Deep within the swampy wetlands of the Florida Everglades—and less than 50 miles west of President Donald Trump’s Miami resort—lies the latest battleground in his administration’s immigration enforcement campaign: a makeshift detention center nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz.”
In a matter of days, workers have transformed the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport from a nearly 2.5-mile runway into a temporary tent city that Trump is expected to visit on Tuesday.
When completed, it will house up to 5,000 migrants while they await deportation, officials told CNN.
“We had a request from the federal government to do it, and that’s why there’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz,’” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said at a press conference last week, adopting the nickname coined by his attorney general for the Everglades facility.
“It’s clear that, from a security standpoint, if someone escapes, they’re going to have to face a bunch of alligators,” DeSantis said. “No one’s going to get anywhere once you do that. It’s as safe as it gets.”
Here’s what we know:
“Alcatraz” in the Everglades
Trump has long been enamored with the idea of reopening Alcatraz, the notorious island prison off San Francisco Bay known for being virtually inescapable.
Now, Florida officials are looking to open their own Alcatraz, at least temporarily.
An unassuming airstrip, once built to serve supersonic aircraft but quickly relegated to a training center, bustled with activity Monday as tractor trailers unloaded supplies and construction crews worked in dense humidity to finish building the detention center.
“Alligator-Alcatraz,” according to the governor’s office, is designed to be “completely self-contained.” Immigrants will be housed in repurposed FEMA trailers and “temporary soft-sided facilities,” a Department of Homeland Security official told CNN.
State officials said they are developing evacuation plans for the facility in case of severe weather, during what forecasters said could be a busy hurricane season.
The center is expected to house up to 5,000 beds, according to the Department of Homeland Security official, at a cost of $245 per bed per day.
Water, sewer, and electricity services will be provided by mobile crews, according to the governor’s office.
During a Fox News tour of the site last week, DeSantis pointed out an array of large portable air conditioning units that he said will be used to cool the structures on the site.
The “dehumanizing” facility
“Alligator Alcatraz” is expected to cost $450 million to operate in a single year, according to a Department of Homeland Security official who told CNN that Florida will cover the costs of the facility and then “submit reimbursement requests” through FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security.
Last week, more than 58,000 immigrants were in ICE custody, according to internal data obtained by CNN. Many are being held in local jails because ICE has funds to house an average of 41,000 people.
But arguments about capacity have done little to quell the backlash from local immigrant rights advocates, who have accused the DeSantis administration of creating a facility “designed to propagate suffering.”
“We’ve already been through this with Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County, Arizona, where he had a tent city,” said Thomas Kennedy, a policy analyst with the Florida Immigrant Coalition.
