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Florida built a black site and other red states are sure to follow [1]
['Daily Kos Staff']
Date: 2025-07-14
Hundreds of people who are being detained in Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” have no criminal charges in the United States whatsoever. But that hasn’t stopped the Trump administration from constructing a stateside facility with the level of dehumanization and terror that previously required deporting immigrants to other countries’ prisons, like El Salvador’s CECOT.
Why outsource your black sites when you can build them at home? So efficient, so America First.
Protesters gather outside of “Alligator Alcatraz.”
The Miami Herald found that, of the more than 700 people currently being held in the Florida detention center or scheduled to be transferred there shortly, only about one-third have criminal convictions, ranging from attempted murder to traffic violations. Only in the bigoted nativist Trump administration do traffic violations make you a “deranged psychopath” who has to be locked up in a black site in the Everglades.
There was never any reason to suspect that stateside immigrant detention facilities would be more humane or grounded in reality than those that the administration has illegally rendered to other countries. Innocent people aren’t getting deported to foreign prisons because the Trump administration’s efforts are slapdash and hasty; they’re getting deported because the Trump administration doesn’t care if they’re innocent people.
Department of Homeland Security records show that the Trump administration knew that a large majority of the Venezuelan immigrants it sent to CECOT in March had no criminal convictions.
If the use of the term “black site” feels a bit inflammatory or like overreach here, that’s understandable. It’s the term usually reserved for secret prisons in other countries run by the Central Intelligence Agency during the Iraq War. But Florida’s detention center features the same brutality, lack of oversight, and opacity. So if the shoe fits …
For example, immigration attorneys are reporting that they’re not able to visit their clients who are detained at “Alligator Alcatraz.” One attorney even said that, when she arrived to visit her client and other possible clients, she wasn’t allowed in. One of the detainees she was trying to see was a 15-year-old boy who she said was kept at the detention center for at least 3 days. Other attorneys have said that their clients don’t even appear in the immigration court system, making it impossible to file motions on their behalf.
Florida is also refusing to let state lawmakers—well, Democratic lawmakers—into the facility, which is a violation of state law. Per Florida, that law only applies to facilities run by the Department of Corrections, and the immigrant detention facility isn’t under DOC jurisdiction.
Related |Trump says he wants other states to build migrant detention centers after Florida tour
So who is running this thing?
Last month, two environmental groups filed a lawsuit over how the government dropped this monstrosity into one of the most sensitive ecosystems in the country without a required environmental review. In a recent filing in that case, DHS told the court that it has no authority over the facility because DHS hasn’t given any federal money to Florida.
The location of “Alligator Alcatraz”
So, when it comes to liability, it’s not under the jurisdiction of either the state or federal government, but somehow, some government entity has the authority to enter into sweetheart deals with companies run by big GOP donors.
Vendors who donated millions to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and President Donald Trump, among other GOP candidates, have been rewarded with contracts to provide the facility with services that remain secret because they signed nondisclosure agreements.
Florida already has plans for a second facility, with other red states following suit. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem bragged that the Trump administration is in talks with five GOP governors about the exciting opportunity that awaits them.
And what state wouldn’t want a black site of its very own? There’s a staggering amount of federal money sloshing around, it gets to engage in brutality against immigrants, and it can shovel business to its biggest donors. It’s the epitome of Trump’s American dream.
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