When Luis Manuel Rivas Velásquez collapsed in his unit at Florida’s controversial “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant detention center and was taken to the hospital on Aug. 5, detainees pounded on the metal bars of their cages and shouted for help. One detainee who witnessed what happened shared details of the incident in a phone call with his fiancée, along with allegations of abuse at the facility. Prism obtained a recording of their conversation from Thomas Kennedy, a consultant with the Florida Immigrant Coalition who received it from the fiancée.

“Now another person fell to the floor. They fell there, they fainted. I think they lost consciousness, I don’t know,” the detainee says in Spanish, recounting Rivas Velásquez’s collapse.

“They didn’t even know what to do because they don’t kno

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