EVERGLADES, Fla. — President Donald Trump is expected to arrive at a remote location in the Everglades on Tuesday. The site will serve as a new detention center to house undocumented immigrants arrested in the U.S.
The facility, nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” will house about 5,000 detainees and will help the president’s agenda to carry out what he called the “largest mass deportation program” in the history of the country.
The site is catching attention on social media, especially after the Department of Homeland Security posted an AI generated image of alligators wearing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) hats on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“What it can be is an effective way to increase the number of removals and deportations,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said Monday.
The location, which is about 55 miles west of Miami, was initially meant to be the Everglades jetport, but the project stopped back in the 1970s due to environmental concerns.
Over the weekend, hundreds took to the streets near the area, taking a stand against the facility. They said the detention center will drastically damage the area, made largely of original land.
Local elected officials also said there’s a conflict of interest here, since some of the companies hired to do the job are financial supporters of DeSantis and Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who spearheaded the initiative.
“The same vendors who make political contributions to Republican leadership are now the ones building up this detention center, and the funding is coming from taxpayers,” State Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-Orlando) told Channel 9.
Eskamani also claimed that the structure there was not secure enough to withstand severe weather, saying it would be a problem not only for those being held at the facility, but also for the environment.
According to DeSantis, the state is paying for the center now with funds from the Division of Emergency Management, but DHS is expected to reimburse the state.
“It has serious human rights implications and environmental implications,” Florida Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith (D-Orlando) said. “It’s being done by our new unelected attorney general who wants to spend $450 million in FEMA housing money to throw migrants into Everglades detention camps, and he’s done that in a way that is avoiding all legislative oversight.”
Numbers from the state show there are about 55,000 undocumented immigrants living in Florida. The governor believes the new detention facility will speed up deportations and support the federal efforts to arrest 3,000 undocumented immigrants a day.
Channel 9’s Geovany Dias is in the Everglades and will have coverage of Trump’s visit to South Florida and the opening of “Alligator Alcatraz” starting on Eyewitness News at Noon.
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