On September 11, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security’s own Office of Inspector General released Report OIG-26-22, an unannounced inspection of the Florida Soft-Sided Facility in Ochopee — the detention camp the public came to know, with a cynicism the government never bothered to correct, as “Alligator Alcatraz.” Both the New York Times and the Washington Post have since reported on the findings, and the story has spread quickly through the wire services and beyond. That such a report was published at all, under an administration that has treated inspectors general as obstacles rather than watchdogs, is itself a small mercy. What it documents is not a mercy of any kind.
I will say plainly that this was not an easy piece to write. It required reading a government document from beginning to end, and there is nothing in thirty-four pages of bureaucratic prose — measurements, tables, footnotes, a posted policy sign quoted verbatim — that should be capable of turning the stomach the way this one does. And yet it does. Anyone with an ounce of human sensitivity and compassion, let alone a priest, would find what is described here utterly abhorrent: that human beings, made in the image of God, were treated this way by any government let alone their own, and that the treatment was recorded, photographed, and then defended rather than confessed.
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