Florida's senior bishop is pressing local, state and federal authorities for permission to bring Catholic pastoral care to the already infamous Alligator Alcatraz immigrant detention center.
Opened in early July at a time of political uproar over alleged abusive practices at several federal immigration detention centers, Alligator Alcatraz is situated at Dade Collier Training and Transition Airport some 55 miles west of Miami's downtown.
Miami Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski has said he and the archdiocesan prison ministry staff have repeatedly been denied access to the facility thus far, including during an impromptu visit to the region that the archbishop made there July 20 with more than 20 members of the "Knights on Bikes" club of the Knights of Columbus in Florida.
"Visiting the prisoner is one of the corporal works of mercy and the church has always done that -- but in this particular circumstance it almost seems to be an intentional effort to dehumanize these people," Archbishop Wenski told The Florida Catholic newspaper of Miami July 22.
"Offering Mass is an opportunity to humanize the detainee, to elevate their dignity and also to assure them that they are not forgotten by God. That is why prison ministry is important in any context of people being detained or deprived of their freedom, especially in this context," Archbishop Wenski said.
He added that he has reached out to local elected officials, along with the director of the Tallahassee-based Florida Catholic Conference and others, in order to request prison ministry privileges at Alligator Alcatraz, but that the situation has been clouded by confusion as to what state or federal body is responsible for operations there.
"I am still waiting for a response," the archbishop said. "Our Deacon Edgardo Farias (who heads prison ministry in the archdiocese) is ready and willing to schedule something when someone contacts him."
"We also have Michael Sheedy at the Florida Catholic Conference reaching out to state officials and Congressman Carlos Gimenez has continued to reach out on our behalf. But we have been getting the runaround so far," Archbishop Wenski said.
Sheedy is executive director of the Florida Catholic Conference.
U.S. Rep. Gimenez (R-FL) represents Florida's 28th congressional district, which is located just south of Alligator Alcatraz but does not include the facility. The immigrant detention center is located within Florida's District 26, represented by U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, also a Republican.
The archbishop's July 20 attempt to visit the detainees there was an impromptu decision tacked on to a previously scheduled motorcycle charity ride to nearby Everglades City as part of an outing that group had planned following Mass at a local parish. Archbishop Wenski, who is an avid motorcyclist, said the group stopped for prayers after being informed they could not access the facility.
"We got a place to park and we prayed the rosary together, finishing about five decades by noon. It was a moving experience for the Knights and for myself," the archbishop said, adding that although he didn't get inside, "I saw the pictures that were in the media when the president and the governor went through there. But we only got to the access road to the prison and the Florida Highway Patrolman told us we couldn't go further. We parked our bikes and said the rosary out there, but the detainees were not even aware that we were there."
In a July 21 report, the New York-based Human Rights Watch alleged that overcrowding and other conditions at several Florida-based immigration detention centers were in violation of international and U.S. human rights standards. Mentioned were Krome North Service Processing Center near Miami, the Broward Transitional Center in Fort Lauderdale and the Federal Detention Center in Miami.
At times in March, Krome, the United States' oldest immigration detention facility, detained more than three times its operational capacity of inmates. As of June 20, the number of people in immigration detention at the three Florida facilities was at 111% of the levels before President Donald Trump's inauguration, the report alleges.
"Detainees in three Florida facilities told Human Rights Watch that ICE detention officers and private contractor guards treated them in a degrading and dehumanizing manner. Some were detained shackled for prolonged periods on buses without food, water, or functioning toilets; there was extreme overcrowding in freezing holding cells where detainees were forced to sleep on cold concrete floors under constant fluorescent lighting; and many were denied access to basic hygiene and medical care," the report reads.
Archbishop Wenski said he was able to visit Krome detention center on Easter Sunday after an initial refusal and that he celebrated two Masses there for some 160 inmates who were broken into two groups.
"There were more than 1,000 people at Krome and, I don't know how they picked who got to go to Mass or not, but I had a representative group at each Mass because when I talked with them, they were from almost every country in Latin America and a couple countries in Africa," the archbishop said. "It should not be an irresolvable problem; detention facilities have had pastoral services -- even when they have Haitian detainees down in Guantanamo (Bay Detention Facility in Cuba) we had priests visiting."
With some church leaders encouraging their immigrant populations to consider staying home if they feel in danger by attending Sunday Mass, Archbishop Wenski said his own pastors are reporting a mixture of responses from parishioners but that thus far "the U.S. government has not invaded any church to my knowledge; they have said so themselves -- that they have not gone into any church."
He added that there are better ways to manage U.S. immigration policy other than strictly enforcement and removal.
"We have to look beyond just enforcement only," he said. "We have to look at other ways of regularizing the status of some of these populations -- people who are not criminals and who are hardworking people trying to create a future of hope for themselves and their children.
"President Trump says he wants to control the borders and he has done that; he wants to remove the bad actors and he is doing that. He also says he wants the best economy in the world -- but you can't have the best economy in the world without counting on the labor-force participation of immigrants. Otherwise, how are you going to maintain the growth of the economy?"
