Trump flying down to open Florida's ‘Alligator Alcatraz' detention center Tuesday

Yahoo

9 hours ago

President Donald Trump is planning to visit a site in the Everglades where Florida officials want to detain migrants, which they have nicknamed 'Alligator Alcatraz.'
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis previewed the president's visit for the formal opening, saying the site 'will be ready for business' by Tuesday.
'What'll happen is you bring people in there. They ain't going anywhere once they're there, unless you want them to go somewhere, because good luck getting to civilization. So the security is amazing,' DeSantis said, hinting at the alligators that swim in the wetlands surrounding the abandoned airport site, approximately 45 miles from Miami.
DeSantis said he spoke with Trump over the weekend and announced the site obtained approval from the Department of Homeland Security last week. Secretary Kristi Noem will join Trump on the visit.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the trip during Monday's press briefing, calling the facility an efficient and low-cost way to help carry out the largest mass deportation campaign in American history.
The facility is located on a rarely used airstrip in Miami-Dade County that the DeSantis administration seized through emergency powers to establish a housing center for undocumented migrants.
DeSantis issued an emergency order focused on immigration early in 2023, and he has since extended it multiple times. The measure grants him significant authority to take actions, such as seizing land.
Local political leaders in Miami-Dade County have opposed using the airstrip for a detention center.
The facility was set up in just a week and is expected to have 5,000 immigrant detention beds. NBC News reports that the estimated annual cost for the facility is $450 million.
State Attorney General James Uthmeier, DeSantis' former chief of staff and one of his top political advisers, conceived the idea.
The scheme was praised by Noem, who said the department has been looking to expand immigration detention capacity. She has been reviewing contracts that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has with various vendors for detention beds.
'The ones with some of the vendors that we had, I felt were way too expensive, and that those vendors were not giving us fair prices and so I went directly to states and to ask them if they could do a better job providing this service,' she said in an interview with The Associated Press.
She said the department has been reaching out to states and companies that aren't regular ICE contractors to see whether they can provide the detention space the department needs at a better price.
'We really are looking for people that want to help drive down the cost but still provide a very high level of detention facility,' Noem said.
Environmental groups sued to block the plan Friday, arguing it could have devastating effects on the Everglades.
'The site is more than 96% wetlands, surrounded by Big Cypress National Preserve, and is habitat for the endangered Florida panther and other iconic species,' Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Florida Everglades, among the groups suing, said in a statement.
'This scheme is not only cruel, it threatens the Everglades ecosystem that state and federal taxpayers have spent billions to protect.'
Hundreds of people protested against the construction of the facility on Saturday.