Immigrants are living in brutal conditions at the Florida detention camp, built on a sense of scripted unreality
The concentration camp seems to have been erected largely for the sake of a photoshoot. Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis – eager to rehabilitate his reputation among the Maga right in the wake of his humiliating and disastrous 2024 presidential run – has been among the most eager foot soldiers of the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. He has dedicated funding to capturing migrants and holding them at facilities like the Krome detention center in Miami, where dramatic overcrowding, the absence of air conditioning, rapidly spreading disease, and a shortage of food, sanitation, and medical care have contributed to an outcry among immigrants imprisoned there and the deaths of multiple detainees, including a 29-year-old man from Honduras, a 44-year-old man from Ukraine and a 75-year-old Cuban national who had lived in the United States since his teens.
For his efforts, DeSantis has received praise from Donald Trump and the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem. This kind of abuse of immigrants – rounding them up, cramming them into detention centers that are little more than cages, and letting them die there of heat, illness or neglect – is exactly the kind of policy that aligns with the Trump administration’s aims.