Alligator Alcatraz guards Trejos and Seenaraine allegedly battered detainee during Jan. 25 transfer at Florida facility

On Jan. 25, 2026, two Critical Response Strategies corrections officers, Stephen Trejos and Andre Seenaraine, allegedly battered detainee Rigoberto Rodriguez Arce, a 42-year-old Cuban national whom U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had detained on Dec. 9, 2025, during a chaotic transfer of dozens of handcuffed detainees at Florida's "Alligator Alcatraz" immigration detention facility in Ochopee. According to former detainee Frank Rivera, who said he witnessed the incident, Rodriguez Arce and other detainees had been waiting in handcuffs since early morning without food or water and began banging their cuffs against metal benches; Rivera said Trejos then grabbed Rodriguez Arce, slammed him to the ground and struck him, and that Seenaraine later punched Rodriguez Arce in the face in another part of the facility. Rodriguez Arce's attorney said he arrived at a Texas detention facility days later with a black eye, bandages on his hand, and a blood-stained uniform.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigated and confirmed on the record that the incident involved the two officers and the detainee. A Collier County judge signed arrest warrants for both officers in June 2026, roughly five months after the incident, and Collier County prosecutors charged each with first-degree misdemeanor battery. Both were released on $1,000 bond and have pleaded not guilty. Trejos, who has moved to dismiss the charge under Florida's self-defense immunity law, says surveillance video shows he delivered a single "compliance strike" to the side of Rodriguez Arce's head after Rodriguez Arce spat on him, and that he had no further contact with Rodriguez Arce once officers brought him to the ground; his account does not address Seenaraine's alleged separate use of force. Seenaraine's attorney has said the publicly available charging documents contain little detail and that his client is presumed innocent.

The case, which became public through investigative reporting in September 2026, is the first known criminal prosecution over detainee mistreatment at the now-closed facility, which drew numerous complaints from former detainees and their families about beatings, inhumane conditions, and inadequate medical care that state and federal officials dismissed as false before the facility closed in June 2026. It is a separate incident from an earlier, independently documented case at the same facility, in which guards employed by a different security contractor allegedly beat and pepper-sprayed detainees on April 2, 2026.