Regime Using CIA Torture Methods in Immigrant Gulags – The Tuesday AM Quickie 12/9/25
Trump and his confederates are downplaying how badly their healthcare cuts are harming children. I wrote about it for TAP today. One consequence is that more kids will get sent into foster care, which can drastically alter their lives. My colleagues at TAP and I are writing more about foster care and would love to hear about any experiences you’ve had with the system. We created this form for folks to share their stories, including anonymously if that’s more comfortable. - Whitney
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12/9: Sam and Emma will be in studio today, and their guest is David Dayen, executive editor at The American Prospect and co-host of the Organized Money Podcast.
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Today you’ll read about the regime’s ongoing torture of prisoners in its immigration gulags, Jasmine Crockett’s Senate bid, and how Trump committed mortgage fraud under his own definition of mortgage fraud.
THE BIG NEWS
Regime Using CIA Torture Techniques on Immigrants Imprisoned in Nightmare Prison Network
Immigration officials are torturing prisoners in Florida’s immigration detention centers with the same techniques CIA agents visited on victims in its black sites after 9/11, according to a report by Amnesty International and covered by the Miami Herald and Forever Wars. The report found “chronic medical neglect” at the Krome North Service Processing Center and “torture” at so-called Alligator Alcatraz.
Prisoners told Amnesty International that guards punished them by chaining them inside a tiny “box” at Alligator Alcatraz, for hours at a time. As Forever Wars pointed out, detainees’ description of the “box” matches the “Confinement Box,” which was among “the most horrific torture methods that the CIA employed in its post-9/11 incommunicado ‘black site’ torture chambers.” Per Amnesty’s report:
The four men interviewed by Amnesty International, as well as Florida-based organizations, told the organization about the ‘box’, described as a 2x2 foot cage-like structure located outside in the yard of “Alligator Alcatraz” where individuals are sent for punishment. Individuals are put in the ‘box’, their hands are shackled and their feet are attached to restraints on the ground. They are unable to sit down or move positions, and are forced to remain there for hours in the heat with hardly any water or protection from the sun, heat and insects. According to a man seeking safety, “People ended up in the ‘box’ just for asking the guards for anything. I saw a guy who was put in it for an entire day.”
One person told Amnesty International that two of their cellmates were punished for “calling out to the guards telling them that I needed my medication. Ten guards rushed into the cell and threw them to the ground. They were taken to the ‘box’ and punished just for trying to help me. Any time that anyone demanded that our rights be respected, they were punished.” Another said the box was outside, exposed to the South Florida sun and humidity, as well as mosquitos.
“The conditions of the ‘box’ – an extremely small space that prevents sitting, lying or changing position – combined with high temperatures and humidity levels, and the deprivation of water, sanitation and protection from harsh weather conditions and insects, would likely cause severe physical and psychological pain and suffering,” the aid organization said. “Amnesty International considers that the use of the ‘box’ as a form of punishment at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ constitutes torture.”