Biography
Alexis Butler, 25 at the time and of Dania Beach, Florida, was one of the "GEO9," a group of Fort Lauderdale Food Not Bombs activists arrested for the December 3, 2019 blockade of the Boca Raton, Florida headquarters of the GEO Group — the private-prison corporation that operates immigration detention centers for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including Florida's Broward Transitional Center. The activists sealed the building's entrances, parking garage and elevators with concrete-filled tires and barrels to shut down "business as usual" and protest GEO's role in immigrant detention and family separation. Initially charged only with misdemeanor trespassing, the protesters were re-arrested in February 2020 on far more serious felony charges — false imprisonment and conspiracy to commit false imprisonment — after police alleged that a security guard had been confined inside the building during the blockade, exposing them to up to 15 years in prison. The escalation was widely criticized, including by U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, as an attempt to criminalize and chill political protest against the private-prison industry. Butler was arrested at her Dania Beach home and held about four days in the Broward County jail before posting bond.
Custody phases separated October 12, 2026: The original GEO9 report confirms initial December 3, 2019 same-day release and February 7–10, 2020 detention. February detention was in Broward, not the stored Palm Beach institution. Named defendant identification. No later endpoint inferred.
