‘Alligator Alcatraz’: Florida’s $690m plan to help Trump’s immigration crackdown

Washington: Florida is building a detention facility for migrants, nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz”, turning an airfield in the Everglades into the newest – and scariest-sounding – holding centre designed to help the Trump administration carry out its immigration crackdown.

The remote facility, composed of large tents and other planned facilities, would cost the state about $US450 million ($690 million) a year to run, but Florida could request some reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said.

Florida’s attorney-general says the former airfield is surrounded by dangerous wildlife, including alligators and pythons.Credit: Getty Images

Florida Attorney-General James Uthmeier – a Trump ally who has pushed to build the detention centre in the Everglades – has said the state would not need to invest much in security because the area was surrounded by dangerous wildlife, including alligators and pythons. A spokesperson for the attorney-general said work on the new facility started this week.

The project is sure to appeal to US President Donald Trump, who talked repeatedly during his first term about building a moat along the southern border filled with alligators or snakes. As he pushed for a wall to keep migrants out, he urged officials to build it with spikes, razor wire and black paint to ensure that it would serve as a deterrent – the more terrifying-looking, the better.

And since resuming office this year, Trump has already sent migrants to Guantanamo Bay, the symbol for America’s worst enemies, and to a mega-prison in El Salvador.

The Everglades facility is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to enlist local authorities to boost detention capacity and expand the number of officers around the country who can arrest immigrants living in the country illegally.

The Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, in the Florida Everglades, in 2019.Credit: NYT

The Trump administration has struggled to meet its mass deportation goals in part because of resource constraints, and it is looking for every way to help increase numbers.

The goal in Florida is to have 5000 additional beds, spread out at the new facility and potentially other, smaller facilities as well.

It’s not clear how quickly the new detention centre can be built.

Mayor Daniella Levine Cava of Miami-Dade County said on Monday that she wanted more time to evaluate the state’s plans for the land.

“I understand there is an intention to begin work on the site as early as Monday,” she wrote in a letter to the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which will have primary oversight of the facility.

“There has not been sufficient time to fully discuss these matters and we thank you for your attention to these concerns, given the rapid pace of the state’s effort.”

But McLaughlin said the goal was to have at least some of the tents up and running by July.

The Trump administration is currently holding about 55,000 immigrants, a spike from the end of the Biden administration, when US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was holding about 40,000 people.

Trump officials have been pushing Congress for more funding to expand detention capacity even further. Tom Homan, Trump’s border tsar, has said that the number of detention beds available will dictate the number of deportations the administration will be able to hit this year.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, we are working at turbo-speed to deliver cost-effective and innovative ways to deliver on the American people’s mandate for mass deportations of criminal illegal aliens,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement.

Immigrant advocates criticised the move, saying that it was creating a new form of detention outside the scope of the federal government. Mark Fleming, the associate director of federal litigation at the National Immigrant Justice Centre, said it amounted to an “independent, unaccountable detention system”.

Fleming added that there were a host of problems with the plan to hold migrants in tents at the airfield.

The Everglades National Park in Florida.Credit: stellalevi

“The fact that the administration and its allies would even consider such a huge temporary facility, on such a short timeline, with no obvious plan for how to adequately staff medical and other necessary services, in the middle of the Florida summer heat, is demonstrative of their callous disregard for the health and safety of the human beings they intend to imprison there,” he said.

“It simply shocks the conscience.”

Immigrants are typically held by ICE officials in private prisons and local jails that offer space in their facilities for a certain amount of money.

Florida officials are going a step further, building a detention centre specifically for immigrants picked up by local authorities on behalf of the federal government. ICE could also use the facility to hold migrants picked up elsewhere in the country.

A large Burmese python that was removed from the Florida Everglades.Credit: US National Park Service via The Washington Post 

“I’m proud to help support President Trump and Secretary Noem in their mission to fix our illegal immigration problem once and for all,” Uthmeier said in a statement.

“Alligator Alcatraz and other Florida facilities will do just that.”

The FEMA money will be drawn from a fund that was created during the Biden administration to pay organisations and local jurisdictions that help house and care for migrants going through the immigration court system in the United States.

The Trump administration criticised Biden’s use of the money, particularly the funds that went towards helping New York City care for migrants. Earlier this year, DHS took back $US80 million from the grants. The city is suing to retrieve the money.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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