The first group of migrant detainees was transferred late Wednesday to the newly built “Alligator Alcatraz” detention complex in Florida’s Everglades, state officials said, two days after President Donald Trump toured the site alongside Governor Ron DeSantis and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. The remote facility, erected at the disused Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport about 60 kilometres west of Miami, is designed to speed removals as the administration pushes a nationwide mass-deportation plan.
Constructed in just eight days, the compound opens with roughly 3,000 beds housed in air-conditioned tents and caged dormitories and is slated to expand in 500-bed increments to about 5,000 by mid-July. Officials say more than 200 security cameras, 28,000 feet of barbed wire, 400 guards and a contingent of 100 Florida National Guard troops, together with the surrounding swamp teeming with alligators and pythons, provide multiple layers of security. Operating costs are projected at $450 million a year.
Financing comes largely from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Shelter and Services Program—money that under the prior administration had paid for hotel accommodation for migrants—supplemented by state emergency funds. Trump hailed the Everglades site as a template for additional centres and urged Congress to approve a wider immigration-enforcement spending bill now pending on Capitol Hill.
The project has drawn legal and political fire. Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity sued in federal court, alleging the build-out violates environmental laws protecting Big Cypress National Preserve, habitat for endangered Florida panthers. Leaders of the Miccosukee and Seminole tribes say the land holds cultural significance, while human-rights groups warn of extreme heat, mosquitoes and hurricane risks—concerns underscored when heavy rain caused minor flooding during the presidential visit.
State Attorney General James Uthmeier, who devised the Everglades plan, said additional detainees will arrive “within days” under the federal 287(g) partnership that allows local police to hold migrants for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Court hearings on the environmental challenge are expected later this month, leaving the long-term future of the $450-million-a-year complex uncertain.
At the newly constructed detention camp in the Everglades, mosquitoes and hurricanes are more likely to harm the expected 3,000-plus detainees and 100-member staff than are alligators and Burmese pythons.
Between pythons and caimans, this is the anti-migrant prison 🐍 🐊🚨
A controversial detention center, surrounded by alligators, opened near #Miami. Trump defends it as “hell on Earth” for undocumented immigrants, but critics denounce violation of rights and a cost of 450
