At the brand new Everglades immigration detention center that officials have dubbed “ Alligator Alcatraz,” people held there say worms turn up in the food. Toilets don’t flush, flooding floors with fecal waste, and mosquitoes and other insects are everywhere.

Inside the compound’s large white tents, rows of bunkbeds are surrounded by chain-link cages. Detainees are said to go days without showering or getting prescription medicine, and they are only able to speak by phone to lawyers and loved ones. At times the air conditioners abruptly shut off in the sweltering heat.

Days after Donald Trump toured it, attorneys, advocates, detainees and their relatives are speaking out about the makeshift facility, which Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration raced to build on an isolated airstrip surrounded by swampland. Detainees began arriving July 2.

  • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    34
    ·
    edit-2
    20 hours ago

    I think what people keep overlooking about “optics” is that a mass number of people will never see this news because they only digest news through algorithmically controlled content providers that give them more of what they already believe.

    The number of people going directly to traditional media outlets keeps shrinking in favor of YouTube shorts, Tiktok, Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram

    • null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      10 hours ago

      Half of the US is very happy to punish poor brown people in this place.

      They might not say it overtly but they feel that most of the people there deserve it.

      They are also very happy to see the radical woke left upset about it.

    • gdog05@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      21
      ·
      19 hours ago

      Not that it matters that much because traditional media has created a “business as usual” narrative instead of calling out our plummet into fascism. Between that and the sane-washing of Trump, unless you visited very obviously leftist news sources, you wouldn’t hear about most of this.

    • KnitWit@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      19 hours ago

      Agreed, that’s kinda what I’m getting at. This whole term has been with the understanding that the narrative has become fully divorced from the reality. Scary times.