Obtaining a secret list of 700 people held at the “black box” Florida detention center known as “Alligator Alcatraz” was a major scoop for the Miami Herald. Detainees didn’t show up in federal records, so publishing their names would alert families of their whereabouts and would allow the Herald to assess claims from state and federal officials that only “the worst of the worst” were held within the Everglades site’s network of tents and cages. But the scoop implicated serious ethics questions. Could the Herald protect the sources who supplied reporters with the list? And could the Herald responsibly reveal the identities of detainees without speaking to the men, who were mostly unreachable within the confines of Alligator Alcatraz?

The Herald pulled off this perilous balancing act in a trio of exposes about the detention center that were co-published by the Tampa Bay Times. To date, the Herald and Times stories are the only public account of who was detained at Alligator Alcatraz.