PRESSTV — broadcast
20260806 233000 UTC
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[00:00:06] Bueno, duró año, a qué me refiero? Well, it lasted year. What am I
[00:00:10] referring to? A prison, very unusual prison a
[00:00:13] detention center in Florida surrounded by alligators in
[00:00:17] case anyone managed escape. Who was held there,
[00:00:20] criminals? No, immigrants. It was an
[00:00:23] experiment, because it opened about year ago and recently shut
[00:00:27] down. Who benefited from it? "the most important
[00:00:31] point I want to make is that in the context
[00:00:33] of the recent and mysterious death of senator Lindsay Graham, had
[00:00:37] recently been to Ukraine, let me remind you that earlier this
[00:00:41] year in Tel Aviv, this man said that what was happening in Gaza
[00:00:45] was the model for wars anywhere in
[00:00:47] of the world, including against
[00:00:49] immigrants,
[00:00:57] it opened in July 2025 and closed one year."
[00:01:00] natural cage, if you escaped, the alligators would eat you. They move
[00:01:04] incredibly fast, Trump said.
[00:01:07] It was the largest prison for migrants, not criminals, not convicted
[00:01:11] of offenders, not people on trial, but simply migrants who arrived in the
[00:01:14] United States. This corrupt and criminal
[00:01:17] of experiment cost more than $1.2 billion, averaging
[00:01:21] $3,500 per prisoner per day. A year ago,
[00:01:25] in just
[00:01:25] of matter of days, without transparency and inside protected natural
[00:01:28] areas, Several companies built this migrant detention
[00:01:32] center. They named it
[00:01:34] of alligator because
[00:01:35] of the thousands of alligators surrounding it and alcatras after the legendary
[00:01:39] Maximum Security prison in San Francisco that once housed some of
[00:01:42] America's most notorious criminals. It's official name was the
[00:01:46] South Florida Detention Center. Maximum capacity
[00:01:50] 200 people. The facility was accused of torture,
[00:01:54] shortages of medication, inadequate medical care, insufficient
[00:01:58] food and infrastructure that. to inhumane living
[00:02:01] conditions. In total, 21 migrants
[00:02:05] passed through the facility. Today they have been transferred like mere
[00:02:09] objects to other prisons across the United
[00:02:11] States.
[00:02:20] Thomas Kennedy, Thomas Kennedy is the spokes person for
[00:02:24] the Florida immigrant coalition based in the very state where the
[00:02:28] alligator Alcatras.
[00:02:54] of
[00:02:58] of
[00:03:12] prison or
[00:03:14] since this detention center was located there in florida. Thomas, I clearly
[00:03:18] remember President Donald Trump saying that this immigrant
[00:03:21] in detention center
[00:03:22] of was a model that would be expanded to the rest
[00:03:25] of the United States. However, the prison has now been
[00:03:28] closed, the people were...
[00:03:57] of because it
[00:04:00] was the
[00:04:01] of first detention facility operated entirely by a
[00:04:05] state government rather than the federal government. normally the
[00:04:08] federal government grants the authority to detain
[00:04:12] migrants through federal contracts. so without those
[00:04:16] federal contracts, this detention
[00:04:18] of center operated without
[00:04:20] of any of real oversight or accountability, becoming
[00:04:24] kind
[00:04:24] me of quasi clandestine extrajudicial
[00:04:28] jurisdiction. the other problem was that it was built inside
[00:04:31] ecological reserve where they weren't even allowed to
[00:04:35] install lightning infrastructure because
[00:04:37] of the protected wildlife and endangered species in the
[00:04:41] area. it was also located next to a protected native american
[00:04:45] reservation. as
[00:04:46] a result, they faced numerous legal challenges under both
[00:04:50] state and federal law in order to continue building and
[00:04:53] operating the detention center.
[00:04:55] of top of that, they spent more than $1 billion dollars from what we
[00:04:59] call Here in Florida, the emergency reserve fund, that is
[00:05:03] money the state sets aside for disasters such
[00:05:07] as hurricanes, wildfires
[00:05:09] and other emergencies. They
[00:05:11] of spent more than one billion dollars and after just one year of
[00:05:15] operating the detention center, the reserve fund had only $9
[00:05:19] million left, which is practically nothing. they had
[00:05:22] completely depleted it, so from both a political and
[00:05:26] economic or rather fiscal standpoint, it was simply
[00:05:30] unsustainable to continue operating this
[00:05:32] detention.
[00:05:37] what happened to the people who were being held there? what can you tell us that
[00:05:41] the public may not? already know international organizations such
[00:05:45] as Amnesty International went so far as to conclude
[00:05:49] that this detention center constituted the violation of human
[00:05:52] rights.
[00:05:56] That's a good question. We worked together with Amnesty International
[00:06:00] and Amnesty International concluded that certain
[00:06:03] punishments used at this detention center amounted to torture.
[00:06:07] For example, they would place the teines in what the guards called the
[00:06:11] box. It was a space measuring just two feet by
[00:06:15] two feet where people were chained outdoors,
[00:06:18] exposed to the elements and the blazing sun for seven or
[00:06:22] eight hours a time, simply left there to suffer. As for what
[00:06:26] happened to the detainies, the vast majority were
[00:06:29] transferred to other detention centers. In fact, just
[00:06:33] recently we held a press conference in downtown Miami, because
[00:06:37] federal prison is now holding more than 100 detainees
[00:06:41] who were previously. at alligator Alcatras and they're
[00:06:45] being kept in rooms during the middle the Florida summer. It's
[00:06:48] extremely hot, yet they have no air conditioning. There are
[00:06:52] about 90 people packed into each room. I believe there are only two
[00:06:56] or three rooms. They're being served poor quality, spoiled
[00:07:00] food, and the prison is infested with cockroaches. We're being
[00:07:04] told that they're actually enduring even worse conditions than they
[00:07:07] did at alligator Alcatras, but overall they've been
[00:07:11] dispersed among.
[00:07:21] Very well, Thomas, let me turn now to Leopoldo Mendaval
[00:07:25] here in the studio, leopoldo, years ago I visited the
[00:07:28] Maricopa county jail run by sheriff Joe
[00:07:32] Arpeyo where inmates were dressed in pink and so on. There was
[00:07:36] clearly intention to humiliate people, and from what Thomas has just
[00:07:40] described, it seems we're talking. not only about
[00:07:43] humiliation, but about conditions that come very close to
[00:07:46] deliberate human suffering. how do you view Donald Trump's
[00:07:50] entire immigration policy? does it bear a distinctive
[00:07:54] hallmark compared with previous administrations in the United
[00:07:57] States?
[00:08:07] that underlying mindset is probably directed at the loyal segment of his
[00:08:10] supporters, the remaining 30%. percent who will stand behind Trump no matter
[00:08:14] what he does, because he is giving
[00:08:16] them exactly the kind of satisfaction they want, and following Thomas
[00:08:20] Kennedy's remarks, I believe the illegality surrounding all of
[00:08:23] this inevitably takes us back to Germany in the
[00:08:26] 1930s, because history is repeating itself in many
[00:08:30] ways. In fact, it's no coincidence that Stephen
[00:08:33] Miller, one the chief architects of this project, has openly
[00:08:37] described facilities such as the Everglades detention
[00:08:42] that has... center, been
[00:08:42] one closed the as concentration camps, literally
[00:08:45] camps, they are no longer even trying to soften the language, that
[00:08:49] is essentially how they themselves view these places. there's
[00:08:53] another point Thomas also touched on, namely that an entirely new legal
[00:08:57] framework has been created, if it can even be called that to justify these
[00:09:01] arrests, again it takes us back to Germany in the
[00:09:04] 1930s, because at that time new legal doctrine was
[00:09:08] created that resembles what we now call preventive detention.
[00:09:12] Under that system, it was no longer necessary to prove that someone had committed
[00:09:16] a crime. Instead, the government declared a state of
[00:09:20] emergency. They called it shutshaft, and
[00:09:23] essentially the German government manufactured its own
[00:09:26] emergency after the parliament building caught fire,
[00:09:30] blamed all the regime's political enemies and that alone
[00:09:34] became sufficient grounds to imprison them. What is
[00:09:38] especially disturbing about the current Trump administration is that the
[00:09:41] architects.
[00:09:44] of this new agenda, project 2025, have essentially developed a
[00:09:47] strategy for creating a state of emergency and then invoking
[00:09:51] two old laws, one from 1788 and
[00:09:54] another from 1798, known as the enemies
[00:09:58] act. the United States had barely come into existence
[00:10:02] as the so-called land of liberty when President John Adams enacted
[00:10:06] that law based on the principle that enemies the government should be
[00:10:09] imprisoned. there were four such acts later, another
[00:10:12] president, one truly believed in liberty, and like those claim that
[00:10:16] labeled today, Thomas Jefferson argued that these laws violated
[00:10:20] freedom and the declaration of independence. He repealed three
[00:10:24] them. but one remained, that is the law they are invoking
[00:10:28] today. In order to make it work, the US government has perversely,
[00:10:32] in my view, had to create the illusion of a state of war, because only
[00:10:36] under those circumstances can such inhumane law, one that
[00:10:39] violates fundamental legal principles be put into
[00:10:42] effect, and to return to your question, Rubaine, about
[00:10:46] whether this model will continue even though this particular prison has been
[00:10:50] closed, there's one more point
[00:10:52] worth mentioning. Florida attorney general who
[00:10:56] spearheaded this project deliberately gave it the terrifying name alligator
[00:11:00] alcatras before entering politics, he played
[00:11:03] for the florida gaters, so there is also an element of spectacle or
[00:11:07] even play in all of this. It reflects the psychology behind
[00:11:11] these people, this desire, as you said, to humiliate and to
[00:11:15] establish
[00:11:16] dominance.
[00:11:21] Do you see Donald Trump's immigration policy
[00:11:24] as something?
[00:11:34] Yes, obviously because the level of cruelty in the policy, but
[00:11:38] I'd like to expand a little on the analysis we just heard, because
[00:11:42] one the most influential legal theories of Nazi Germany
[00:11:46] was Carl Smith, wrote a book called the state of exception,
[00:11:50] in other words, the state of emergency, we're just discussing not only in the
[00:11:54] federal. here in the United States using emergency laws to
[00:11:58] carry out this aggressive immigration enforcement, but here in
[00:12:02] Florida, governor Ron Den Santes has kept a state honor
[00:12:05] a state of emergency since 2023, he has renewed that
[00:12:09] emergency declaration 20 times and has used it to
[00:12:13] establish detention centers like alligator,
[00:12:16] alcutras without having to go through normal administrative or
[00:12:19] legislative procedures. He has also used to spend money from the
[00:12:23] emergency funds and mentioned earlier, awarding those funds without
[00:12:27] any competitive bidding process or accountability to us, the
[00:12:31] tax payers. I think the most disturbing part of all this is
[00:12:35] that governments with concentration camps or detention camps,
[00:12:39] usually try to hide them, they feel embarrassed by them or try to
[00:12:42] justify them. Here in Florida, as you've just heard, both the
[00:12:46] state government and the federal government were proud of this
[00:12:50] concentration camp. In fact, the governor and James
[00:12:53] Amir, the state. attorney general said that this detention center has
[00:12:57] an entrance but no exit and that anyone who tried escape would be
[00:13:01] met by alligators, pythons and death. they said it openly,
[00:13:05] what's more the florida republican party, the party of Trump, the
[00:13:09] governor and the rest was selling t-shirts, shirts, caps
[00:13:13] and monks with the alligator alcatras logo, featuring
[00:13:16] pythons, crocodiles and alligators. it was something truly
[00:13:20] dark, truly evil, and they openly mocked the suffering these
[00:13:24] people.
[00:14:25] if i'm mistaken on some the details, once the war was over,
[00:14:28] there was a change of administration, dwight eisenhower came into
[00:14:31] office and he was the one who said, now it's time to send them all
[00:14:35] back, launching what became known as operation wetback, throw the
[00:14:39] wetbacks out, the americans can be pretty
[00:14:42] ext,
[00:14:49] let ask you something, senator lindsay recently passed away
[00:14:53] earlier this year, While in Tel Aviv, Senator Graham
[00:14:57] said that what was happening in Gaza would become the model for future
[00:15:01] wars around the world. According to several American analysts i have
[00:15:05] read, they say he was right. They argue that the tactics being
[00:15:09] used in Gaza are now being extended to the persecution,
[00:15:13] not of criminals, but of immigrants, with Israeli methods being
[00:15:16] adapted and applied in that sphere of
[00:15:19] experiment. as
[00:15:20] kind
[00:15:37] framework for intervention by equating drug trafficking with
[00:15:40] terrorism, he was the one pushing that idea.
[00:15:44] lindraham consistently supported these kinds of supremacist policies
[00:15:48] and they pose a real danger to humanity. that's why
[00:15:51] i applawed the work Thomas is doing, because this mentality is becoming
[00:15:55] normalized in many political circles, particularly among certain far
[00:15:59] right parties in Europe, the normalizing these kinds of actions
[00:16:03] in the name of defending themselves from migrants, whether they're coming
[00:16:06] from.
[00:16:07] of extermination
[00:16:17] these kinds policies can somehow be justified, beneath that lies another
[00:16:20] layer, satisfying tribal instincts. many sociologists have
[00:16:24] studied this: for segment of middle America, there is a sense of
[00:16:28] pride, even pleasure, even a dopamine rush, in crushing
[00:16:32] people they consider inferior, everything else is merely
[00:16:35] attempt to justify that.
[00:17:07] practically an interview that aired on the telemundo network. she
[00:17:11] was essentially saying that organizations such as blackwater should
[00:17:15] at some point enter mexico because in her view drug trafficking
[00:17:19] groups were intrinsically linked to terrorist organizations. in other
[00:17:23] words, it was very much along the same lines as what Trump is
[00:17:27] saying
[00:17:27] today.
[00:17:37] way is something I find disastrous and terrible, but I'd like to return to
[00:17:41] Lindsay Graham's remarks, because I think he was imprecise in
[00:17:45] the way he expressed himself. What the Israeli entity has contributed through
[00:17:49] its intervention in Gaza is surveillance technology, technology
[00:17:53] for monitoring social media, tracking people's movements,
[00:17:56] surveillance, cameras and technologies capable of hacking computers and
[00:18:00] mobile phones. These technologies have now been implemented here in
[00:18:04] the United States under the pretext of combating.
[00:18:07] anti-semitism, when in reality they're being used to suppress
[00:18:11] pro-palestinan activism and to expand immigration
[00:18:15] enforcement by giving ICE, DHS and other agencies
[00:18:19] additional tools to continue this witch hunt against
[00:18:23] immigrants, but I think that in terms of what is happening in that region,
[00:18:27] what has truly revolutionized warfare is what we have seen in
[00:18:31] Iran. We're witnessing a civilization thousands of years old
[00:18:35] with highly intelligent and well-per'. people who have
[00:18:38] spent decades preparing for this moment by using low cost
[00:18:42] technology and asymmetric tactics essentially a form of
[00:18:45] technological gorilla warfare with drones and similar systems,
[00:18:49] they have been able to confront eight persian gulf countries,
[00:18:53] Israel and the united states while also maintaining control
[00:18:57] over
[00:18:57] the straight of hormos, so a way linzi graham was right, but not in
[00:19:01] the way he imagined he would be when they decided to confront Iran,
[00:19:05] what we're seeing now is what we call the... The
[00:19:08] surveillance technologies originally developed to control the population
[00:19:12] in Gaza and the Palestinians in that region are now
[00:19:16] beginning to be used here in this country and elsewhere to hunt
[00:19:19] immigrants. Little by little, however, they expend until they are used
[00:19:23] to monitor and control the entire
[00:19:26] population,
[00:19:27] including citizens.
[00:19:32] And yet, most Americans remain unaware the policies the United
[00:19:36] States pursued in the country. that have generated these waves of
[00:19:40] migration, that was always one of my greatest
[00:19:43] frustrations during my 18 years as a journalist in the
[00:19:46] United States, realizing how little awareness there was. they
[00:19:50] keep criticizing one another, but Barack Obama voted in favor
[00:19:54] the border wall, and Hillary Clinton voted in favor the border wall
[00:19:58] as well. Absolutely.
[00:20:02] Take for example, many other gangs that now operate throughout Central
[00:20:06] America, they actually... originated in the prisons of Los
[00:20:09] Angeles, those individuals were later deported to central
[00:20:12] America where they continued organizing themselves into
[00:20:16] criminal groups. Another example would be the paramilitary and drug
[00:20:20] trafficking groups in Central America and Colombia that according to
[00:20:24] critics were financed by the CIA and the US state
[00:20:27] department. Today we're also seeing sanctions that are crippling
[00:20:31] countries such as Cuba and Venezuela contributing to the
[00:20:34] migration flows arriving here in Florida. and elsewhere in
[00:20:38] the United States, then there's the destruction of Haiti, a process that
[00:20:42] stretches back more than a century, since the 1990s
[00:20:46] Haiti's autonomy and the industries that could have developed their...
[00:20:50] have been systematically undermined, which is clearly
[00:20:54] contributed to the wave of Haiti and migration into Florida, so I
[00:20:58] completely agree that there is no accountability for the way US
[00:21:01] policies and interventions in our countries encourage
[00:21:05] migration, only for the US government to then blame the migrants
[00:21:09] themselves for seeking better life in the United States, or simply
[00:21:13] trying to escape authoritarian governments in
[00:21:16] violence.
[00:21:31] literally and it really was a shameless remark that
[00:21:34] it is not in the United States interest to have a Japan south the
[00:21:37] border, there has been a great deal of research into how whenever a
[00:21:41] Mexican industrial or business initiative begins to succeed, a
[00:21:45] system of intervention quickly follows aimed at buying those
[00:21:48] initiatives or... with others so that we always remain
[00:21:52] behind, so as thomas was saying, how can a
[00:21:56] government punish immigrants when it is the very same government
[00:22:00] discouraging development and economic growth in their own
[00:22:03] countries
[00:22:04] that
[00:22:12] su access? is there anything else
[00:22:16] we should know or investigate about what happened at alligator?
[00:22:20] alcatras is there impunity, which companies
[00:22:23] enriched themselves, because just as there is a military
[00:22:26] industrial complex, there's also a prison industrial
[00:22:30] complex, and that extends to the privatization of prisons,
[00:22:33] especially immigrant detention centers rather than prisons for
[00:22:37] convicted
[00:22:37] criminals.
[00:22:42] that's a very good question, it's something i've spoken and written about
[00:22:46] extensively, the economic interests and the entire industry.
[00:22:50] that has grown around these detention centers. As I said before,
[00:22:53] alligator Alcatras was always going to close sooner or later,
[00:22:57] but when it closed, a large number of private contractors and
[00:23:01] companies simply walked away without facing any
[00:23:05] consequences. After making enormous amounts of money. Remember, more than
[00:23:09] one billion dollars was spent from the state's emergency funds
[00:23:12] and virtually all of that money went to private
[00:23:16] contractors. Nothing inside that facility was that... actually
[00:23:20] run by the government, everything was managed by private companies. I'll
[00:23:24] give you one example, a single company whose only job was
[00:23:28] supplying portable toilets, what we call portapoties, was
[00:23:31] awarded a contract worth $219
[00:23:34] million. That's $219 million
[00:23:38] for just one portable toilet company. Later numerous cases of
[00:23:42] corruption came to light showing that some these funds were being
[00:23:45] used for private jets and luxury air travel in mind.
[00:23:50] opinion, these are criminal corruption cases, because $1
[00:23:53] billion is an enormous amount of money for the state government
[00:23:57] of
[00:23:57] Florida.
[00:24:14] And then hide its hand. There is a deeper issue here that must
[00:24:17] continue to be examined.
[00:29:02] many?
[00:30:11] Iran's parliament speaker dismisses Donald Trump's threats of military
[00:30:14] action followed by demands for negotiations as theater
[00:30:18] diplomacy on loop. new report reveals
[00:30:21] nearly 700 American forces suffer traumatic brain injuries
[00:30:26] eurons missile and drone strikes on US
[00:30:28] bases.
[00:30:32] and Yemen's arm forces say they have conducted major military
[00:30:35] operation against Saudi backed mercenaries in Yemen planning
[00:30:39] to attack the Capital
[00:30:41] Sana.