President Donald Trump will be heading on Tuesday to “Alligator Alcatraz,” a detention facility in the Florida Everglades, as his administration goes all in on the project that’s sparked an outcry from environmental and civil rights groups
“There’s only one road leading in, and the only way out is a one-way flight. It is isolated and surrounded by dangerous wildlife and unforgiving terrain,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday. “This is an efficient and low-cost way to help carry out the largest mass deportation campaign in American history.”
The facility was set up in roughly one week, per NBC News, by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration, and was the idea of state Attorney General James Uthmeier. Uthmeier has said he proposed the location — an airstrip that was once intended to be the world’s largest airport until environmental concerns and local activism halted it — because of the surrounding wildlife.
“It presents an efficient, low-cost opportunity to build a temporary detention facility because you don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter,” Uthmeier said, according to ABC News. “If people get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons.”
Trending
The alligators were a selling point for DeSantis, too.
“Clearly, from a security perspective, if someone escapes, you know, there’s a lot of alligators,” he said, according to The Associated Press. “No one’s going anywhere.”
Leavitt said the facility will have up to 5,000 beds “to house, process and deport criminal illegal aliens.”
The facility has been the subject of protests, including hundreds of people lining the U.S. highway that cuts through the Everglades, due to concerns about environmental degradation. Environmental protection group Friends of the Everglades also sent DeSantis and Uthmeier a letter asking them to reverse course, writing construction would “inflict significant damage on the Everglades ecosystem.”
The group also joined with the Center for Biological Diversity to file a federal lawsuit in an effort to halt the project, calling for an environmental review and a chance for public comment.
“This scheme is not only cruel, it threatens the Everglades ecosystem that state and federal taxpayers have spent billions to protect,” Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.
—
Nuha Dolby is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
Author
