Noem defends conditions at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ detention facility

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem defended the conditions at the “Alligator Alcatraz” facility in Florida after Democrats made claims of “inhumane” treatment of the detained migrants.

In an interview on NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” moderator Kristen Welker asked Noem about claims from Democrats that, in the facility, more than 30 people are “stuffed into a jail cell” and that the detainees “get their drinking water and they brush their teeth from the same place where they go to the bathroom.”

“Our detention centers at the federal level are held to a higher standard than most local or state centers and even federal prisons. The standards are extremely high,” Noem responded, noting the facility is “state run.”

Noem also pushed back on the term “jail cells,” calling them, instead, “secure facilities” that are “held to the highest levels of what the federal government requires for detention facilities.”

Noem suggested that there is a double standard in the way Democrats react to facilities under the Trump administration compared to past Democratic administrations.

“I wish they would have said that back during the Biden administration and back when Democrats were in the White House and they were piling people on top of each other on cement floors and literally didn't have two feet to move,” Noem said about claims that the migrants are in “cages” in the facility. “They never did that, and that's why this politics has to end.”

Noem said she would take cameras in the facility to “show people what these facilities look like.”

“Because if you compare them to what happened under the Biden administration and under the Obama administration, these centers are at the highest levels,” she continued. “And they're even higher than what our federal prison standards are or state or local often are.”