us.

That is not something I've ever experienced in any type of carceral facility, be it an immigrant detention center, a county jail, a federal or state prison.

Fernandez is desperate for information.

She says calls from him are sporadic.

I can't find anything out about my son.

I don't know if he's in the hospital.

I can't see him.

I can't do anything for him.

She finds it almost incomprehensible that she now thinks her son might actually be safer in Cuba.

And an update on this story.

On Wednesday, Gonzalez was able to have his first confidential video call with Borrego.

It took 16 days to make that happen.

Gonzalez says he's still trying to reach an Ice officer assigned to this case.

To learn more about the legal issues surrounding the Everglades Detention Center, we're joined by longtime immigration attorney Eric Kurz.

Band.

Mr. Kriseman, welcome.

Hi.

Thank you.

So, as you know, the class action lawsuit that was filed against governor DeSantis, as well as state lawmakers essentially alleges that detainees are unable or unable to access their lawyers, that detainees are being denied confidential attorney client communication.

We've heard one attorney describe this is essentially a black hole that they can't get information on how to contact their clients or when to reach clients.

So help us to understand by law what type of legal access are these detainees required to receive?

Okay, under the Immigration Nationality Act, there's no question but that it says that you are entitled to have a lawyer at your own expense or if things are free, lawyer or available, as there are in many of these cases, and that you have a right to represent in an immigration proceeding.

It seems to me this is clearly an effort just to prevent people from getting access to their attorneys.

Part of it is due to the fact that this is just a makeshift, I would even call it a, a prison because prisons have rules.

They have guidance.

They have people who are competent running the facility.

We don't have any of the normal usual procedural safeguards that people have.

In fact, as we know, 60% of these people are just people scooped up off the street, many of whom have been here for years in the United States, have no criminal record, have no other problems, except they've been working hard for the last ten, 15, 20 years, whoever they are.

And those people have equities, and those equities allow them to have a hearing.

And at that hearing, if the judge believes that they are eligible for certain kinds of benefits, for example, we have something called cancellation of removal.

If you've been here more than ten years and you have American citizen children, but we suffer extorted during an extremely unusual hardship, you're entitled to remain here.

And that's aside from other forms of relief, including the simplest of all, which is I want to voluntarily leave the United States, and I don't want to have a record of deportation.

So a lawyer has a critical role, whether it's asylum cancellation or others.

And sometimes it's even on the merits that I shouldn't be deported at all.

That's why you need a lawyer.

And the and the, you know, the the fact is that the rates of approvals vary extraordinarily by whether or not you have counsel.

Do you see any remedy here?

I mean, if these attorneys can't reach their clients and they're in there quickly deported, I mean, what is next?

A lawsuit has been brought.

The lawsuit is designed to, get access by lawyers to their clients or potential clients.

And, I believe any judge is going to say, in all fairness, that a person has the right to have counsel.

It's right in the act.

And if it wasn't in the act, it would be a part of our Constitution.

It's what's called due process.

What we want to do in these lawsuits is basically say these people have a right to counsel.

You can have a right to counsel if you don't set up a system that allows them to do that, which means you're supposed to be able to call or send an email or do something that says, I want to visit my client and I want to see them.

In most cases, you don't even have to do that.

You can show up if you're the lawyer for the person and say, I want to see my client and I want to see him in a confidential basis.

In other words, there's supposed to be a room available where you can talk to your client in confidence.

Mr. Kerr has been you.

You told me earlier that you feel the DeSantis administration is violating the constitutional rights of these detainees.

What precedent does this set?

Having these folks at alligator.

Alcatraz.

There is no precedent for anything like this.

It is clear that if you would deciding to incarcerate people again, this is where they fall back.

Well, this is civil.

This is not criminal.

So we don't have to do some of the things we do for criminals.

We can treat people who are civilly detained, even worse that sometimes they make that argument.

It's not constitutional to just lock people away in horrific conditions and then say, well, we're doing it because they're the worst of the worst when that's not even true.

So they're not really detention centers there, which is kind of a you from ism.

They're horrible, jail like conditions that are even worse than normally run jails and prisons.

And remember, they are not criminals.

They're not serving a sentence.

They're simply they're awaiting a deportation hearing, which, again, is a civil proceeding.

So imagine if you owed a debt to somebody.

And what they did is they threw you into the middle of the Everglades until your trial was over, about your debt.

That's the equivalent of what immigration is.

Immigration is a civil proceeding about.

It's not a criminal proceeding, but they've criminalized it by putting people in these horrific conditions.

I workers man, we thank you so much for your time.

Thank you for your insight.

Great.

Thank you.

After the break, the Everglades is considered one of the most fragile ecosystems in North America.

And environmental groups have concerns regarding the detention centers impact on endangered species.

Florida's top emergency official is requesting a federal judge throw out a lawsuit from environmental groups that aims to shut down alligator.

Alcatraz.

Kevin Guthrie, the executive director for the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said in a court filing that the lawsuit was filed in the wrong jurisdiction since all detention facilities, buildings and paving at issue are located in Collier County, not Miami-Dade.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Everglades, claims the facility poses a cruel and inhumane threat to the ecologically sensitive wetlands, argues Jennifer Crawford reports.

Those environmental groups dispute previous statements from the governor, who maintains the facility has no impact on the Everglades.

Environmentalists warn that each day Alligator Alcatraz remains up and running is one more day of irreparable damage to the Everglades.

North America's only subtropical wilderness and home to thousands of native species of plants and animals, dozens of which are endangered or threatened.

We know that species like the Florida panther are just barely clinging to existence.

We have one population, the only in the world that's found here in South Florida.

There's roughly 200 of them left in the wild.

Florida director and attorney at the center for Biological Diversity, Elise Bennett, says the significant increase in traffic can doom the Florida Panther.

Dump trucks, you know, staff coming to work on the site, transporting folks to be held at the site.

And all of that increases the chances of losing more Panthers to road deaths, which just drives them closer to the brink of extinction.

Bennett says the facility also threatens one of the rarest bats in the world, the Florida bonded bat.

We've talked with bat experts, and we know that they have been documented just miles from the site, and they can fly dozens of miles every night.

So we know it's very likely that they're flying over this area that they're foraging, she says.

The detention center lights up the night sky, reportedly seen at least 15 miles away.

As you bring all of the artificial lights into the site, what you're doing is you're destroying their grocery store, their restaurant, the places that they go to eat, and that puts them at greater risk and makes them weaker.

You know, and displaces them.

This is an area that's actually known as an international dark sky.

It's one of the darkest skies east of the Mississippi River.

And preserving that darkness is not only good for us.

People who like to go and stargaze, but also for wildlife like panthers that do a lot of their movement and hunting at night, and Florida and at bats who need dark, open skies to hunt as well.

She says they're concerned about chemicals used at the site, harming wildlife like the Everglades snail kite, a bird who hunts snails.

If you're using pesticides and they're getting into the prey items for these endangered species, that it could impact them at a cascading scale, right?

Maybe not directly, but through the food that they're eating.

And it also says noise, water and soil pollution are top concerns.

This is an incredibly ecologically sensitive area.

If you just look out, you know, really to either side, you see water and wetlands that are surrounding the site all the way up to where that paved runway is.

It's very vulnerable to runoff.

And so we know that we've seen new paving, new asphalt.

All of that risks introducing new contaminants from the paving itself, but also the contaminants of just keeping thousands of people living on this site.

You know, all of the solid waste, the trash, the human refuse.

Governor DeSantis has denied the detention center will cause environmental harm.

Any sense?

It's somehow like, you know, is going to have any impact at all on the overall Everglades is there's zero impact from the large and charismatic Florida panther all the way to a lowly crabgrass.

The impacts are extensive.

And when you destroy the fabric of life by coming into an incredibly sensitive place like this and develop, you're not only hurting each and every one of those species, but you're also hurting humanity in the Everglades.

I'm Jennifer Crawford, reporting for WGCU news.

Coming up next week, recreating the power of hurricanes.

How a new facility coming to South Florida will help build stronger, more resilient communities.

We thank you for joining us for the special edition of Southwest Florida in Focus.

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We hope you have a great day and we'll see you next week.