A new immigration detention facility being dubbed ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ is set to be constructed in Florida’s Everglades in the coming months. The initiative has been polarizing among Floridians, invoking tensions around immigration policy, environmental protection, and the impacts of development.
The facility is located at a remote airstrip 45 miles west of Miami. According to Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, the goal for the center is to have 5,000 beds ready to go by early July. The Florida National Guard has confirmed the deployment of up to 100 troops to guard the site.
Comparisons to Alcatraz, the long-closed San Francisco prison located on an island across the bay from the city, refer to the center’s remoteness to major civilization. “If you’re housed there, you’re detained there,” Uthemier said. “There’s no way in, no way out.”
The project is being supported by the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE). Under President Donald Trump, the United States is working to conduct one of the largest mass-deportations in American history.
Though the land being used for the facility is owned by Miami-Dade County, Gov. Ron DeSantis has utilized a loophole to use the land for a new detention center. A previously-instituted executive order declaring a state of emergency over Florida’s undocumented immigrant situation empowers DeSantis to commandeer county lands to support ICE detentions.
Critics of ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ have alleged that the project is potentially harmful to sensitive natural habitat in the Everglades. Even some tribal leaders, such as Miccosukee Chairman Talbert Cypress, are contesting that the project violates sacred indigenous land.
“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,” Cypress said. “The landscape has protected the Miccosukee and Seminole people for generations.”
The DeSantis administration has claimed their project will not be permanent and that measures are being taken to prevent environmental damage. “Utilization of this facility for these purposes will not incur the removal of vegetation, additional paving or permanent construction,” DeSantis’ office said in a statement. “Utilities such as water, sewage, and power will be facilitated by mobile equipment that will be removed at the completion of the mission.”
Some in the state have also concerned about the ethics of housing detained migrants at the site in question. “What’s happening is very concerning, the level of dehumanization,” said Maria Asuncion Bilbao, immigration campaign coordinator with the American Friends Service Committee. “It’s like a theatricalization of cruelty.”
Honestly, the facility is closer to Collier County. It’s an existing air field, still used for training purposes, and, during hurricane season, emergency crews are pre-positioned there. The existing footprint is being used. I love the idea and support Governor DeSantis!