In the late 1960’s, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, then 79 years old, founded Friends of the Everglades to oppose the proposed construction of a major airport in the fragile wetlands of the Big Cypress Preserve.
“I’ll do whatever I can” to stop it, Douglas said at the time.
On Sunday, Friends of the Everglades is again taking on the government. This time it’s a fight against a proposed plan by state officials to build a massive immigrant detention center to house and process suspected undocumented immigrants on the site of an unused airport facility in the Everglades.
The influential environmental group is holding a planned protest from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the jetport, 54575 Tamiami Trail, Ochopee, 34141.
“This site is sacred, a multi-generational home to Florida’s native people, and is no home for a damaging, unnecessary prison,” Friends of Everglades posted on its Facebook account.
“Show Florida’s leaders we do not stand for the destruction of the Everglades,” wrote the group. “No airports! No rock mines! No prisons! ONLY EVERGLADES.”
Friends of Everglades were successful in halting the project in 1969 but not before a runway was built at what is now the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport. It was supposed to be the world’s largest airport and replace Miami International Airport.
The site covers nearly 25,000 acres with 900 acres of “developed and operational land,” according to Miami-Dade officials.
READ MORE: 'Alligator Alcatraz': Florida Attorney General proposes immigrant detention center in Everglades
The planned protest comes less than a week after Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced his proposal to build “Alligator Alcatraz” to help the Trump administration achieve its aggressive deportation strategy.
“If somebody were to get out, there's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Only the alligators and pythons are waiting. That's why I like to call it ‘Alligator Alcatraz,’” Uthmeier told Fox Business.
If approved by local, state and federal authorities, said Uthmeier, it said would become the state’s largest immigration detention facility and help ease the pressure on local jails and federal facilities used to hold immigrants accused of being illegally in the country.
The facility could be up and running within 60 days if local, state and federal agencies approve it, Uthmeier told the cable TV network.
"This is a really terrible idea," Eve Samples, director of Friends of the Everglades, told the Fort Myers News-Press.
"Although the attorney general is calling it temporary, the environmental harm, the traffic, human waste, water needs, none of that has been analyzed or discussed publicly," Samples said. "The attorney general is talking about this site as being abandoned, and the reason it was abandoned is because everyone banded together."
Uthmeier's plan comes at a time when the Trump administration has said it wants U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to apprehend at least 3,000 unauthorized migrants daily, up from about 650 daily during the first months of Trump’s second term.
