COLLIER COUNTY, Fla. – Republican Florida Sen. Blaise Ingoglia wore a University of Florida golf polo with an alligator icon to a guided tour of Alligator Alcatraz on Saturday in Collier County.
Ingoglia, who has represented District 11 since 2022, said that after the three-hour walk through it was clear to him that the critics’ “rhetoric” did not “match” the reality that he experienced.
Ingoglia was with Florida Sen. Gayle Harrell, who represents District 31, and Florida Rep. Michael “Mike” Caruso, who represents the state’s 87th House district.
The trio said they did hear the detainees yelling at them.
After Harrell said she couldn’t understand them, Ingoglia said, “I think a bunch of the detainees said, Vote Trump!”
Harrell and Carusa laughed out loud.
During a separate conversation, Republican U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, a Cuban American who speaks Spanish, said she tried to talk to the detainees.
“I asked, ‘How are they treating you?’ And one of them said, ‘Very good,’” Salazar said.
Ingoglia also said the detainees’ beds were more comfortable than his, so he was going to have to have a conversation with his wife. He also said the food “was so yummie” that they were all hungry.
Harrell said the facility was “meeting all of the standards for prisons and detention facilities” both at the state and federal levels.
“What I saw complies with the highest federal standards for a prison or a detention center like this one,” Salazar said.
The Democrats, who also toured the facility, painted a radically different picture.
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