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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
‘Alligator Alcatraz’: What to know about Florida’s new
controversial migrant detention facility
By Chelsea Bailey, Isabel Rosales
Updated:
5:55 AM EDT, Wed July 2, 2025
Source: CNN
Deep in the marshy wetlands of the Florida Everglades – less than 50
miles west of President Donald Trump’s resort in Miami – sits the
latest battleground in his administration’s immigration enforcement
efforts: A makeshift detention facility dubbed “Alligator
Alcatraz.”
In a matter of days, workers have transformed the Dade-Collier Training
and Transition Airport from an 11,000-foot runway into a temporary tent
city that
When completed, it will be able to house up to 3,000 migrants with the
ability to add more capacity, an official said Tuesday.
“We had a request from the federal government to do it, and so
‘Alligator Alcatraz’ it is,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a
news conference last week, adopting the nickname coined by his attorney
general for the Everglades facility.
“Clearly from a security perspective, if someone escapes, there’s a
lot of alligators you’re going to have to contend (with),” DeSantis
said. “No one is going anywhere once you do that. It’s as safe and
secure as you can be.”
But while Republicans are touting it as a “low cost” facility
fortified by Mother Nature, the project has already sparked a backlash,
not only from immigration rights activists and environmentalists but
also members of the state’s Indigenous community, who see the project
as a threat to their sacred lands.
Here’s what we know:
An Everglades ‘Alcatraz’
Trump has long been enamored with the idea of reopening Alcatraz, the
famed island prison just off the San Francisco Bay known for being
Now, Florida officials aim to open their own Alcatraz, at least
temporarily.
An unassuming airstrip, once built to serve supersonic jets but quickly
relegated to a training facility, thrummed with activity Monday as
tractor trailers unloaded supplies and construction crews worked in the
thick humidity to finish building the detention facility.
“Alligator-Alcatraz,” according to the governor’s office, is
designed to be “completely self-contained.” Migrants will be housed
in repurposed FEMA trailers and “soft-sided temporary facilities,”
a Department of Homeland Security official told CNN.
The same tents are often used to house those displaced by natural
disasters, like hurricanes, DeSantis’ office said. Indeed, they will
provide the only shelter from the elements, as temperatures soar into
the 90s and powerful storms move across the Everglades.
State officials said they are developing evacuation plans for the
facility in the event of severe weather, during what forecasters said
may be a .
The facility as currently built has “a detainee capacity of up to
3,000 people with room for additional capacity,” Executive Director
of the Florida Division of Emergency Management Kevin Guthrie said in a
roundtable Tuesday alongside Trump.
The DHS official, however, told CNN the facility is expected to be able
to house up to 5,000 beds - figures similar to those shared previously
by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Utilities like water, sewage and power will be provided by mobile
equipment, according to the governor’s office.
During a tour of the site for Fox News last week, DeSantis pointed out
a number of large portable air conditioning units he said will be used
to cool structures on the site.
DeSantis stressed the facility is both temporary and necessary to
alleviate burdens on the state’s law enforcement agencies and jails,
which have seen an influx in migrants amid the Trump administration’s
immigration crackdown.
The governor added he hopes the facility will be a “force
multiplier” in the administration’s increasing efforts to detain
and deport undocumented migrants.
Immigrant rights activists decry ‘dehumanizing’ facility
“Alligator Alcatraz” is expected to cost $450 million to operate
for a single year, according to one DHS official who told CNN Florida
will front the costs of the facility and then “submit reimbursement
requests” through FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security.
As of last week, more than 58,000 immigrants were in ICE custody,
according to internal data obtained by CNN. Many are detained in local
jails because ICE has funding to house an average of 41,000 people.
But arguments about capacity have done little to quell the backlash
from local immigration rights advocates who have accused the DeSantis
administration of creating a facility “engineered to enact
suffering.”
“We’ve been down this road before with Sheriff Joe Arpaio in
Maricopa County in Arizona where he had a tent city,” said Thomas
Kennedy, a policy analyst for the Florida Immigrant Coalition.
“The fact that we’re going to have 3,000 people detained in tents,
in the Everglades, in the middle of the hot Florida summer, during
hurricane season, this is a bad idea all around that needs to be
opposed and stopped.”
Democrats and other immigrant-rights activists have also decried the
detention facility as “dehumanizing.”
“It’s like a theatricalization of cruelty,” Maria Asuncion
Bilbao, Florida campaign coordinator at the immigration advocacy group
American Friends Service Committee, previously
Kennedy said he’s been angered by Florida’s Attorney General James
Uthmeier – who coined the phrase “Alligator Alcatraz” –
boasting “if people get out, there’s not much waiting for them
other than alligators and pythons.” White House press secretary
Karoline Leavitt similarly said at a White House press briefing Monday
the alligators were “a deterrent for them to try to escape.”
“When we talk about people as if they’re vermin … The location,
the manner in which it’s done, the dehumanizing language …
there’s nothing about this detention camp that is not cruel and
inhumane,” he said.
DeSantis promises ‘zero impact’ on environment. Advocates are
skeptical
When it first opened, the Dade-Collier airport, originally known as the
Everglades Jetway, was meant to be of New York’s JFK and an
international hub for supersonic jets.
But today, it remains a little-used runway in the heart of the
Everglades, only open during business hours. Environmental concerns
have long hampered plans to expand the airport, as efforts to preserve
the marshlands, which are a crucial source of freshwater for South
Florida, have routinely clashed with business interests.
The Miami-Dade Aviation Department has used the runway as a training
facility for years. But it changed last week when the DeSantis
administration invoked the governor’s emergency powers to combat
“illegal immigration” to begin immediately building a detention
facility on the site.
The administration initially proposed purchasing the site from
Miami-Dade County for $20 million. In a lengthy response to the
proposal, reviewed by CNN, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava noted the figure
was “significantly lower than the most recent appraisal” value of
$190 million.
She also signaled concerns about the environmental impact of housing
thousands of people so close to a key source of Florida’s drinking
water. Indeed, environmental advocacy groups appear to share her
concerns, and several, including Friends of the Everglades, on Friday
in an effort to halt the project.
At a news conference last week, the governor downplayed the lawsuit and
touted his administration’s efforts to restore the Everglades, saying
the facility would have “zero impact” on the environment.
“I think people are just trying to use the Everglades as a pretext
just for the fact that they oppose immigration enforcement,” he said.
Tribal members are ‘standing up for our home’
Betty Osceola stood at the gates of the Dade-Collier airport Monday and
glared at the bustling construction site.
The environmental activist has been documenting the rapid construction
of “Alligator Alcatraz” for her followers on social media, and she
was among those protesting along Highway 41 last week as construction
crews began making their way to the site.
But for Osceola, this fight in particular feels personal. She’s a
member of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, whose lands are
adjacent to the airport and runway.
Osceola told CNN the temporary detention facility is being built on
land sacred to her people, calling it an affront.
“When I first heard about it, I thought, ‘Is this a joke?’” But
then construction crews began arriving in droves less than 2 miles from
her home.
“I was particularly upset when they said, ‘Nobody lives out here,
it’s not going to inconvenience anybody,’” she said, adding she
has relatives who live even closer to the site. “What about me? What
about the tribe?”
Osceola, who is a prominent local environmental activist, said the
governor’s insistence that he has spent billions to protect the
Everglades rings hollow after green-lighting a project which could
threaten the delicate ecosystem of the area.
“Signing a bill or signing a check doesn’t mean you understand
anything,” she said. “What’s going to happen to all that sewage
if a hurricane hits? … This is the drinking water aquifer for 8
million South Floridians, not just the Miccosukee Tribe.
“This is our ancestral territory. I come out here to pray. This is
our home. We are standing up for our home.”
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