"Help! I Don’t Want to Die Here": ICE Quietly Relocates Alligator Alcatraz Prisoner Who Collapsed Amid Mass Disease Outbreak

"80% of people were sick; they had coughs, fevers...essentially what you would expect from a COVID-type outbreak," attorney for Luis Velásquez on disease outbreak rampant at Alligator Alcatraz

Status Coup recently reported ON-THE-GROUND outside the Alligator Alcatraz ICE prison and would like to return to continue investigating and spotlight ongoing protests against it. Support our investigative reporting as a Status Coup member for as low as $5 bucks a month.

After nearly four days without contact, immigration attorneys for Luis Manuel Rivas Velásquez, a prisoner at Alligator Alcatraz who collapsed inside the prison on August 5th after being denied medical care, say they have finally made contact with their client.

Velásquez’s attorneys had been unable to reach the Venezuelan national after he was quietly transferred from so-called Alligator Alcatraz, the immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades, to the El Paso Enhanced Hardened Facility in Texas.

“Help! I don’t want to die in here,” was one of the last things Velásquez told his attorneys over a brief, three-minute long phone call on August 9th.

Velásquez’s transfer comes amidst reports of mass relocations of detainees from Alligator Alcatraz to other facilities in Florida and Texas over the last several days—and a disease outbreak sickening the overwhelming majority of prisoners.

“Essentially what we had heard from everybody who was in the facility last week was that around 80% of people were sick,” James Hollis, an attorney for Velazquez, told Status Coup (video below). “They had coughs, they had fevers, they had essentially what you would expect from a COVID-type outbreak.”

Velazquez confirmed his lawyer’s account following his collapse and hospitalization last week. “We are all sick in this jail, some are worse than others,” he said in a statement released by his attorneys.

Thus far, the Florida Division of Emergency Management [FDEM], which runs the makeshift outdoor prison, nor ICE have commented or confirmed the existence of mass disease inside Alligator Alcatraz. As Status Coup has reported, prisoners—most of whom have no criminal charges filed against them—are suffering from a variety of ailments including malnourishment, dehydration, chest pains, fever, sores, and more. Mentally, prisoners have expressed depression and confusion as they receive no light inside the prison, which also has no clocks inside—leaving prisoners unaware whether it is day or night.

At the same time, a flurry of prisoners being transported in—and out—of Alligator Alcatraz continued over the weekend. Thomas Kennedy, an immigration activist who’s been monitoring the facility, has documented the surge in buses coming in and out of the detention camp.

One detainee’s wife, Gladys Smith, was informed that her husband’s “pod” shrunk from 32 people down to nine over the weekend. However, it has since filled back up to capacity.

“They intend to move people very quickly through this facility,” Hollis told Status Coup. “And because of that, they're going to cut corners. One of the corners that they're going to cut is going to be providing sufficient medical care.”

The cause of these relocations hasn’t been verified, however previous reporting indicates prisoners have been transported to nearby ICE prisons in Florida as well as Texas.

Additionally, many detainees are reported to be well over the 14-day legal limit for detention.

On August 5th, mere days before his transfer, Velásquez had been hospitalized after collapsing and losing consciousness in tent five of the prison. Eyewitness accounts from detainees detail guards at the facility displaying an apparent lack of urgency and know-how when tending to Velásquez—who was unconscious for at least 30 minutes.

"The detainees essentially saw that he had passed out or lost consciousness and proceeded to try to help him themselves because none of the guards were helping him,” said Hollis. “It didn't seem like they knew what they were doing. Like, they came up, they kind of checked his pulse — or they tried to check his pulse. It didn't really seem like they knew what they were doing.”

For thirty minutes, Velásquez was left on the ground where other prisoners had moved him in an attempt to get medical attention. It was left to other prisoners to provide medical attention like attempting chest compressions on the unresponsive 38-year-old.

“Even as they're bringing in the stretcher to to take him out, there's not a sense of urgency. They're walking, they're walking very slowly. They're walking very slowly out. They get the stretcher. They walk very slowly back in,” said Hollis. “ The message from DHS is there wasn't a medical emergency. I'm like, well, it certainly wasn't treated as a medical emergency."

Accounts from prisoners also made their way back to Velásquez’s sister and partner in Venezuela. Having not been informed by ICE of this serious medical event and subsequent hospitalization, Velásquez’s family presumed him to be dead for at least twenty-four hours. Both his sister and partner made desperate pleas for the return of his body over social media.

Smith’s husband, who underwent heart surgery and caught pneumonia prior to being detained on July 23rd, has also been facing a serious lack of medical attention. She says her husband has not received his heart medication since arriving at the facility and has been hospitalized as many as four times — information she’s receiving through a network of other prisoners. ICE has not reached out to inform her of her husband’s condition. His current whereabouts are unknown, though she believes him to be in the hospital.

After being treated at Kendall Hospital for what Velásquez told his attorneys was a “respiratory infection,” he was returned to Alligator Alcatraz. By Friday, August 8, he had been transferred to “another tent facility,” in El Paso, Texas Hollis said.

Attorneys were not aware their client was being transferred until they received a call from him in El Paso. When he called back the following day to report that his condition was worsening, Velasquez’s attorneys called the El Paso fire department in the hopes that they would be able to gain entry to the facility and provide medical care—but their medical team was denied entry by ICE agents.

Neither his attorneys or family had heard from Velásquez — or received an update or information from ICE — after that Saturday call until late Monday evening.

“He's still not doing great but any contact is good contact at this point,” Eric Lee, one of his attorneys, told Status Coup. “We simply hope the government deports him to his family as quickly as possible.”

Per Lee and Hollis, Velásquez has already signed off on being deported back to Venezuela.

“My understanding is he did that before he was actually taken to Alligator Alcatraz,” said Hollis. Velásquez “had already signed it and was like, okay, look, I'm willing to go. I'm not going to fight this in any way and then instead of sending him immediately back to Venezuela they send him to Alligator Alcatraz.”

“I just want to get to my country,” he told Lee before being transferred to El Paso. “I just want to get to Venezuela, amend everything, and get back to doing things as before.”

When asked why Velásquez had not yet been sent back to Venezuela, and instead was moved to another facility in the U.S., despite requesting to leave, Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, told us:

“Luis Manuel Rivas Velasquez is a criminal illegal alien with a rap sheet that includes an arrest for robbery in Miami. Criminal illegal aliens are not eligible for voluntary departure. When you come to our country and break our laws, you lose that privilege.”

McLaughlin’s statement is in direct contradiction with the often repeated falsehood that if individuals didn’t want to be in Alligator Alcatraz — or assumably other detention camps — that they could simply choose to leave.

Apparently you cannot.

In response to McLaughlin’s statement, Velásquez’s attorney, Eric Lee, said: “The DHS statement indicates the government fails to understand that Mr. Rivas Velasquez is not contesting his removal. He simply wants to go home, through either voluntary departure or deportation. Therefore, there is no lawful basis for his prolonged detention.”

These disappearances, illnesses, and relocations appear routine amidst allegations of horrific conditions, which we’ve covered extensively. Hollis referred to Alligator Alcatraz as the “worst interment crisis since World War II.”

“Historically, it’s going to be looked at in a similar way. You can’t deny thousands of people their rights. You can’t hold normal people off the street. And frankly, you can’t enforce your way out of the immigration challenges that America has. The reason America has immigration challenges is the way the law is written — and the fact it hasn’t been changed in 30 or 40 years,” said Hollis. “And I suspect that when we get to the end of this, the deprivation of rights that’s happening now — and that we hear about from detainees — is going to become a lot clearer, and America will eventually hang its head in shame.”

Status Coup will continue investigating this important story. If you have information about current conditions inside Alligator Alcatraz, or have been in touch with any prisoners, please contact us at info@statuscoup.com. We also seek to return once again to report ON-THE-GROUND at Alligator Alcatraz. If you appreciate independent, on-scene investigative reporting, please support Status Coup as a paying member for as low as $5 dollars a month.

Want more deep-dive, pro-worker, pro-reality reporting like this? SUPPORT Status Coup as a paying member for as low as 16 cents a day! BECOME A MEMBER today and get great perks like our monthly MEMBERS-ONLY call, behind-the-scenes videos from our ON-THE-GROUND reporting, and more!