What is a prayer vigil like at Alligator Alcatraz?

I participated in the 20th interfaith prayer vigil at Alligator Alcatraz, just over an hour from my home, last Sunday, 14 December 2025. If you are in the South Florida area, I encourage you to join us at a future vigil. You can watch a livestream here:

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1DApxvXqc8/

When we pray “May your kingdom come, may your will be done,” we are praying for the opposite of what is being done by our elected officials using our tax dollars in places like this. Please pray with us for this ugly chapter in American history to end.

Here’s the press release:

Press Release: Week 20 Vigil Outside Alligator Alcatraz: Unspeakable Cruelty

What: Vigil outside the gates of Alligator Alcatraz to demand the detention camp be shut down, that the people being detained be freed, and that the immoral ICE sweeps that are abducting, detaining and deporting our neighbors be ended.

Who:

• Rev. Brian D. McLaren, author, speaker, activist

• Rev. Tony Fisher, Minister at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Greater Naples

• Family members of people being detained, leaders of faith and conscience, unions, students, and the wider public

When/Where: Sunday 12/14, Vigil from 4:00-5:00PM

Across from entrance to Alligator Alcatraz on Route 41

54585 Tamiami Trl E, Ochopee, FL 34141

Coordinates: 25.861821,-80.898036

Why: ICE has admitted that over 400 children have been detained longer than the established 20-day legal limit as the Trump administration moves to end that limit. Through interviews with detained families, advocates identified five children held for 168 days. The report didn’t say how old those children were, according to AP. Advocates report that children have been denied medical care and were given moldy, worm-infested cauliflower and broccoli to eat.

Last week ICE agents disrupted a citizenship ceremony in Faneuil Hall in Boston, yanking people who were prepared to pledge their allegiance to the United States, out of line, arresting some because of their country of origin. People who had lived and worked in the country for decades, who had been thoroughly vetted, who had followed every step to become U.S. citizens, now found themselves utterly abandoned. USCIS issued a new memo on December 2, 2025 following the shooting of two National Guardsmen in DC, pausing asylum and other processes for people from certain countries put on a full travel ban by the Trump administration: Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. Those on the partial ban list are Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. “She has made her life here. For this to happen to her and to others like her is an act of unspeakable cruelty,” Gail Breslow, Executive Director of Project Citizenship told boston.com.

Unspeakable cruelty similarly characterizes the terrifying and illegal use of torture inside Alligator Alcatraz reported in the Amnesty International report released on December 5 that chronicles abuses including guards arbitrarily punishing people being detained by locking them in a 2 foot x 2 foot box, chaining their feet to the ground, shackling them, and pushing them out into the hot Florida sun for hours on end with little to no water.

“When what is now a detention facility used to be an abandoned airport property, friends and I used to visit on our kayaks, exploring the summer-flooded cypress forest, enjoying the profusion of butterfly orchids and other wildlife, and appreciating the serene beauty of the Everglades,” said author, retired pastor, and teacher Brian McLaren. “We nicknamed the area Jurassic Park for its pristine beauty. Now, because of the cruel strategies of misguided and arrogant politicians, it has become a crime scene, where some of the current administration’s many shameful policies play out in secret, day by day. This Sunday, many of us, faith leaders, family members of the detained, and concerned citizens, will gather for a 20th weekly vigil as humble, nonviolent witnesses for justice and kindness, and bearing witness of the wrongs being done there by leaders who deserve to be voted out from office and remembered in shame for generations to come. We will stand together in solidarity with the people being imprisoned, pray according to our diverse traditions, and speak aloud about what is happening in secret.

“We should be using all available means to shed light on the cruel ways that our government’s policies are being carried out, said the Rev. Tony Fisher, Minister at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Greater Naples. “The ways in which we are detaining people, many of whom have no criminal record, should be unacceptable in a land that boasts that it is a beacon of freedom. The ways in which we are separating families would be decried if it was happening to our own citizens overseas. The ways in which detainees are being treated in these facilities could easily be compared to prisoner of war camps where torture is used to bring people into line. The way our government is purposely causing trauma for immigrant populations is heartless. This is not who we are as a people who believe in justice and compassion. More and more people need to understand what is happening so that we can change a system based on racism and oppression.”

“The sheer mercilessness of harming children, of torturing terrified people who have done nothing wrong, of snatching citizenship from the hands of asylees who have worked for years to become Americans is so egregious, almost it leaves one without words,” said Noelle Damico, Director of Social Justice at the Workers Circle, a Jewish social justice organization which has been organizing the vigils with Florida leaders of faith and conscience since August. “At this horrifying moment in the US which echoes the violence and hatred of pogroms and persecutions throughout history against the Jewish people, we know the most important thing is to not turn away and to do everything in our power to stop it.”