According to reports, a new remote facility is being constructed to aid in the crackdown on immigration prioritized by President Donald Trump. The facility, nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz”, will repurpose the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, which is located within the Florida Everglades, 36 miles west of Miami on the Tamiami Trail. It was first proposed by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier in a post on X, formerly Twitter, before construction began on Monday (June 23).
“I’m proud to help support President Trump and Secretary [Kristi] Noem in their mission to fix our illegal immigration problem once and for all,” Mr. Uthmeier said in a statement according to The New York Times. “Alligator Alcatraz and other Florida facilities will do just that.” He also said that there won’t be much money needed to invest in security because of the area being rife with dangerous wildlife which includes alligators, pyhtons, and the Florida panther. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis reportedly went over other sites in the state with Uthmeier beforehand. The attorney general estimates that “Alligator Alcatraz” could be operational within 30 to 60 days, and house up to 1,000 migrants.
The facility announcement is part of a goal for Florida to house 5,000 migrants in detention facilities in the state. Comprised mainly of large tents, its believed that the cost to run the facility would cost $450 million a year, but Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Trisha McLaughlin said that Florida could request reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency if needed. It also lines up with reporting in a book published during Trump’s first term alleging that he wanted to have a southern border “with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators” to deter migrants from crossing.
National Immigrant Justice Center associate director of federal litigation Mark Fleming decried the facility’s construction, noting how rushed the project was and its timing during the height of the summer, stating that it “is demonstrative of their callous disregard for the health and safety of the human beings they intend to imprison there.” Executive director of the Friends of The Everglades Eve Sample also spoke out against the site. “It’s really ironic that the state attorney general is characterizing this as a largely abandoned site, she said to local news network WPTV5. “It was abandoned because the people of Florida, including Friends of the Everglades, rose up to stop it back in 1969, 1970.”
