Key to the marketing ploy underpinning Florida's detention camp in the Everglades is the alligator, portrayed by Republican leaders as a blood-thirsty prison guard ready to attack anyone who escapes.

But data and news reports about the first month’s arrivals show the majority of Alligator Alcatraz’s detainees do not have U.S. criminal convictions.  President Donald Trump, federal officials and Florida Republicans touted the remote Everglades immigration detention centers — dubbed Alligator Alcatraz — as a place to detain people deemed the "worst of the worst.

The lawsuit says attorneys have been repeatedly turned away from the detention camp and had virtual meetings mysteriously canceled.

Newsweek spoke with the attorney of a detainee and the friend of another. Both described harrowing conditions at the remote facility.

The Trump administration created a mosquito-plagued gulag where prisoners’ forbearance is tested. Many things are wrong with the Florida migrant detention center officially named “Alligator Alcatraz,” but least of these are the gators and pythons that populate the environmentally sensitive Everglades, where the prison is located.

Florida officials should learn from the facility that inspired the state’s newest immigrant detention center, and change course before it’s too late.

“Alligator Alcatraz,” the public moniker for an abandoned airport in the Florida Everglades that has been turned into an immigration detention center, has captured national attention since its opening on July 3.