Alligator Alcatraz – Aerial View of Florida Everglades at Sunset Hour – Courtesy: Shutterstock – Image by ocudrone
Because of its closeness to the top predators, Florida officials are renaming an Everglades airfield “Alligator Alcatraz” and converting it into a migrant detention facility.
In a video posted on X last week, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier proposed the initiative, stating that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had requested state authorities to find locations for temporary detention centers in favor of the Trump administration’s fight on illegal immigration.
Uthmeier remarked, “I think this is the best one, as I call it: Alligator Alcatraz,” alluding to the notorious prison island in San Francisco Bay.
“The Everglades entirely enclose this 30-square-mile region. Because you don’t have to spend a lot of money on the perimeter, it offers a cost-effective and efficient way to construct a temporary detention facility,” he said. “If people get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons.”
The Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, which is about 55 miles west of Miami and runs along the eastern edge of the Big Cypress National Preserve, is the location of the proposed facility. The “Everglades Jetport” was the state’s original plan for it, and it was supposed to be the biggest airport in the world. However, due to environmental concerns, construction was interrupted in the 1970s.
According to Miami International Airport, its only runway, which is 10,500 feet long, is now mostly utilized as a precision-instrument landing and training facility. According to Uthmeier, the location is “virtually abandoned.”
In a matter of days, he received approval.
The federal government accepted Uthmeier’s idea that morning, and the facility is expected to open the first week of July, he told the right-wing podcast The Benny Show on Monday. His prediction was that it will have 5,000 beds, or half of its capacity, by “early July.”
The Department of Homeland Security subsequently posted on X, “Our partnership with Florida will allow Alligator Alcatraz to expand facilities and bed space in just days.”
However, not everybody agrees.
Concerns regarding the project’s possible effects on the delicate Everglades ecology and the welfare of those who would be housed there, particularly during the sweltering summer months, have been voiced by environmental groups and immigration advocates.
According to member station WGCU, several hundred residents gathered outside the property gates on Sunday to express their opposition to the prison facility and demand the preservation of the site, emphasizing its unique value to both conservationists and Native Americans.
In a letter to the Florida Division of Emergency Management on Monday, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava urged the state to take its time and give more details about its intentions for the facility, especially regarding the environmental impact, which she stated “could be devastating.”
“The conveyance of this parcel requires considerable review and due diligence before actions can be taken that could have significant long-term impact to our community,” writer Levine Cava wrote, according to member station WLRN.
Uthmeier’s office has been contacted by NPR for comment. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) directed NPR to a statement made by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in response to an inquiry regarding those worries and the possible outline of a review procedure.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, we are working at turbo speed on cost-effective and innovative ways to deliver on the American people’s mandate for mass deportations of criminal illegal aliens,” Noem stated.
What is known about the establishment?
According to Uthmeier on The Benny Show, because the facility’s runway can handle large aircraft, it will detain migrants who have been arrested in Florida and around the nation. The National Guard will be present, he said, and officials will “give them the due process that all the courts say they need on their way out.”
He noted that “heavy-duty tent” and trailer amenities will be the main components of the system.
“We don’t need to build a lot of brick and mortar … it will be temporary and thankfully Mother Nature does a lot on the perimeter,” he stated. “A few additions will be necessary, but there isn’t really anywhere else to go. There’s no way in or out if you’re being held there or housed there.”
For some immigration supporters, that raises concerns.
On social media, American Immigration Council policy director Nayna Gupta stated that the detainees would be housed at a facility “surrounded by alligators and snakes in dangerous heat with NO oversight.”
“DeSantis’ Little Guantanamo in the swamp,” as former DHS spokeswoman under former President Joe Biden Alex Howard, a native Floridian, described the endeavor as a “grotesque mix of cruelty and political theater.”
“You don’t solve immigration by disappearing people into tents guarded by gators,” he emailed NPR. “You solve it with lawful processing (like humanitarian parole, [Temporary Protected Status], humane infrastructure, and actual policy — not by staging a $450 million stunt in the middle of hurricane season.”
Who is funding this project?
The project would be financed “in large part” by FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program, according to a statement from Noem.
In order to assist towns housing DHS-released migrants awaiting court hearings, the initiative was established in late 2022 to help defray some of the costs. According to the American Immigration Council, it reimbursed charitable organizations and state and municipal governments in 35 areas between fiscal years 2023 and 2024.
Florida will need around $450 million to operate the facility for a year, DHS said NPR, and the state can ask FEMA for repayment. FEMA has about $625 million in Shelter and Services Program money available for the project.
The issue of purchasing the land is another. According to the Miami Herald, the Florida government has offered to pay $20 million for the land, and state and county officials are currently negotiating the acquisition.
Which environmental issues are at issue?
The Everglades, a subtropical wetland ecosystem encompassing two million acres in central and southern Florida, is where Dade-Collier Airport is situated.
The region is well-known for its biodiversity, including hundreds of species of birds and animals like manatees, crocodiles, panthers, and alligators, as well as its wetlands, which are essential to the state’s drinking water and irrigation systems.
The Everglades’ size and health have been endangered over time by invasive species, urban and agricultural growth, and climate change, all of which have stoked a campaign to save it.
As part of their campaign against “Alligator Alcatraz,” Friends of the Everglades is arguing that the area is “part of one of the most fragile ecosystems in the country” and “deserves lasting protection.”
In the same way that Floridians banded together to successfully reject the construction of the Everglades Jetport fifty years ago, conservationists hope that Floridians will be able to unite to block the prison facility.
According to the National Park Service, when construction started in 1968, state officials had a vision for an airport with six runways and a monorail that was five times larger than JFK International Airport in New York. Hydrologist Luna Leopold was assigned by the Department of the Interior to do study on the construction’s effects on the environment as part of the project.
According to Leopold’s assessment, which was released the following year, the jetport’s expansion “will lead to land drainage and development for agriculture, transportation, and services in the Big Cypress Swamp which will inexorably destroy the south Florida ecosystem and thus the Everglades National Park.”
Equipped with these discoveries, a group of hunters, environmentalists, and worried people was able to exert pressure on the government to look for a different site for the jetport. In 1970, construction was put on hold, and in 1971, President Gerald Ford made Big Cypress National Preserve the nation’s first national preserve.
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Melissa’s career in writing started more than 20 years ago. Today, she lives in South Florida with her husband and two boys.
