President Donald Trump traveled to the southern tip of Florida and took office in a new immigration detention facility called Alligator Alcatraz.
On Tuesday, Trump joined Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Homeland Security Secretary Christie Noem at a remote facility in a vast wetland area known as the Everglades.
“This is what you need,” Trump said. “Many bodyguards and many cops in the shape of crocodiles.”
The president then said of the danger: “I wouldn’t want to run the Everglades for too long.”
Built on the grounds of Ochopee’s former Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, the facility is designed to address the need for more beds and the need to increase the space to run a campaign to expel Trump’s U.S. deportation campaign.
State Attorney General James Usmierer first announced Florida’s “Crocodile Alcatraz” two weeks ago, featuring rock music that plagued and pulsed alligators in the hopes of highlighting the ban on facilities by sharing videos on social media.
“This 30 square miles [78sq-km] The area is completely surrounded by Everglades. It offers efficient, low-cost opportunities to build temporary detention facilities because there is no need to invest so much in the boundary line,” Uthmeier said.
“If people go outside, there’s not much waiting for them except for crocodiles and pythons. They can’t go anywhere. They’re not hiding anywhere.”
The nickname draws from the lore surrounding the Alcatraz Federal Prison, the largest isolated security detention center built on a rocky island in the middle of California’s San Francisco Bay. The facility, which has been closed since 1963, has gained an inevitable reputation, but in fact there were five escapes whose fate remains unknown.
“That could be as good as the real Alcatraz site,” Trump said Tuesday of the Florida site. “That’s also creepy. It’s a difficult site.”
Alcatraz has long been a source of appeal for Trump. Trump meditated earlier this year on the reopening of his San Francisco facility despite concerns about costs and feasibility.
Similarly, the Alligator Alcatraz facility urged criticism of its impact on human rights, its location in the environmentally sensitive landscape, and its proximity to the Indigenous communities of Mikkoski and Seminoles.
However, the Trump administration has been accepting the place as a selling point as it seeks to take a strong stance on immigration.
“There is only one road that continues, and the only way is one way. It is isolated and surrounded by dangerous wildlife in unrelenting terrain,” White House spokesperson Caroline Leavitt said Monday.
“It’s an efficient and low-cost way to help run the biggest deportation campaign in American history.”
In a baseball cap that read “American Bay: yet another Trump development,” Trump flew to O’Copy and inspected the Wannial Catraz facility on the first day.
Florida officials are celebrating the fact that it only took eight days to set up a detention center. The detention center appears to be using temporary structures to pave the old airport.
Gov. DeSantis, who played against Trump in 2024 for the Republican presidential nomination, said Wannial Catraz would use the adjacent runway to promote rapid deportation of immigrants.
“I said they’ve already been ordered to be deported,” DeSantis told reporters Tuesday.
“You drive them 2,000 feet [667 metres] On the runway. And they were gone. This is a one-stop shop and this airport has been here for a long time and is a completely safe place. ”
Kevin Guthrie, head of the Florida Department of Emergency Management, added that the facility is equipped to hold up to 3,000 immigrants from the initial estimate of 1,000 people.
Another 2,000 people will be held at Camp Branding, a National Guard base on the other side of the state in northern Florida.
The poster on display at Trump’s press conference at Ochopee promoted 1,000 staff members, over 200 security cameras and 28,000 feet (8,500 meters) of barbed wire on site.
Guthrie tried to dispel concerns that the facility could be vulnerable to natural disasters such as hurricanes. After all, the Everglades collect overflows from nearby Lake Okechechobee and drain that water into Florida Bay, making it a natural flood-prone area.
“Like all state correctional facilities, there is a hurricane plan,” Guthrie said, pointing out the “complete aluminum frame structure” of the detention center.
He said it can withstand winds up to 110 mph (177 kph), the equivalent of a Category 2 hurricane.
“Overall, teacher,” Guthrie told Trump.
Still, human rights advocates and environmental groups gathered on the highway, which on Tuesday led to Wannial Catraz, showing opposition to Trump and his deportation plan.
The protesters chanted through the megaphone. Some picket signs say, “Community, not cages” and “I say no to Wannial Catraz!”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Florida issued a statement before the facility was opened, denounced the Trump administration for confusing immigration with criminality.
He said that the creation of Crocodile Alcatraz is an extension of that idea.
The name “Alligator Alcatraz” reflects the intention to build dangerous criminals of people who try to escape difficulties and build better lives for themselves and their families.
Meanwhile, friends from the Everglades, an environmental group, have called on supporters to contact Governor DeSantis to oppose the “large detention center.” It noted that nearly 50 years ago, the construction of the airport itself raised similar environmental concerns.
“The land surrounded by Everglades National Park and the Big Cypress National Reserve is part of one of the most vulnerable ecosystems in the country,” the group said in a statement.
“The message is clear. There are no airports. There are no rock mines. There are no prisons. Only the Everglades. Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the past. This land deserves lasting protection.”
However, Trump claimed at a press conference Tuesday that the construction was primarily built at existing airports.
“I don’t think you did anything to the Everglades,” he said. He turned to Governor DeSantis. “I think you’re just strengthening it.”
DeSantis himself sidelined environmental criticism in an attempt to derail the president’s deportation initiative.
“I don’t think these are valid or even honest criticisms, because they have no effect on the Everglades at all,” the governor said.
Trump suggested that the Alligator Alcatraz site could be the first of many similar state-led immigration detention facilities.
“We want to see them in a lot of states — so many states,” he said. “At some point, they might transform into a system where you keep it for a long time.”
