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 center designed to help the Trump administration carry out its immigration crackdown.
The remote facility, comprised of large tents, and other planned facilities will cost the state around $450 million a year to run, but Florida can request some reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security.
Florida’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, a Trump ally who has pushed to build the detention center in the Everglades, has said the state will not need to invest much in security because the area is surrounded by dangerous wildlife, including alligators and pythons. A spokesperson for the attorney general said work on the new facility started on Monday morning.
The project is sure to appeal to President Donald Trump, who talked repeatedly during his first term about building a moat along the southern border filled with alligators or snakes.
And since resuming office this year, Trump has already sent migrants to Guantánamo Bay, the symbol for America’s worst enemies, and to a megaprison 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 Trump administration has struggled to meet its mass deportations goals in part because of resource constraints.
It’s not clear how quickly the new detention center can be built.
McLaughlin said the goal is 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 Immigration and Customs Enforcement was holding about 40,000 people.
“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,” Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said in a statement.
Immigrant advocates criticized 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 Center, said it amounted to an “independent, unaccountable detention system.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
