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On a recent Wednesday at 11 p.m., Arianne Betancourt’s phone rang. It was her father, Justo Betancourt, who had spent much of the last six months at the notorious Alligator Alcatraz immigration detention facility in Florida. ICE had just transferred him to Krome, a different facility in Miami, and with little warning, he was being released in the middle of the night. Still in her pajamas, Arianne asked a friend to take her. “I was too nervous to drive myself,” she told me a few days later.
Their reunion at Krome included no hugs or warm greetings. Once 55-year-old Betancourt got in the car, guards ordered them to leave immediately. Under the fluorescent lights of a nearby gas station, the father and daughter finally embraced for the first time. Arianne noticed “the toll that that place took on my dad.” He had lost about 50 pounds. His wrists and ankles were bruised from the shackles he wore during his detention, and his speech seemed slurred.
“Welcome home to Justo Betancourt, whose Daughter, Arianne, fought very hard to free her father from Alligator Alcatraz. Enjoy your Freedom together!!!”
They headed to his son’s house in Miami, where the family gathered and stayed up most of the night. Betancourt drank Cuban coffee for the first time since his arrest and saw his 15-month-old granddaughter, who could now walk, toddling around the living room.
By the weekend, Arianne noticed her father’s speech had worsened. She drove him to a nearby emergency room, where he was admitted, and doctors confirmed he had suffered a stroke while in detention. Justo, who is diabetic, had not received the proper amount of insulin he needed at Alligator Alcatraz, Arianne told me, and he will need speech and physical therapy to recover. His medical condition, however, is only part of the effects of his ordeal. “What Mr. Betancourt has experienced shows that folks who are caught up in this cruel deportation machine are suffering, and that their suffering doesn’t end upon release,” said Miriam Haskell, a senior attorney with the Community Justice Project, a legal nonprofit in Miami. She represented Betancourt pro bono and filed the Habeas Corpus petition that resulted in his release. “People have endured great hardships, and getting out doesn’t solve all of the problems.”
An unexpected expression of support for Betancourt’s release came from President Donald Trump, whose draconian immigration policies were responsible for his incarceration in the first place. On a Sunday night Truth Social post, the president wrote, without any apparent irony: “Welcome home to Justo Betancourt, whose Daughter, Arianne, fought very hard to free her father from Alligator Alcatraz. Enjoy your Freedom together!!!”
Arianne Betancourt at a Sunday vigil in front of Alligator Alcatraz.Jose Mejia/Owl Media
Justo Betancourt at a Sunday vigil in front of Alligator Alcatraz.Jose Mejia/Owl Media
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his administration erected the makeshift detention camp in the Everglades last summer when the Department of Homeland Security needed more beds to house immigrants pending their deportations. Over the last year, the center has come under fire for its living conditions, its environmental impact on the Everglades, and its location on sacred tribal land. Nearly 22,000 people have been detained there despite reports of mosquito infestations, flooding, poor medical care, and lackluster food. The venture has also been costly, requiring more than $1 million a day to run the facility.
Recently, reports circulated that Alligator Alcatraz will be closing soon. Federal and state officials haven’t announced any official plans. Still, signs of an imminent closure are emerging. Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost, a Democrat from Orlando, learned during a visit to the center on May 27 that only 655 people remained there, half the population reported earlier this year. Contractors were also told that operations would be winding down in early June, the New York Times reported.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty and lack of information and transparency here,” said Carmen Iguina Gonzalez, Deputy Director for Immigration Detention at the ACLU. “That makes a lot of people nervous because they have no certainty as to what is going to happen to them.”
Last week, I asked the Florida Division of Emergency Management, the state agency that manages Alligator Alcatraz, when the facility was closing and how many people were currently being detained. A spokesperson referred me to DeSantis’s May 13 remarks during a press conference, in which the governor said that the responsibility for sending immigrants to Alligator Alcatraz rested with DHS. “I have not gotten any official word that they’re not going to be sending illegal aliens there,” DeSantis continued. When I reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for more information, a spokesperson replied in an email, “Daily operations at Alligator Alcatraz continue as usual.”
a Sunday vigil in front of Alligator Alcatraz.Jose Mejia/Owl Media
I wrote about Arianne and her father back in March, when I first learned about his story. Justo Betancourt came to the US from Cuba more than 35 years ago, and had an order of removal following his release from prison in 2020 after serving time for drug-related charges. Betancourt reported to his check-ins with immigration and was issued a work permit, court filings state. He was arrested in Miami during a routine immigration check-in appointment in October and was taken to Alligator Alcatraz. In January, he was transferred to a Texas detention center and then forced to present himself for deportation to Mexican authorities at the border. But due to his health problems, including diabetes, Mexican officials turned him away. ICE transferred him back to Alligator Alcatraz, court filings state.
Since her father was detained, Arianne has become a firebrand within the immigrant rights movement. As I wrote in March:
Before her father’s arrest, Betancourt, a 33-year-old Miami native, spent her days guiding tourists through the city’s most iconic sites like Little Havana and South Beach. Now, she is holding a microphone and a bright orange sign that reads, “Give Justo Betancourt the right to due process.” She peered across the crowd of about 100. When she came to the weekly vigil for the first time, Betancourt told them she was “absolutely broken.” She then added, “Week after week, I’ve come here, and I’ve felt stronger. I feel love, I feel empathy, compassion from absolute strangers.”
Her activism began at the weekend vigils held outside the detention camp’s gates. She protested in Minneapolis and Chicago and shared her family’s story with local and national news outlets. In March, she attended then US Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s testimony at a Senate oversight hearing. Her advocacy led to a career change; she quit her job as a Miami tour guide and was hired as an organizer for the Workers Circle, a Jewish social-justice organization that has taken the lead in coordinating the Alligator Alcatraz gatherings. Most recently, she contributed to the launch of a new pro bono legal program for Alligator Alcatraz detainees.
I spoke to Justo for the first time this week. He was out of the hospital and living with Arianne. Despite his slurred speech, he sounded upbeat. While thrilled to be with his family, he is worried about the friends he left behind. He described the frozen bologna and cheese sandwiches eaten during 15-minute meal breaks, the mosquito and spider infestations that left detainees covered in bites, and the anxiety of waiting hours to make one phone call to Arianne and his two other children. He witnessed fights break out, and people trying to take their lives. “We were 32 people in one cage,” he recalled.
For months, he said, he went without insulin. He spent much of his time at the medical unit shackled to a bed and escorted to the restroom by guards. “Alligator Alcatraz has scarred me like nothing else in my life. It broke me mentally and emotionally,” he added. “Some people may say I’m exaggerating…but I lived through those moments.”
On Sunday, Justo joined Arianne at the vigil outside Alligator Alcatraz, where week after week, she showed up to advocate for him. They held hands and faced the detention camp that had separated them for more than six months.
“Nobody deserves what’s happened to them and what’s continuing to happen inside of Alligator Alcatraz,” Arianne said. “And if the government and DeSantis can be proud of having an operation like that, then I should be proud of all of my efforts to get it shut down.”
