What’s Brewing Inside Alligator Alcatraz & Other Detention Centers

Measles, Tuberculosis, and a Mystery Respiratory Illness Are Turning Detention Centers into Public Health Threats

It began with a desperate phone call.

“Pass the phone,” Venezuelan detainee Luis Manuel Rivas Velásquez told attorney Eric Lee after collapsing from severe breathing difficulties in Florida’s Everglades. For 48 harrowing hours, he begged for medical help inside the notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” detention camp. When he was finally taken to a hospital, he…