[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 122 (Wednesday, July 16, 2025)]
[House]
[Pages H3327-H3328]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               INTERNMENT CAMP IN THE FLORIDA EVERGLADES

  (Mr. Frost of Florida was recognized to address the House for 5 
minutes.)
  Mr. FROST. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to shine light on a moral 
atrocity going on in my home State of Florida, an immigrant internment 
camp that Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and his administration have 
propped up in the middle of an abandoned airfield deep in the Florida 
Everglades.
  It is a place where nearly 1,000 humans are being forced to live in a 
tent city in the middle of the hot Florida summer, hot sun, where folks 
are not getting enough food. Detainees are exposed to the heat, and 
wildlife, and mosquitoes that can potentially carry disease. They are 
being stripped of their civil rights, and as of this past Saturday, 
they have been cut off from legal counsel.
  While this humanitarian nightmare unfolds, soulless politicians like 
Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump, and Kristi

[[Page H3328]]

Noem grin and call this place--I am actually not even going to use the 
name that they are calling it and dignify it. Mr. Speaker, they sell 
merch. They make jokes. They print hats with cartoon alligators dressed 
up as ICE agents, and they laugh as people and families are suffering.
  I can't tell you the amount of constituents I have heard from, for 
example, that their dad is in this facility and haven't heard from them 
for weeks. No one with eyes and a conscience can ignore what this 
really is. It is an internment camp. It is a place full of people who 
look like me, Latinos, Haitian men, subjugated to inhumane conditions 
under the guise of immigration enforcement. It is disgusting. It is un-
American. It demands oversight.
  Members of Congress have a legally protected right to conduct 
oversight of immigrant detention centers. That means that we have the 
power to show up unannounced, as I have on other occasions, and see 
what is going on with our own eyes.
  That was my plan and the plan of my fellow Florida congressional 
Democrats last week. We were ready to do our jobs. Somehow word got out 
to the DeSantis administration that we were showing up, and so they 
decided to invite us at the same date and time we were going to show up 
anyway.
  We took them up on that. We went in the facility. I am here to talk a 
little bit about my experiences there.
  The State of Florida and DHS got wind of our visit. They got scared. 
They invited us. Of course, what we got was a sanitized version of the 
way things usually are. Even that sanitized version to me was abhorrent 
conditions.
  I also heard reports that the night before we showed up, magically 
the detainees got their first shower they had in a while. Also 
magically, they got one of their first actually good meals. It just 
shows why the unannounced visits are so important. It is to see how 
things really are. Mr. Speaker, I have to tell you, a clean cage is 
still a cage.
  At the end of the day, in this facility we have 32 men being crammed 
in each cage, about 4 to 6 cages in each tent. We brought a thermometer 
in there and each tent was about 84, 85 degrees, of course, in the hot 
Florida sun.

                              {time}  1120

  I will always remember walking in that front door and looking at 
these gentlemen in there, everyone screaming for help, one guy asking 
me to call his family. He was screaming out a phone number. I couldn't 
hear him. I couldn't get all the digits down.
  Only three sources of water per cage, the spigots connected to the 
toilets, much like the jail units we have seen. Usually in those jails, 
it is one of those units for 2 to 4 people, not three for 32 people.
  I have to tell you, one of the most emotional parts for me was when 
we looked at the cages from afar. We weren't let in the tent but stood 
at the doorway, hearing those chants: ``Freedom, freedom''; ``libertad, 
libertad.'' People were yelling.
  This isn't security. It is cruelty. It is not immigration policy. It 
is dehumanizing people.
  Trump said this was about keeping people safe. He said it was about 
going after criminals, but we all know it was one big lie. Hundreds of 
the people being held in this internment camp have no criminal charges.
  I won't stay silent while our government turns the Everglades land--
protecting it used to be a bipartisan thing. The State is spending $450 
million from our Division of Emergency Management to run this 
internment camp, and we are in hurricane season.
  I don't care if you are a Democrat or Republican. I don't care what 
you are. The Division of Emergency Management has the ability to spend 
up to $500 million without going to the legislature for emergency 
money. They are going up to $450 million.
  We are about to go into hurricane season, which means that when a 
hurricane is barreling toward our State, they are not going to do what 
they need to do immediately to save lives. Every minute matters, and 
they will have to go back to the legislature and beg for more money 
because they spent $450 million of our money on a damn internment camp 
in the middle of the Everglades.
  Along with partners, we are going to do something about it. Of 
course, litigation has been filed.
  I think what is important for people to know is that this is a 
Federal facility--we were told that ICE is calling the shots here--a 
Federal facility run and operated by the State.

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