Guard Smuggles Migrant's Letter Out Of Alligator Alcatraz
By Luis A., Detainee #421139 – Alligator Alcatraz, Florida Everglades Internment Camp
BY MARK WHITNEY1
To the people of the United States,
My name is Luis. I am a father. A husband. A worker. A man who believed in your country more than mine. A man who still does, somehow.
I write from the place you call Alligator Alcatraz—an internment camp carved into a Florida swamp. Ten miles of barbed wire, humidity, and shame. A prison for migrants like me who made the mistake of hoping we could outrun the fire that America helped start.
I come from Venezuela, a country strangled by corruption and fear, where I practiced law for nearly ten years. My country was never known for the rule of law. But, the lawlessness was not organized. That changed with the Cartel de los Soles, a criminal empire run by men in uniform, funded by cocaine, and protected by politics. They are not a gang. They are the government. And they exist because U.S. policy made the cartel worth billions.
Let me be clear: The United States of America funds the monster I ran from.
I did not come to your country to cause harm. I fled on foot with my wife and children. We legitimately feared certain death if my teenage son failed to join the cartel.
We traversed eight nations. We walked through the Darién jungle, where we saw corpses, rapes, drownings. We were robbed by men with badges and guns, then by men with no badges at all. We paid bribes. We carried our children across rivers and border checkpoints. My wife bled for a week after falling down a ravine in Guatemala.
We didn’t come for handouts. We came because your country was built on the idea that if you work hard and love your family, you deserve a chance.
When we got to the U.S., I started a landscaping business. I got a social security number. I paid rent. I shopped at Trader Joe’s. My daughter was enrolled in third grade. She speaks fluent English and dreamt of being a firefighter.
A week ago ICE came and here I am, in an internment camp named after reptiles. I have no idea where my family members are. Today, with 400 other men, I sat in the TV room, and we watched the President of the United States call us:
“Sadistic animals”
“Vicious invaders”
“Monsters”
I am none of those things. I have committed no crime. I am here because some of you love cocaine and are rich enough to afford it at prohibition prices.
The Cartel de los Soles would not exist without your money.
Your demand fuels their empire.
Your policies militarized their control.
Your drug war buried my cousin, burned my neighborhood, and sent me fleeing north with my youngest on my back.
So do not look away now and call me illegal.
You made this border.
You made this violence.
You made this cage.
And yet I still believe in your better angels. I still believe someone will read this and remember that a country is not its slogans—but how it treats the people who beg at its door.
I do not want pity.
I want understanding.
I want dignity.
I want my family free.
If this letter reaches you—tucked into a sock, smuggled by a guard whose Guatemalan cousin was deported last month to the slave-state of Libya —please know it is written in pencil. I say this for two reasons: (1) pens are not allowed and (2) like me, like my family, what is written in pencil can be erased—unless righteous individuals choose to remember.
Nobody invaded the United States. We are just an everyday family once again surviving a place where the lawlessness is organized.
—
Luis A.
Landscaper. Father. Detainee #421139
Alligator Alcatraz
Florida Everglades, USA
Mark Whitney is a civil libertarian, entrepreneur, and host of America’s Coach Live!. From January 10, 1992 - April 12, 1993, Mark spent 452 unconstitutional days in four federal prisons in four states. Armed only with a high school education and a prison typewriter, Mark eventually earned an order for his immediate release from retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer. Over the DOJ’s strenuous objection, Breyer (then Chief First Circuit Judge) found Whitney’s sentencing proceeding to be so constitutionally infirm that it was wiped from the books.