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'Alligator Alcatraz' detainee who faced 'total nightmare' while in custody fights to return home to Venezuela

Luis Manuel Rivas Velasquez suffered health crisis while at Everglades detention facility, attorney says

@<a href="https://www.instagram.com/luisfrioficiall/#">luisfrioficiall</a>, Instagram

Luis Manuel Rivas Velasquez, who is known to his 166,000 Instagram followers as car enthusiast "Luis Frio," nearly died while in ICE custody, according to his attorney.

By: Jamie Ostroff

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A Venezuelan man who was the subject of a high-profile health scare at Alligator Alcatraz this month aims to return to his home country on Friday, his lawyer told WPTV.

This comes as a federal judge denied requests from both state and federal governments to pause the order to dismantle the immigration detention facility in the Everglades, and as WPTV has learned that detainees were already being removed from the facility, even before last week's court order was issued.

WATCH BELOW: 'Alligator Alcatraz' detainee faced 'life-or-death situation,' attorney says

'Alligator Alcatraz' detainee faced 'life-or-death situation,' attorney says

Lawyers and court documents reveal that some detainees are being deported while others are being transferred to ICE facilities like Krome in Miami-Dade County.

One immigration attorney told WPTV he has "never worked so hard to get a client deported" after his client experienced what he described as a life-threatening situation at the facility.

"I've practiced immigration law for over a decade. I deal with a lot of terrible situations of detainees. I've never experienced anything as terrible as the life-or-death situation, which my client still finds himself in," said attorney Eric Lee.

Lee represents Luis Manuel Rivas Velasquez, who is known to his 166,000 Instagram followers as car enthusiast "Luis Frio."

"Luis Velasquez is a 38-year-old Venezuelan man who came to the United States lawfully and was paroled into this country in 2024. In the last month, he's found himself living a total nightmare," Lee said.

According to Lee, Velasquez was detained in Alligator Alcatraz in early August when he became seriously ill.

"He caught some disease which is going viral inside of this facility, and as a result, was essentially unable to breathe. He collapsed," Lee said. "If it wasn't for one of his cellmates, who happened to have been a nurse from Cuba, he may very well have passed away in Alligator Alcatraz."

The incident occurred around Aug. 6. The following evening, in response to widespread rumors that a detainee had died, Homeland Security officials stated that Velasquez had fainted, was taken to the hospital and then returned to Alligator Alcatraz.

Lee said that in the days that followed, his client was taken to a facility in another state.

"They shipped him away to the new Fort Bliss facility that has just opened up outside of El Paso, Texas," Lee said.

According to Lee, no one — including Velasquez's family — knew where he was until he called Lee last week.

"He was begging to be released. He had sounded like there were tears in his eyes, and he was asking me, 'Please, lawyer, get me out of here. They're denying me access to my medication. I'm worried I'm going to die in here. All I want to do is go home and see my family,'" Lee said.

Over the course of at least a week — during which Lee alleges Velasquez hadn't been allowed to change clothes, was denied access to his blood pressure medication, and wasn't allowed to self-deport — Velasquez's name was missing in ICE's detainee locator.

"Disappearances like the type that the Trump administration has engaged in, in the case of Mr. Velasquez, are unlawful," Lee said.

This comes despite statements encouraging self-deportation from Gov. Ron DeSantis and top Trump administration officials.

Eventually, Lee says Velasquez was moved to an ICE processing facility in El Paso, where the hope is to get him on a flight back to Venezuela on Friday. But Lee said, at this point, he'll believe it when he sees it.

"We don't know if his ongoing detention is in retribution for his courageous decision to tell the truth about what's happening to him, but that is increasingly what it looks like," Lee said.

The Florida Department of Emergency Management, which runs Alligator Alcatraz, forwarded WPTV's questions to ICE.

ICE and other Homeland Security have acknowledged they have received our emails with questions about Velasquez, but so far have not provided any information.

WPTV is committed to keeping you informed about issues that impact our community's safety and well-being. We'll continue to investigate this developing situation and bring you updates as they become available.

This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
Read the judge's full order issued late Wednesday:

Attorneys for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in their request for a stay that Williams' order last week, if carried out, would disrupt the federal government’s ability to enforce immigration laws.

But the judge in Wednesday night's order noted that the detainee population already was dwindling at the facility, and that the federal government's "immigration enforcement goals will not be thwarted by a pause in operations."

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration is preparing to open a second immigration detention facility dubbed "Deportation Depot" at a state prison in north Florida.

Williams said in last week’s order that she expected the population of "Alligator Alcatraz" to decline within 60 days through the transferring of the detainees to other facilities, and once that happened, fencing, lighting and generators should be removed. She wrote that the state and federal defendants can’t bring anyone other than those who are already being detained at the facility onto the property.

Florida signed more than $250M in contracts for Alligator Alcatraz

Environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe had argued in their lawsuit that further construction and operations should be stopped until federal and state officials complied with federal environmental laws. Their lawsuit claimed the facility threatened environmentally sensitive wetlands that are home to protected plants and animals and would reverse billions of dollars spent over decades on environmental restoration.

A second lawsuit also was filed by civil rights groups last month against the state and federal governments over practices at the Everglades facility, claiming detainees were denied access to the legal system. Another federal judge in Miami last week dismissed parts of the lawsuit which had been filed in Florida's southern district and then moved the remaining counts against the state of Florida to the neighboring middle district.

Civil rights groups last Friday filed a third lawsuit over practices at the facility in federal court in Fort Myers, asking for a restraining order and a temporary injunction that would bar Florida agencies and their contractors from holding detainees at "Alligator Alcatraz." They described "severe problems" at the facility which were "previously unheard-of in the immigration system." Detainees were being held for weeks without any charges; they had disappeared from ICE's online detainee locator and no one at the facility was making initial custody or bond determinations, the civil rights groups said.

Immigration is a federal issue, and Florida agencies and the private contractors hired by the state have no authority to operate the facility, the civil rights groups argued in asking that their lawsuit be certified as a class action.