A scathing Office of Inspector General report released last Friday found that the shuttered Florida concentration camp known as Alligator Alcatraz failed numerous health and safety standards. Inspectors also called its use of “small metal enclosures” “unprecedented” and said they posed “significant risks to detainee health and safety.”

Photos from the OIG’s January visit showed a phone booth sized cage beneath a temporary outdoor awning. Camp staff called the cages “calming areas,” claiming detainees could “reflect on their behavior choices, manage their emotions,” and leave whenever they wished.

Staff records said 79 detainees entered the cages during a two day period, with nobody remaining longer than two hours. The OIG said it could neither confirm nor refute those records.

Yet the photographs sharply conflict with descriptions collected by Amnesty International before the inspection. Those discrepancies raise the disturbing possibility that inspectors encountered a cleaned up display rather than the punishment cages former detainees remembered.

Amnesty interviewed four people detained at the Everglades site during the summer of 2025 for periods ranging from two weeks to one month. It also spoke with local groups that worked with former detainees.

Those sources described “the box,” an outdoor cage allegedly used as punishment for infractions. Detainees said they were handcuffed inside a 2 foot by 2 foot cage, with their ankles shackled to the floor so they could not sit or change positions.

They also described little or no protection from the sun, hours of confinement, insect attacks and little water. “People ended up in the ‘box’ just for asking the guards for anything. I saw a guy who was put in it for an entire day,” one detainee told Amnesty.

Other former detainees described a 4 foot by 4 foot cage, but their accounts otherwise matched. An Amnesty illustration based on detainee descriptions depicted a man in an ICE gray sweatsuit inside a cage too small for him to stand.

The enclosure photographed by the OIG was different. It appeared larger, had wood covering its bottom, sat beneath a thick awning and rested on plastic turf within another fence, creating the impression that occupants could walk out.

The timing only deepens the suspicion. Amnesty released its report on December 4, while inspectors arrived on January 21 for what the OIG described as an “unannounced” inspection.

The OIG did not interview previous detainees, according to an unnamed spokesperson, because doing so was outside the inspection’s scope. Inspectors evaluated conditions only as they existed that day, leaving former detainees’ allegations effectively outside the inquiry.

The report also produced some remarkable arithmetic. Records showed 79 people entered two cages on January 17 and 18 for an average of 59 minutes, totaling 79 of 96 available cage hours and suggesting nearly constant use, including during nighttime hours.

Three days later, those detainees were gone, having been transferred elsewhere and becoming unavailable for interviews. Inspectors acknowledged, “We were unable to independently confirm or refute ICE officials’ assertions regarding their use of the enclosures … as none of the detainees we interviewed reported experiencing these conditions during our unannounced inspection.”

Flight records reviewed for about 80 planes in ICE’s charter network showed U.S. Coast Guard aircraft landing at the facility every day from January 18 through January 20. That was the only three day streak between Amnesty’s early December report and the end of January.

Andrea Pitzer, a concentration camp expert and author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, said solitary punishment cages are common in extrajudicial camps. She classifies Alligator Alcatraz as such a facility.

“This is not done as a kind of timed time-out, but very much to punish troublemakers, whoever the authorities see as insubordinate,” Pitzer said. She also described efforts to sanitize camps before outside inspections as a familiar tactic, sometimes including moving prisoners to reduce overcrowding and remove potential witnesses.

The OIG report took eight months to emerge, a delay its spokesperson attributed to the DHS shutdown and the normal review and clearance process, including 30 days for ICE to respond. By publication, the camp had been closed for nearly three months, rendering its recommendations largely moot.

Responsibility for the camp remained murky throughout its existence, with ICE and Florida offering conflicting positions. ICE continued claiming it was not responsible, while a spokesperson for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis responded to the cage photograph by saying, “We’d make it even smaller if we could.”

Former detainees’ accounts suggest that was not merely a cruel wisecrack. According to people who said they were placed inside the box, the camp already had.