Politics

For the hundreds of men who were detained at Alligator Alcatraz, entering the gates of the makeshift migrant detention center in the Everglades meant exiting the labyrinthine but familiar federal immigration process and entering what several immigration attorneys described as an alternate system where the normal rules don’t apply.

One Guatemalan man detained at the tent site was accidentally deported to Guatemala before a scheduled bond hearing, his attorney said, reminiscent of the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador.

A 35-year-old Cuban man could not be located at the California detention facility where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said they had sent him, leaving his family and attorney frantically trying to determine where he was for more than a week, they said.

As of the end of August, the whereabouts of two-thirds of more than 1,800 men detained at Alligator Alcatraz during the month of July could not be determined by the Miami Herald. The Herald had obtained the names from two detainee rosters.