Editor's Note: This article has been updated to reflect the correct spelling of Rebecca Putman's name.
About 50 people gathered in rural Baker County Sunday along the side of the highway in opposition to Florida’s second immigration detention facility Sunday.
The state-run immigration detention center, “Deportation Depot,” is located at the former Baker Correctional Institution in Sanderson and opened in 2025 to hold up to 1,300 detainees. It serves as a counterpart to Alligator Alcatraz, an immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades that has attracted controversy due to instances of abuse and negligence toward its detainees.
The crowd was made up of members of north Florida organizations including the Party for Socialism & Liberation, Baker Interfaith Friends, Jacksonville Immigrant Rights Alliance and Florida Immigrant Coalition. Bundled up to fight the cold, rainy day, protesters were holding signs reading, “No ICE detention in Florida,” “Abolish ICE” and “Justice for immigrants.”
The protest’s goal was to promote human rights and discourage the cruelty occurring in the detention center, according to Andrea Mason, a member of North Central Florida Indivisible Group, a left-wing advocacy group. Mason said she decided to protest Deportation Depot because she thinks immigration policies have reached an extreme.
“There’s the right way to do things, and right now, this is just about being as cruel as possible and harming people,” she said.
Mason said she has heard stories about suspected immigrants being abused and mistreated in detention centers that have stuck with her and motivate her to advocate for them. These people deserve to be treated better, she said.
Mason said the one way she could make her voice heard and incite change was peaceful protest. Her goal, she said, was to raise awareness and inspire others.
A Mexican woman living in Florida, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said she speaks with inmates at Deportation Depot. She said they receive contaminated water, solitary confinement and can go up to a week without sunlight.
Her friend and inmate at the center, Jose Antonio Martinez Marino, is depressed and frustrated, she said. Marino, who is from Cuba, has been in detainment for over a year and has no hope of being released. Many are in the same condition, she said.
She said she feels anxious in her everyday life and was nervous to be protesting, as she is still in the citizenship process. She feels America is not a home for her, she said, but she is also scared of going back to Mexico after President Donald Trump suggested military action.
“I don’t feel at all that this can be a place where I can feel safe right now, or worthy,” she said.
Vilerka Bilbao, an attorney for Bilbao Law Firm in Jacksonville and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said this detention center is one of the facilities the association is monitoring.
Bilbao said she has nine clients being detained at Deportation Depot. Her clients come from all over the world, she said, such as Mexico, Vietnam and Venezuela. The majority of them do not have criminal records worthy of detention, she said.
Since November 2025, Bilbao’s caseload has been increasing. There were 200 arrests last week in Jacksonville, she said.
Deportation Depot doesn’t have the same problems that other detention centers like Alligator Alcatraz have, Bilbao said. Her clients have access to regular sunlight, meetings with an attorney and a law library.
However, her clients said detainees are not getting adequate medical help. She said she has clients who need specialists or X-rays, but are getting refused those services. She’s also heard complaints about the air conditioning being turned off and the flu being spread around the center.
Bilbao said many immigrants get deported to third-party countries, meaning countries that agree to take deported individuals if their native country refuses to take them back. She has one client who immigrated to the U.S. from Cuba in 2021 and is being deported to Ecuador, she added.
There is a false narrative that every detainee is a criminal illegal alien, she said, and that is not the reality. The reality she sees are business owners, nurses, teachers, mothers and fathers being detained sometimes through illegal arrest, she said.
“Businesses are suffering, families are suffering,” Bilbao said.
Miles Gibbs, a 27-year-old Gainesville resident, said he was protesting ICE facilities after hearing about killings and disappearances of suspected immigrants. Though he doesn’t personally feel endangered by ICE, he said he’s worried for people in Minnesota, where a U.S. citizen was recently shot and killed by an agent.
Gibbs has a personal connection to the cause — his family members were arrested in a Chicago ICE protest.
“ICE is out in full force. They’re taking people, they’re heckling protestors. They’re making life hell for people,” he said.
Rebecca Putman, the pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Gainesville, said she came to protest as a person of faith.
“Jesus tells us to love our neighbours. I don't know — I don’t feel like putting our neighbors into cages is anyone’s definition of love,” she said.
She said she thinks the “rampant cruelty of centers like this” motivates her to figure out how to speak against it.
Contact Angelique Rodriguez at arodriguez@alligator.org. Follow her on X @angeliquesrod.
Avery Parker contributed to this report.
Angelique is a first-year journalism major and the Fall 2025 graduate school reporter. In her free time, she'll probably be reading, writing, hanging out with her friends or looking through the newest fashion runway shows on Vogue.
