Glades County Detention Center, 2025 Photo: Emma Shaw Crane
This week, AFSC Florida in coalition with a group of researchers and immigrant rights advocates including the ACLU of Florida, Detention Watch Network, Earthjustice, Freedom for Immigrants and Immigrant Action Alliance released a report documenting conditions at Glades County Detention Center.
Located in Moore Haven, FL, the center housed thousands of immigrants between 2008 and 2022. Through extensive research, Sweet Land, Bitter Deal reveals how Glades systematically exposed detainees to environmental hazards while siphoning public funds to out-of-state bondholders, despite its operators promising prosperity and economic development to the rural county.
Guadalupe De la Cruz, editor and Program Director of AFSC Florida, said:
"This report reveals a detention system that dehumanizes people and harms them in profound ways. Glades is not an anomaly—it reflects how immigrant detention inflicts deep and lasting suffering on people and communities and broader trend in Florida. The state has long been a laboratory for diverting public money and political will away from community needs and towards the criminalization of immigrants. That is why we are calling on state and local leaders to end their participation in immigrant detention and permanently close the Glades County Detention Center."