Florida building ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ as Trump ramps up deportations
Remote detention facility to house up to 5,000 migrants, who will have ‘nowhere to go’
Florida has started construction of a temporary migrant detention facility dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” due to its remote location at an airfield in the Everglades, a vast subtropical wetland teeming with alligators, crocodiles and pythons.
Footage aired by a local NBC affiliate showed the start of construction on the site, which will feature large tents to house migrants and trailers for staff. The facility will have minimal security due to the natural barriers provided by the surrounding inhospitable marshy grasslands.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has compared it to the former maximum-security prison on Alcatraz Island off the coast of San Francisco.
“We don’t need to build a lot of brick and mortar,” Uthmeier said in an interview with conservative media commentator Benny Johnson. “And thankfully, Mother Nature does a lot on the perimeter.”
“There’s really nowhere to go. If you’re housed there, if you’re detained there, there’s no way in, no way out,” Uthmeier added.
US President Donald Trump, a Republican, has sought to ramp up the detention and deportation of migrants, saying it was needed after millions crossed the border illegally under Democrat Joe Biden.