By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Hospitality
Early reviews on lodging at “Alligator Alcatraz,” the new migrant detention center built in eight days in Florida’s Everglades, have been mixed.
- “Worms in food. Toilets that don’t flush, flooding floors with fecal waste. Mosquitoes and insects everywhere. Lights on all night. Air conditioners that suddenly shut off in the tropical heat. Detainees forced to use recorded phone lines to speak with lawyers and loved ones” were raves cited by the Associated Press last week.
- President Trump, who toured the facility July 1 with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem, praised the center’s harshness and remoteness as befitting “the worst of the worst.” So why didn’t they stay?
“There’s really nowhere to go,” said DeSantis of the sweltering site ringed by gators, pythons and mosquitoes. Unless it’s in limos back to your mansions, natch.
Trump praised center’s “incredible” quick construction and called it an example of what he wants to implement “in many states.”
But, alas, it does have detractors. “These are human beings who have inherent rights, among them to dignity,” immigration attorney Josephine Arroyo said.
Lawmakers from both parties got their first tours of Alligator Alcatraz July 8, but only parts where detainees are not housed yet.
“They are essentially packed into cages, wall-to-wall humans, 32 detainees per cage,” reported U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat.
Each cage contained three small toilets with attached sinks, which inmates use for drinking water and brushing their teeth, sharing the same water used to flush the toilets, she went on.
“These are really disturbing, vile conditions and this place needs to be shut the hell down,” Wasserman Schultz said. “They are abusing human beings there.” Whine-whine-whine.
I say throw the book at them. Maybe not the Bible though. It has good parts, like where God inflicts floods, fires, locusts and eternal damnation on His creations. But the New Testament shares squishy shows
For comparison’s sake I booked lodgings at the Trump Tower in New York City. After all, “All men are created equal” another GOP President, Abraham Lincoln, said.
There I saw Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. advocating for psychedelic therapy. Jr., who started using drugs like LSD, crystal meth and heroin at age 14, claims his own son has benefited from psychedelics to deal with grief and depression.
“This line of therapeutics has tremendous advantages,” said Kennedy told Congress, “if given in a clinical setting. We are working very hard to make sure that happens within 12 months.”
For decades, boosters have lobbied for now-illegal substances like LSD and ecstasy to be approved for Americans dealing with trauma, depression and other hard-to treat conditions.
Kennedy, a noted vaccine skeptic, is encountering similar blowback now in trying to bypass rigorous clinical trials before OK’ing psychedelics too.
“If RFK and the new administration are serious about this work,” said Yale psychiatric researcher Philip Corlett, “there are things they could do to shepherd it into reality by meeting the benchmarks of medical science. I just don’t think that’s going to happen.”
As federal officials weigh this, states like Oregon and Colorado have already approved psychedelic therapy.
Even deep-red Texas, urged on by former governor and Trump cabinet secretary Rick Perry, is going all-in: the state in June green-lit $50 million to study ibogaine, made from a shrub native to West Africa, as a treatment for opioid addiction, PTSD and more.
I remember backpacking through the Texas desert in the 1970s seeking peyote for enlightenment ala Carlos Castaneda. No luck too.
“Bobby,” I said when we hooked up at the Trump Tower, “let’s head for Alligator Alcatraz. South, then turn right at Mar-A-Lago. Maybe Rick Perry may join us too.”
“I brought something for the trip,” he said.
We found accommodations austere. “What effect,” I asked, “will this have on immigrants’ mental health?”
“Deterrence,” he said.
“So far it’s worked on you,” I said.
