‘It’s like you’re dead alive’: Families, advocates allege inhumane conditions at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’

(OCHOPEE, Fla.) — For a month, Rafael Collado couldn’t tell the night from the day.

Detained in the temporary detention center known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” he spent his time confined in a chain-link cage with another man, stuck in what his fiancee Sonia Bichara described as a legal purgatory — unaware of why he was detained, where he might be sent, and how long he would be stuck in the controversial Florida facility.

“They don’t see the daylight. They don’t know what time it is. He’ll call me and say, ‘What time is it? What day is it?'” said Bichara, who said she speaks with Collado daily. “You don’t know if it rains, you don’t know if it’s sunny out there, you don’t know if it’s dark — it’s like you’re dead alive.”

Collado’s experience is far from unique, according to immigration att