Florida began construction this week on a detention center surrounded by fierce reptiles and cypress swamps, an “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Everglades wetlands, as part of US President Donald Trump’s expansion of deportations of undocumented migrants.
The chosen site, an abandoned airfield in the heart of a sprawling network of mangrove forests, imposing marshes and “rivers of grass” that form the conservation area, will house large tents and beds for 1,000 “criminal aliens,” according to state Attorney General James Uthmeier.
The 30-square-mile (78-square-kilometer) area “presents an efficient, low-cost opportunity to build a temporary detention facility, because you don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter,” he said recently in a video on X showing the area and clips of migrant arrests.
“If people get out, there’s not much waiting for them, other than alligators and pythons,” he added. “Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.”
Uthmeier described what he is calling Alligator Alcatraz as a “one-stop shop to carry out President Trump’s mass deportation agenda.”
Such a project — during searing summer months in an inhospitable and dangerous landscape filled with reptiles and mosquitos — fits into a broader series of harsh optics which officials hope will discourage migrants from coming to the United States.
The large southeastern state governed by Republican Ron DeSantis boasts of collaborating closely with the Trump administration on immigration enforcement.
Since the billionaire businessman’s return to the White House in January, his administration has enlisted local authorities to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ramp up arrests of undocumented migrants.
Uthmeier said the new facility will be up and running within 30 to 60 days after construction begins.
It is expected to cost roughly $450 million per year to operate, with the state likely to apply for funding from the federal government, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin told local media.
The plan has already raised hackles among critics of Trump’s immigration crackdown, which recently sparked anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles and other American cities.
“Turning the Everglades into a taxpayer-funded detention camp for migrants is a grotesque mix of cruelty and political theater,” former DHS spokesman Alex Howard told the Miami Herald.
“You don’t solve immigration by disappearing people into tents guarded by gators,” he added. “You solve it with lawful processing, humane infrastructure, and actual policy — not by staging a $450 million stunt in the middle of hurricane season.”
The project is also controversial because of its environmental impact on a subtropical ecosystem that is home to more than 2,000 species of animals and plants and is the site of costly conservation and rehabilitation programs.
The Friends of the Everglades, a non-profit group instrumental in helping preserve and protect the wetlands, has criticized the project in a letter to Governor DeSantis, saying construction of the center “poses an unacceptable and unnecessary risk to on-site wetlands.”
