'Alligator Alcatraz': Florida's new detention centre for migrants in Everglades

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 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. As he pushed for a wall to keep migrants out, he urged officials to build it with spikes, razor wire and black paint to ensure that it would serve as a deterrent, the more terrifying-looking the better.

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, and it is looking for every way possible to help increase numbers.

The goal in Florida is to have 5,000 additional beds, spread out at the new facility and potentially other, smaller facilities as well.

It's not clear how quickly the new detention center can be built.

Mayor Daniella Levine Cava of Miami-Dade County said Monday that she wanted more time to evaluate the state's plans for the land.

"I understand there is an intention to begin work on the site as early as Monday," she wrote in a letter to the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which will have primary oversight of the facility.

"There has not been sufficient time to fully discuss these matters, and we thank you for your attention to these concerns given the rapid pace of the state's effort," Cava said.

But McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, 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.

Trump officials have been pushing Congress to help pay for more funding to expand detention capacity even further. Tom Homan, Trump's border czar, has said that the number of detention beds available will dictate the number of deportations that the administration will be able to hit this year.

"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."

Fleming added that there were a host of problems with the plan to hold migrants in tents at the airfield.

"The fact that the administration and its allies would even consider such a huge temporary facility," he said, "on such a short time line, with no obvious plan for how to adequately staff medical and other necessary services, in the middle of the Florida summer heat is demonstrative of their callous disregard for the health and safety of the human beings they intend to imprison there."

"It simply shocks the conscience," Fleming said.

Immigrants are typically held by ICE officials in private prisons and local jails that offer space in their facilities for a certain amount of money.

Florida officials are going a step further: building a detention center specifically for immigrants picked up by local authorities on behalf of the federal government. ICE could also use the facility to hold migrants picked up elsewhere in the country.

"I'm proud to help support President Trump and Secretary Noem in their mission to fix our illegal immigration problem once and for all," Uthmeier said in a statement. "Alligator Alcatraz and other Florida facilities will do just that."

The FEMA money will be drawn from a fund that was created during the Biden administration to pay organizations and local jurisdictions that help house and care for migrants going through the immigration court system in the United States.

The Trump administration criticized Biden's use of the money, particularly the funds that went toward helping New York City to care for migrants. Earlier this year, DHS took back $80 million from the grants. The city is suing to retrieve the money.