'It's An Internment Camp!': Maxwell Frost Details 'Abhorrent Conditions' At ICE Detention Center In Florida

Forbes Breaking News

During remarks on the House floor, Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) spoke about his visit to the new ICE detention facility in the Florida Everglades.

Transcript

00:00Mr. Speaker, I rise today to shine light on a moral atrocity going on in my home state

00:11of Florida, an immigrant internment camp that Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and his administration

00:17have propped up in the middle of an abandoned airfield deep in the Florida Everglades, a

00:23place where nearly 1,000 humans are being forced to live in a tent city, in the middle

00:29of the hot Florida summer, hot sun, where folks are not getting enough food, detainees are

00:35exposed to the heat, wildlife, mosquitoes that can potentially carry disease, stripped of

00:40their civil rights, and as of this past Saturday, cut off from legal counsel.

00:46And while this humanitarian nightmare unfolds, soulless politicians like Ron DeSantis and

00:51Donald Trump, Kristi Noem, grin and call this place, I'm actually not even going to use

00:57the name that they're calling it and dignify it.

01:00But they sell merch, they make jokes, they print hats with cartoon alligators dressed up

01:06as ICE agents, and they laugh as people and families are suffering.

01:11I can tell you the amount of constituents I've heard from.

01:14Their dad is in this facility.

01:16I haven't heard from them for weeks.

01:19No one with an eyes and a conscience can ignore what this really is.

01:23It's an internment camp, a place full of people who look like me, Latinos, Haitian men, subjugated

01:31to inhumane conditions under the guise of immigration enforcement.

01:35And it's disgusting.

01:37It's un-American.

01:38It demands oversight.

01:40Members of Congress have a legally protected right to conduct oversight of immigrant detention

01:44centers.

01:45That means that we have the power to show up unannounced, as I have on other occasions,

01:50and see what's going on with our own eyes.

01:53That was my plan and the plan of my fellow Florida congressional Democrats last week.

01:58We were ready to do our jobs.

02:00Somehow, word got out to the DeSantis administration that we were showing up, and so they decided

02:05to invite us at the same date and time we were going to show up anyway.

02:09But we took them up on that.

02:11We went in the facility and here to talk a little bit about my experiences in there.

02:15You know, the state of Florida and DHS, they got wind of our visit, they got scared, they

02:21invited us, and of course what we got was a sanitized version of the way things usually

02:27are.

02:27But even that sanitized version, to me, was important conditions.

02:33You know, I also heard reports that the night before we showed up, magically the detainees

02:39got their first shower they had in a while.

02:41Well, magically they got one of their first actually good meals, and it just shows why

02:46the unannounced visits are so important to see how things really are.

02:50But I got to tell you, a clean cage is still a cage.

02:54And at the end of the day, in this facility, we have 32 men being crammed in each cage, about

03:01four to six cages in each tent.

03:03Each tent, you know, we brought a thermometer in there, was about 84, 85 degrees, of course

03:11in the hot Florida sun.

03:13You know, I'll always remember walking in that front door and looking at these gentlemen

03:18in there, everyone screaming for help.

03:20One guy asking me to call his family, he was screaming at a phone number, I couldn't

03:24hear him, I couldn't get all the digits down.

03:26Only three sources of water per cage, they're the spigots connected to the toilets, much

03:33like the jail units we've seen.

03:35But usually in those jails, it's one of those units for two to four people, not three for

03:4032 people.

03:42But I got to tell you, one of the most emotional parts for me was when we looked at the cages

03:45from afar.

03:46We weren't let in the tent, but standing at the doorway, hearing those chants, freedom,

03:50freedom, libertad, libertad, people yelling.

03:54This isn't security, it's cruelty.

03:56It's not immigration policy, it's dehumanizing people.

04:00You know, Trump said this was about keeping people safe.

04:03He said it's about going after criminals, but we all know it's one big lie.

04:07Hundreds of the people being held in this internment camp have no criminal charges.

04:12I won't stay silent while our government turns the Everglades land, of which protecting

04:19it used to be a bipartisan thing.

04:22And the state is spending $450 million from our Division of Emergency Management to run

04:30this internment camp.

04:31And we're in hurricane season.

04:33I don't care if you're a Democrat, Republican, I don't care what you are.

04:37The State, the Division of Emergency Management has the ability to spend up to $500 million

04:41without going to the legislature and emergency money.

04:44They're going up to $450 million.

04:46We're about to go into hurricane season, which means that when a hurricane is barreling towards

04:50our state, they're not going to be able to do what they need to do immediately to save

04:55lives, because every minute matters.

04:56They'll have to go back to the legislature and beg for more money, because they spent

05:00$450 million of our money on a dam internment camp in the middle of the Everglades.

05:07Along with partners, we're going to do something about it.

05:10Of course, litigation has been filed.

05:13I think what's important for people to know is that this is a federal facility.

05:16We were told that ICE is calling the shots here.

05:19A federal facility run and operated by the state.

05:22I yield back.

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