Alcatraz

July 5 (UPI) — Five Florida state Democrat lawmakers on Thursday were denied access to the state’s newly opened “migrant” detention facility that has been dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”

State Representatives Michele Rayner, Anna Eskamani and Angie Nixon and Senators Carlos Guillermo Smith and Shevrin Jones were turned away while attempting to tour the facility, The Hill reported.

State law enforcement officers from several agencies stopped the lawmakers from entering the facility after showing up for an unannounced inspection of the facility that President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis toured on Tuesday and before detainees arrived there.

Safety concerns cited

Eskamani said they were told they could not tour the facility due to “safety concerns,” CNN reported.

“If it’s unsafe for us, how is it safe for the detainees?” Eskamani said she asked the general counsel for the Florida Division of Emergency Management.

The Florida lawmakers said they have the legal authority to inspect the detention facility.

“Florida law gives legislators the authority to make unannounced visits to state-run facilities,” Jones said in a post on X made on Thursday afternoon.

Jones said the group went to the detention facility “to inspect conditions and check on the well-being of the people inside.”

A group statement issued on Thursday accuses state officials of a “blatant abuse of power and an attempt to conceal human rights violations from the public eye.”

The facility received its first 500 detainees midweek and eventually will be capable of holding up to 3,000 detainees while undergoing deportation proceedings.

Not a federal facility

The detention facility is located in the Everglades along U.S. 41, about 70 miles west of Miami.

A local airport previously occupied the site, which Florida officials converted into a detention facility in eight days, DeSantis said while touring it with Trump on Tuesday.

Although Trump toured it, the facility is not a federal operation.

“The Department of Homeland Security has not implemented, authorized, directed or funded Florida’s temporary detention center,” DHS attorneys said in a court filing made on Thursday, the Miami Herald reported.

The filing is in response to a lawsuit challenging the detention facility’s purpose, which prompted the Department of Justice to defend its existence.

The DOJ “has defended President Trump’s immigration agenda in court since day one and we are proud to protect ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ from baseless, politically motivated legal schemes,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement issued on Thursday.

Florida officials are considering adding two more such facilities to help hold and process detainees who are undergoing deportation proceedings.

The Department of Defense is deploying 200 Marines to Florida to assist with logistical and administrative support.

United States President Donald Trump has travelled to the southern tip of Florida to inaugurate a new immigration detention facility, nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz.

On Tuesday, Trump joined Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at the remote facility, located in a vast wetland region known as the Everglades.

“This is what you need,” Trump said. “A lot of bodyguards and a lot of cops in the form of alligators.”

The president then quipped about the dangers: “I wouldn’t want to run through the Everglades for long.”

The facility, built on the site of the former Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in Ochopee, is designed to help address the need for more beds and more space to carry out Trump’s campaign for mass deportation.

State Attorney General James Uthmeier first announced Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” two weeks ago, sharing a video on social media that featured bellowing alligators and pulsing rock music to underscore the forbidding nature of the facility.

“This 30-square-mile [78sq-km] area is completely surrounded by the Everglades. It presents an efficient, low-cost opportunity to build a temporary detention facility because you don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter,” Uthmeier said.

“If people get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide.”

Its nickname draws from the lore surrounding the Alcatraz federal prison, an isolated, maximum-security detention centre built on a rocky island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay in California. That facility, closed since 1963, gained a reputation for being unescapable — though there were, indeed, five escapees whose fates remain unknown.

“It might be as good as the real Alcatraz site,” Trump said of the Florida site on Tuesday. “That’s a spooky one too, isn’t it? That’s a tough site.”

Alcatraz has long been a source of fascination for Trump, who mused earlier this year about reopening the San Francisco facility, despite cost and feasibility concerns.

Similarly, the Alligator Alcatraz facility has spurred criticism for its human rights implications, its location in an environmentally sensitive landscape and its proximity to communities of Miccosukee and Seminole Indigenous peoples.

But the Trump administration has embraced its location as a selling point, as it seeks to take a hard-knuckled stance on immigration.

“There is only one road leading in, and the only way out is a one-way flight. It is isolated and surrounded by dangerous wildlife in unforgiving terrain,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday.

“ This is an efficient and low-cost way to help carry out the largest mass deportation campaign in American history.”

Dressed in a baseball cap that read, “Gulf of America: Yet another Trump development”, Trump flew to Ochopee to inspect the Alligator Alcatraz facility on its opening day.

Florida officials have celebrated the fact that it took only eight days to set up the detention centre, which appears to use temporary structures on the pavement of the former airport.

Governor DeSantis, who ran against Trump in 2024 for the Republican presidential nomination, said that Alligator Alcatraz would take advantage of the adjacent airstrip to facilitate expedited deportations for migrants.

“Say they already are been ordered to be deported,” DeSantis told reporters on Tuesday.

“You drive them 2,000 feet [667 metres] to the runway. And then they’re gone. It’s a one-stop shop, and this airport that’s been here for a long time is the perfectly secure location.”

The head of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, Kevin Guthrie, added that the facility will be equipped to hold up to 3,000 migrants — up from an initial estimate of 1,000 — with the potential for expanding the premises.

A further 2,000 people will be held at Camp Blanding, a National Guard base on the other side of the state, in northern Florida.

A poster on display at Trump’s news conference in Ochopee also advertised 1,000 staff members on site, more than 200 security cameras and 28,000 feet — or 8,500 metres — of barbed wire.

Guthrie sought to dispel concerns that the facility might be vulnerable to natural disasters like hurricanes. The Everglades, after all, collects overflow from nearby Lake Okeechobee and drains that water into the Florida Bay, making it a region prone to natural flooding.

“As with all state correctional facilities, we have a hurricane plan,” Guthrie said, pointing to the detention centre’s “fully aluminium-frame structure”.

He said it was capable of withstanding winds up to 110 miles per hour (177 kilometres per hour), equivalent to a Category 2 hurricane.

“All in all, sir,” Guthrie told Trump, “this has been a perfect state logistics exercise for this hurricane season.”

Still, human rights advocates and environmental groups gathered on the highway leading to Alligator Alcatraz on Tuesday to show their opposition to Trump and his deportation plans.

Protesters chanted through megaphones, “Hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go.” Some picket signs read, “Communities not cages” and “We say no to Alligator Alcatraz!”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida released a statement prior to the facility’s opening, denouncing the Trump administration for conflating immigration with criminality.

The creation of Alligator Alcatraz, it said, was an extension of that mentality.

“The name ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ reflects an intent to treat people fleeing hardship and trying to build a better life for themselves and their families as dangerous criminals, which is both unnecessary and abusive,” the ACLU branch said.

Meanwhile, the Friends of the Everglades, an environmental group, called upon its supporters to contact Governor DeSantis to oppose the “massive detention center”. It noted that the construction of the airport itself had raised similar environmental concerns nearly 50 years earlier.

“Surrounded by Everglades National Park and Big Cypress National Preserve, this land is part of one of the most fragile ecosystems in the country,” the group said in a statement.

“The message is clear: No airports. No rock mines. No prisons. Only Everglades. Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the past. This land deserves lasting protection.”

Trump, however, argued in Tuesday’s news conference that the construction mostly built upon the existing airport.

“ I don’t think you’ve done anything to the Everglades,” he said, turning to Governor DeSantis. “I think you’re just enhancing it.”

DeSantis himself brushed aside the environmental criticisms as attempts to derail the president’s deportation initiative.

“ I don’t think those are valid and even good faith criticisms because it’s not going to impact the Everglades at all,” the governor said, promising no seepage into the surrounding ecosystem.

Trump hinted that the Alligator Alcatraz site could be the first of many similar, state-led immigration detention facilities.

“ I think we’d like to see them in many states — really, many states,” he said. “At some point, they might morph into a system where you’re gonna keep it for a long time.”

WASHINGTON — President Trump will visit a new immigration detention facility in the Florida Everglades on Tuesday, showcasing his border crackdown in the face of humanitarian and environmental concerns.

The trip was confirmed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday.

“When the president comes tomorrow, he’s going to be able to see,” DeSantis told reporters. He added that “I think by tomorrow, it’ll be ready for business.”

The governor, who unsuccessfully challenged Trump for the Republican presidential nomination last year, said he spoke with Trump over the weekend. He also said the site obtained approval from the Department of Homeland Security.

“What’ll happen is you bring people in there,” DeSantis said during an unrelated press conference in Wildwood. “They ain’t going anywhere once they’re there, unless you want them to go somewhere, because good luck getting to civilization. So the security is amazing.”

The facility has drawn protests over its potential impact on the delicate ecosystem and criticism that Trump is trying to send a cruel message to immigrants. Some Native American leaders have also opposed construction, saying the land is sacred.

The detention facility is being built on an isolated airstrip about 50 miles west of Miami, and it could house 5,000 detainees. The surrounding swampland is filled with mosquitos, pythons and alligators.

“There’s really nowhere to go. If you’re housed there, if you’re detained there, there’s no way in, no way out,” Florida Atty. Gen. James Uthmeier told conservative media commentator Benny Johnson.

He’s described the facility as “Alligator Alcatraz,” a moniker embraced by the Trump administration. DHS posted an image of alligators wearing hats with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s acronym.

State officials in Florida are spearheading construction but much of the cost is being covered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, which is best known for responding to hurricanes and other natural disasters.

Gomez Licon reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Megerian and Licon write for the Associated Press.

A coalition of groups including environmental activists and Native Americans advocating for their ancestral homelands converged outside an airstrip in the Florida Everglades on Saturday to protest the imminent construction of an immigrant detention center.

Hundreds of protesters lined part of U.S. Highway 41 that slices through the marshy Everglades — also known as Tamiami Trail — as dump trucks hauling materials lumbered into the airfield. Cars passing by honked in support as protesters waved signs calling for the protection of the expansive preserve that is home to a few Native tribes and several endangered animal species.

Christopher McVoy, an ecologist, said he saw a steady stream of trucks entering the site while he protested for hours. Environmental degradation was a big reason why he came out Saturday. But as a south Florida city commissioner, he said concerns over immigration raids in his city also fueled his opposition.

“People I know are in tears, and I wasn’t far from it,” he said.

Florida officials have forged ahead over the last week in constructing the compound dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” within the Everglades’ humid swamplands.

The government fast-tracked the project under emergency powers from an executive order issued by Gov. Ron DeSantis that addresses what he casts as a crisis of illegal immigration. That order lets the state sidestep certain purchasing laws and is why construction has continued despite objections from Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and local activists.

The facility will have temporary structures such as heavy-duty tents and trailers to house detained immigrants. The state estimates that by early July, it will have 5,000 immigration detention beds in operation.

The compound’s proponents have said its location in the Florida wetlands — teeming with alligators, invasive Burmese pythons and other reptiles — makes it an ideal spot for immigration detention.

“Clearly, from a security perspective, if someone escapes, you know, there’s a lot of alligators,” DeSantis said Wednesday. “No one’s going anywhere.”

Under DeSantis, Florida has made an aggressive push for immigration enforcement and has been supportive of the federal government’s broader crackdown on illegal immigration. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has backed Alligator Alcatraz, which Secretary Kristi Noem said will be partly funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Native American leaders in the region have seen the construction as an encroachment onto their sacred homelands, which prompted Saturday’s protest. In Big Cypress National Preserve, where the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport is located, 15 traditional Miccosukee and Seminole villages remain, as well as ceremonial and burial grounds and other gathering sites.

Others have raised human rights concerns over what they condemn as the inhumane housing of immigrants. Worries about environmental effects have also been at the forefront, as groups such as the Center for Biological Diversity and the Friends of the Everglades filed a lawsuit Friday to halt the detention center plans.

“The Everglades is a vast, interconnected system of waterways and wetlands, and what happens in one area can have damaging impacts downstream,” Friends of the Everglades executive director Eve Samples said. “So it’s really important that we have a clear sense of any wetland impacts happening in the site.”

Bryan Griffin, a DeSantis spokesperson, said Friday in response to the litigation that the facility was a “necessary staging operation for mass deportations located at a preexisting airport that will have no impact on the surrounding environment.”

Until the site undergoes a comprehensive environmental review and public comment is sought, the environmental groups say construction should pause. The facility’s speedy establishment is “damning evidence” that state and federal agencies hope it will be “too late” to reverse their actions if they are ordered by a court to do so, said Elise Bennett, a Center for Biological Diversity senior attorney working on the case.

The potential environmental hazards also bleed into other aspects of Everglades life, including a robust tourism industry where hikers walk trails and explore the marshes on airboats, said Floridians for Public Lands founder Jessica Namath, who attended the protest. To place an immigration detention center there makes the area unwelcoming to visitors and feeds into the misconception that the space is in “the middle of nowhere,” she said.

“Everybody out here sees the exhaust fumes, sees the oil slicks on the road, you know, they hear the sound and the noise pollution. You can imagine what it looks like at nighttime, and we’re in an international dark sky area,” Namath said. “It’s very frustrating because, again, there’s such disconnect for politicians.”

Seminera writes for the Associated Press.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration is racing ahead with construction of a makeshift immigration detention facility at an airstrip in the Everglades over the opposition of Native American leaders who consider the area their sacred ancestral homelands.

A string of portable generators and dump trucks loaded with fill dirt streamed into the site Thursday, according to activist Jessica Namath, who witnessed the activity. The state is plowing ahead with building a compound of heavy-duty tents, trailers and other temporary buildings at the county-owned airfield in the Big Cypress National Preserve, about 45 miles west of downtown Miami.

A spokesperson for the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which is helping lead the project, did not respond to requests for comment.

State officials have characterized the site as an ideal place to hold migrants, saying there’s “not much” there other than pythons and alligators.

Indigenous leaders who can trace their roots to the area back thousands of years dispute that — and they’re condemning the state’s plans to build what’s been dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” on their homelands.

For generations, the sweeping wetlands of what is now South Florida have been home to Native peoples who today make up the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida and the Seminole Tribe of Florida, as well as the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma.

“Rather than Miccosukee homelands being an uninhabited wasteland for alligators and pythons, as some have suggested, the Big Cypress is the Tribe’s traditional homelands. The landscape has protected the Miccosukee and Seminole people for generations,” Miccosukee Chairman Talbert Cypress wrote in a statement on social media.

There are 15 remaining traditional Miccosukee and Seminole villages in Big Cypress, as well as ceremonial and burial grounds and other gathering sites, Cypress testified before Congress in 2024.

“We live here. Our ancestors fought and died here. They are buried here,” he said. “The Big Cypress is part of us, and we are a part of it.”

Critics have condemned the facility and what they call the state’s apparent reliance on alligators as a security measure as a cruel spectacle, while DeSantis and other state officials have defended it as part of Florida’s muscular efforts to carry out President Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Tribal leaders and environmentalists are urging the state to change course, noting that billions of dollars in state and federal funds have been poured into Everglades restoration in recent years, an investment they say is jeopardized by plans to house some 1,000 migrants at the site for an undetermined amount of time.

Indigenous leaders and activists are planning to gather at the site again Saturday to stage a demonstration highlighting why the area is “sacred” and should be “protected, not destroyed.”

“This place became our refuge in time of war. It provides us a place to continue our culture and traditions,” Miccosukee leader Betty Osceola wrote in a social media post announcing the demonstration.

“And we need to protect it for our future generations,” she added.

Payne writes for the Associated Press.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida officials are pursuing plans to build a second detention center to house immigrants, as part of the state’s aggressive push to support the federal government’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday he’s considering establishing a facility at a Florida National Guard training center known as Camp Blanding, about 30 miles southwest of Jacksonville in northeast Florida, in addition to the site under construction at a remote airstrip in the Everglades that state officials have dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”

The construction of that facility in the remote and ecologically sensitive wetland about 45 miles west of downtown Miami is alarming environmentalists, as well as human rights advocates who have slammed the plan as cruel and inhumane.

Speaking to reporters at an event in Tampa, DeSantis touted the state’s muscular approach to immigration enforcement and its willingness to help President Trump’s administration meet its goal of more than doubling its existing 41,000 beds for detaining migrants to at least 100,000 beds.

State officials have said the detention facility, which has been described as temporary, will rely on heavy-duty tents, trailers, and other impermanent buildings, allowing the state to operationalize 5,000 immigration detention beds by early July and free up space in local jails.

“I think the capacity that will be added there will help the overall national mission. It will also relieve some burdens of our state and local [law enforcement],” DeSantis said.

Managing the facility “via a team of vendors” will cost $245 a bed per day, or approximately $450 million a year, a U.S. official said. The expenses will be incurred by Florida and reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

In the eyes of DeSantis and other state officials, the remoteness of the Everglades airfield, surrounded by mosquito- and alligator-filled wetlands that are seen as sacred to Native American tribes, makes it an ideal place to detain migrants.

“Clearly, from a security perspective, if someone escapes, you know, there’s a lot of alligators,” he said. “No one’s going anywhere.”

Democrats and activists have condemned the plan as a callous, politically motivated spectacle.

“What’s happening is very concerning, the level of dehumanization,” said Maria Asuncion Bilbao, Florida campaign coordinator at the immigration advocacy group American Friends Service Committee.

“It’s like a theatricalization of cruelty,” she said.

DeSantis is relying on state emergency powers to commandeer the county-owned airstrip and build the compound, over the concerns of county officials, environmentalists and human rights advocates.

Now the state is considering standing up another site at a National Guard training facility in northeast Florida as well.

“We’ll probably also do something similar up at Camp Blanding,” DeSantis said, adding that the state’s emergency management division is “working on that.”

Payne writes for the Associated Press.