‘Alligator Alcatraz': Visit to new detention centre shows pleasure some Republicans derive from inflicting cruelty on immigrants
Who says
Ron DeSantis
does not have a sense of humour? Last year, the Florida governor was
Donald Trump
's favourite whipping boy, verbally bludgeoned and outsmarted during his insipid run for the Republican presidential nomination.
Now, he is virtually best in class, as he showed when he took a Fox News host around his pride and joy: Alligator Alcatraz.
What was a seldom-used air strip about 90km into the Everglades west of Miami City has, in jig time, been transformed into an immigration processing centre.
It will act as the final stop for undocumented people – or 'illegals' as is the official term of the Republican administration – before they are flown back to wherever they came from – or the next closest thing.
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Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Photograph: Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich/EPA
DeSantis ditched the suit and wore a black shirt and shades, going for detention centre chic as he hosted his tour. The curious thing is that this latest system of cost-effective cruelty seemed to have liberated the Floridian from his staggeringly wooden campaigning persona.
In the swampy Ochopee heat, he was positively charming as he showed Steve Doocy around the centre. He made sure to point out that there will be air-conditioning, sanitary facilities, food and all of that good stuff.
'When you want to have deportation of illegal aliens there's a process the DHS [department of homeland security] has to go through to vet, to process, to stage 'em for removal,' he said. 'We've got jails and our sheriffs and police are working and the state of Florida is all in on president [Donald] Trump's measure. But that's not enough- there needs to be more ability to intake and then deport. This answers that.'
There may be a kind of brutal rationale behind the system but the giveaway was contained within the casual differentiating phrase: ''em'.
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DeSantis said that about '750,000 illegals' have already received deportation orders from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) across the country. About 150,000 are in Florida and it is impossible to use the regular prisons as they are needed for 'non-illegals, as they commit crimes too.'
But the unique selling point of the Everglades centre is that wild nature will keep 'em penned in.
'This is as secure as it gets,' De Santis said triumphantly.
'If a criminal alien were to escape from here somehow, and I don't think they will, you've got nowhere to go. What are you going to do? Trudge through the swamp and dodge alligators just to get through 50 or 60 miles back to civilisation? All you need is a little bus to move 'em about 2,000 feet that way. They get on a plane and they're gone.'
And it's more than just alligators – the area is the natural habitat of panthers, bobcats and other terrifying wildlife.
An American alligator resting in the shallow warers of the Everglades in Florida. Photograph: Alamy/PA
'I love the whole concept,' purred Laura Ingraham when De Santis appeared on her show while explaining it to her viewers.
'It's this new migrant detention centre in the Everglades- as long as the Everglades aren't touched! Cos I love them too.'
The most dismal aspect of the entire enterprise is the undisguised and unashamed gleefulness with which key administration officials and its broadcast echo chambers discuss the mass deportation policy.
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It's as if the whole thing is a gas, reminiscent of a famous James Bond scene. Roger Moore, marooned on a tiny bank in an alligator swamp while attired in a Savile Row suit, adjusts his tie to acknowledge his sketchy predicament. He then waits until the gathering reptiles align and nimbly hopscotches across their scaly backs to safety.
It was one of the most notorious stunt scenes in Hollywood history; none of the regular teams would take it on so the alligator park owner did it himself.
The human fear and awe of alligators, with their weird combination of sleepiness and murderous intent, is universal. And the imaginative optics feed into the Republican delight at the prospect of these reptiles standing as unpaid sentries to the thousands of desperate people whose final experience of the US will be a few nights in a tent in the Everglades.
Federal agents patrol the halls of immigration court at the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building in New York City. Photograph: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
It's not enough to merely haul them out of their subterranean lives – as has happened with Madonna Kashanian, a 64-year-old Iranian woman who had lived in New Orleans for 47 years before being lifted by Ice while gardening outside her house.
This is hardly the profile of the rampaging murderous immigrants Trump campaigned on, nor the dog-eating outsiders vice-president JD Vance warned against.
But no matter. You have the paper work, or you don't. The border policy has been the great, uncomplicated success story of Trump's second term. He promised to stop the rush of undocumented people across the southern border and his team has done just that.
They have targeted criminal gangs and operatives and justifiably claim to have made US streets safer. Tom Homan, the 'Border Tzar', has made it clear that this is just a numbers game. There is little room for human empathy.
But the ill-disguised pleasure derived at inflicting maximum cruelty and humiliation on tens of thousands of people, who at the very least are enduring a kind of private despair, will generate a backlash.
It could become the issue to bite the Trump administration back.
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RTÉ News
an hour ago
- RTÉ News
Bombs away - what happens in the aftermath of US attack on Iran?
You can actually understand why Donald Trump was a bit miffed about the public (i.e. media) reaction to last weekend's bombing raid on Iran. It actually was an astonishing feat of arms. Don't get me wrong - there absolutely is a need to critically review that operation, and the US media has mostly done the job it's supposed to: examine the official version, to see how public money is spent. And be in no doubt - this one cost billions. And academics and think tankers did what they are supposed to do: think deeply on the consequences of the action. The various intelligence services did what they are supposed to do too: coldly assess information that the public does not have access to and report the line to political bosses. Sometimes that stuff gets leaked - for all sorts of reasons. So yes, we'll do a little bit of critical analysis of our own later. But first - the mission. The details and the background are useful in assessing the usefulness or otherwise of the US intervention against Iran. Apparently, it's the first time the US has ever directly gone into battle on the Israeli side. That in itself is remarkable, all the more so as the president campaigned on the promise of not allowing the US to be dragged into foreign wars. Yet dragged in, it was. And rather rapidly. Lots of people in America pointed that out. And questioned the efficacy of the raid. That didn't please the president, who took it personally and his administration went on the offensive personally - targeting named reporters from a number of outlets, including CNN and Fox News. At the NATO summit on Wednesday, he posted 28 times on social media complaining about the coverage. He also accused the media of disrespecting the bomber crews and other military who took part and downplayed the difficulty of the operation (in fact the media coverage did neither, but hey). Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth went on the warpath on behalf of his boss, losing the last shreds of his coolness and composure at an ill-tempered press conference on Thursday, even denouncing a one-time colleague at Fox News by name (the reporter in question is a very highly-regarded 18-year veteran of the Pentagon beat). How was the mission was carried out? But back to the mission. The highlight of that news conference on Thursday was the presentation by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Dan Caine, who gave a lot more of the background to the mission. And it goes a long way to explain the presidential umbrage of the previous days. General Caine revealed that the bombing raid on Fordow was not something whistled up in a week by order of the Commander in Chief (let alone cogged from the plot of Top Gun: Maverick). It was in fact a hugely-costly, incredibly-complex operation that has been fifteen years in the making. He told us about the Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), a little-known annex of the Pentagon that is based in Fort Belvoir in North Virginia. Back in 2009 a DTRA officer was "brought into a vault at an undisclosed location and briefed on something going on in Iran", according to Genral Caine's account. "He was shown some photos and some highly classified intelligence on what looked like a major construction project in the mountains of Iran. He was tasked to study this facility, work with the intelligence community to understand it, and he was soon joined by an additional teammate." These two individuals immersed themselves in what is now known to the world at the Fordow nuclear facility. "For more than 15 years, this officer and his teammate lived and breathed this single target: Fordow, a critical element of Iran's nuclear weapons program," General Caine said. "He watched the Iranians dig it out. He watched the construction, the weather, the discard material, the geology, the construction materials, where the materials came from. "He looked at the vent shaft, the exhaust shaft, the electrical systems, the environmental control systems—every nook, every crater, every piece of equipment going in, and every piece of equipment going out." Pretty soon they realised that the US didn't have a weapon capable of destroying such a facility. Which of course is the point of burying it deep under a mountain. So, the DTRA officers set about getting one that might do the job. Which is how the US ended up with the "Bunker Busters", the 13 tonne bombs also known as Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), or the more prosaic official designation, GBU-57. General Caine revealed the MOP has been in development since 2004, but the Iran mission focused minds and sprang resources. The top military advisor to the President revealed the massive investment in developing the technology: "In the beginning of its development, we had so many PhDs working on the MOP program doing modeling and simulation that we were quietly and in a secret way the biggest users of supercomputer hours within the United States of America." "They tested it over and over again, tried different options, tried more after that. They accomplished hundreds of test shots and dropped many full-scale weapons against extremely realistic targets for a single purpose: kill this target at the time and place of our nation's choosing," the General said, and showed video of one of those tests. And that is the only video we have seen so far. A skeptical public is asking why haven't they seen video of the actual raid yet? No doubt the Pentagon wants to keep as much of its secrets as it can, at least until it thinks there is little an adversary can gain from its release (we are still not getting colour images of past bombings, because the military likes to strip out details). But with pilots in following planes reporting explosions "as bright as daylight", no doubt the public would like to see it too. After all they paid for it. And judging by General Caine's backgrounder, it didn't come cheap. Estimated development cost of the MOP was about half a billion dollars, with another $400 million in production contracts. No wonder the US is reported to possess only 20 or 30 of these bunker busters. Now minus the 14 used last weekend. So, America has used either half or two thirds of its stash of bunker busters in just one raid. Then there is the cost of the flying bit. The B2 bombers flew a 37-hour round trip from an airbase in Missouri, pretty much in the middle of the US. And it's the hourly flying cost of planes that are the thing to watch. For the B2, the Pentagon reports it costs about $65,000 an hour. That works out about $2.4 million per bomber. And there were seven of them, so that's $16 million and change. "So, for technical brilliance in the art of aerial warfare, this mission was amazing." In all, there were 125 aircraft of different sorts on the raid, ranging from a fleet of refueling tankers (modified versions of big passenger planes) to F-35 fighters, which cost $42,000 per hour to operate. (President Trump also said the F-22, Americas most advanced fighter also took part: the plane, which is not available to any US allies, costs a reported $80,000 per hour to operate). General Caine said the analysts had identified two ventilation shafts at the Fordow site as being possible vulnerabilities that the bunker busters could use to get down to the underground factory where the Iranians are presumed to have operated centrifuges to enrich uranium. This immediately set off some movie-related memes, as people recalled the plot of Star Wars. In fact, it was closer to Top Gun Maverick: "miracle one and miracle two", blowing a concrete cover off the ventilation shafts, then dropping the munition down the shaft, with a fuse set to detonate up to 100 metres below ground. But unlike Top Gun, the bombers dropped not one, but five bunker busters down each of the two main ventilation shafts. That's five, 13 tonne, bombs, dropped from 13 kilometres up, entering a concrete tunnel a few metres wide. In two locations. Just think about that. For contrast, consider the World War Two-era B-17 "Flying Fortress", each of which carried about four tonnes of bombs, only 20% of which fell within 300 metres of their targets. So, for technical brilliance in the art of aerial warfare, this mission was amazing. That said, the key point of the criticism remains valid too: we don't know much about the impact of this mission on Iran's nuclear programme. Even behind closed doors briefings for Senators and Congressmen on Thursday by General Caine and the head of the CIA left us (and them) none the wiser. Party politics dominated the public comments afterwards: For Democrat Senator Chris Murphy, the raid has set back the Iranians by as little as three months: for Republican Senator Linsey Graham, its set the programme back many years. Only President Trump and his political acolytes are using the word "obliterated", which is not a term of art used by military or intelligence professionals to formally describe the kinetic effects of ordinance. What's next for Iran? Pete Hegseth, the Defence Secretary, was right when he said the only way to know for sure is to get out a shovel and dig at Fordow. Which the Iranians may well do. If they find their structural defences worked as planned, and protected their stockpile of uranium presumed to be stored there, then they could get back in the nuclear game relatively quickly - if only to develop a so called "dirty bomb" to spread radioactive dust around an enemy city, contaminating rather than destroying it. The big question for the Iranians is do they want to? Just as America has spent a fortune to incapacitate the Iranian nuclear programme, so too has Iran spent a much bigger fortune to start and sustain that programme. And to fortify it in underground sites like Fordow cost vast amounts of money (there is another site, in somewhere called by Western Intelligence "Pickaxe Mountain", where another suspicious underground facility was reportedly close to coming into use in recent weeks). On his recent trip to the Middle East, President Trump took time to contrast the discontents of ordinary Iranians with the apparently more lavish lives of the Arab nations on the south side of the Persian Gulf. While one oil rich state spent its liquid gold on nuclear weapons and funding proxy forces in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen - the other oil rich states behaved like oil rich states, and built glittering towers, bought football teams and tried to shift their economies (and their populations future prosperity) beyond oil and into new technologies. Mr Trump held out the prospect of a similar boost to lifestyles and aspirations for the Iranians - but only if they give up their nuclear ambitions and stop trying to subvert neighbouring states. He didn't call for regime change – no American officials have. But they must hope that ordinary Iranians, having witnessed forty years of the Islamic Republic's policy and billions of dollars in investments go up in smoke, will balk at the idea of just picking up and starting over with the same plan. "Tehran may be forced to accept negotiated restrictions on its nuclear programme." Of course, the most dangerous time for any repressive regime is when it starts to change, which inevitably means loosening its grip on society. Which may explain why Iran's supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is in no hurry to enter talks with the Americans on what happens next. President Trump would like to begin talks next month, presumably picking up where his envoy Steve Witkoff left off. Much as he might wish it, it probably won't turn out to be that easy. Amir Asmar, a former Middle East analyst for the US Department of Defence and now a scholar with the foreign policy think tank The Atlantic council, has outlined three scenarios for the Iranians, based on how much of their programme survived the Fordow raid. In the first scenario, if the Fordow complex and its cascade of centrifuges - the machines that enrich the uranium to weapons grade - are damaged and not functional, Tehran may be forced to accept negotiated restrictions on its nuclear programme. But if much of the machinery emerges unscathed, then in Asmar's view "nothing short of endangering the regime itself would cause Tehran's present leaders to permanently abandon decades of commitment to an indigenous nuclear programme". Hence his conclusion that a partially damaged Fordow will only trigger at best a pause – in both Iran's nuclear programme, and in Israel's efforts to smash it. Further attacks, he feels, would be inevitable, with or without US involvement. In a second scenario, Asmar posits the total destruction of Fordow, with none of its highly enriched uranium stock surviving. In this case he thinks the Iranian leaders would calculate they cannot benefit from holding out in nuclear talks because it would take many years (and tens of billions in oil revenues) to reconstitute the programme, and its ballistic weapons programme, which has also been badly smashed up. And as everybody is watching, any efforts to restart the programmes would probably be easily spotted and would probably lead to Israeli raids at the very least. He says compliance would require even more intrusive monitoring by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran considers withdrawing from Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty That agency's head, Rafael Grossi, said the centrifuge machines at Fordow and elsewhere are "extremely vibration-sensitive", and given the huge explosive effects unleashed by the B2 Raid, "very significant damage is expected to have occurred". But Iran's parliament has already begun steps to end Iran's membership of the IAEA and prevent the inspections that come with it. Iran is also considering withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which commits signatories to not acquire nuclear weapons, and subjects them to IAEA inspection in return for access to nuclear technology for energy and other peaceful purposes. Although Iran's extensive development of nuclear facilities that go far beyond peaceful means suggest it was not adhering to the NPT anyway (enriching uranium to 60% is far beyond the needs of a nuclear energy programme), the treaty has other practical uses. It provided the legal justification necessary for the UN Security Council's sanctions on Iran. Without the NPT Iran's only legal barrier to developing a nuke would be Ayatollah Khamenei's fatwa against it. Iran could easily leave the NPT and develop a bomb without the prying eyes of the IAEA. "The long-term prospects for regional security and stability would be destroyed." Writing in The Atlantic magazine, Thomas Wright, who served as senior director of strategic planning at the National Security Council during the Biden Administration, claimed this was the main problem with the Presidents insistence that the Iranian nuclear programme had been "obliterated". "Trump could have managed that risk by telling the public that although the strikes appeared to have been successful, fully ascertaining their results would take time. "He could then have insisted on a week-long cease-fire for the purpose of concluding a diplomatic agreement with Iran - one that would have insisted on limits to Iran's nuclear programme and continued access for the IAEA, whose inspectors remain in Iran but have not been admitted into nuclear sites. "Given the likely damage done to the programme, he could have afforded to stop short of demanding full dismantlement and settled instead for strict limits on enrichment, as well as round-the-clock inspections with no expiration date. "But Trump took a very different path by declaring the problem fully solved and not using the moment of leverage to extract commitments from Tehran. Tensions between Washington and Jerusalem seem all but inevitable in the aftermath of this choice," he wrote. The danger of a half-done job - or worse, scarcely inflicting any damage at all - is that Iran's Supreme leader decides to go for broke, speeding up development of an A-Bomb and detonating one - to show adversaries Iran is in the nuclear club and deter future attackers. The long-term prospects for regional security and stability would be destroyed. From Gaza to Yemen, Kurdistan to Afghanistan the likelihood of a grand bargain to bring peace to this most troubled of regions would slip further away. This is precisely the opposite of what the attacks were intended to achieve. No wonder the effectiveness of the raid has been such a touchy subject for the President. There may be a ceasefire - but now what?
Irish Times
2 hours ago
- Irish Times
US is again betting that installing ‘our sonuvabitch' will neutralise an adversary. It never does
In the surreal world of Donald Trump and Binyamin Netanyahu , war starts and ends on social media, with the flick of a post on Truth Social. Midnight Hammer, the name chosen by Washington for its June 22nd bombing raids on Iran , might have been better suited to a porn film. Everything in Sheriff Trump's wild west is oversized – the world's most expensive warplanes delivered the world's heaviest ordnance on the world's longest bombing raid constituting 'ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MILITARY STRIKES IN HISTORY'. Except it wasn't. In his inaugural address last January, Trump gave the impression he had learned from past errors, promising to 'measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end – and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into'. If Trump were capable of contemplation, he might ask himself why, roughly every 20 years, Israel and the US attempt to remake the Middle East, with catastrophic consequences. A brief reminder of past misadventures: READ MORE June 1982 Israel invades Lebanon with the goal of stopping attacks by the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Hundreds of Israeli soldiers and tens of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians are killed. Israeli occupation forces remain in much of the country for 18 years, until they are driven out in humiliation by Hizbullah, an Iranian-backed Shia Muslim militia. March 2003 The US invades Iraq with the goal of destroying Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and more than 4,000 US troops are killed during the invasion, ensuing civil war and eight-year occupation, which costs more than $3 trillion. Iran becomes the main power in Iraq. June 13th, 2025 Binyamin Netanyahu begins bombing Iran, on the dubious pretext that Iran is about to make a nuclear weapon. Israel has never owned up to owning hundreds of nuclear warheads that it has never submitted for inspection. Trump, who doesn't follow through on his own ultimatums to Vladimir Putin , waits only three days of a two-week grace period before dropping 14 30,000-pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs, or MOPs, on Iranian nuclear sites. Trump calls Iran 'the world's No 1 state sponsor of terror'. But these days, it is Trump's buddies, Putin and Netanyahu, who practise state terror against Ukraine and Gaza. If there really were no other way to spare the world from a hypothetical Iranian bomb, one might have concluded – as German chancellor Friedrich Merz did in an obscene remark – that Israel was 'doing our dirty work for us', or 'Drecksarbeit', as he put it. Nato secretary general Mark Rutte also praised the illegal attacks . Under Trump, the West has lost its moral compass. Painstaking negotiations, not brute force, are the only way to defuse a nuclear threat. Diplomacy achieved the 2015 accord known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action treaty (JCPOA) , which Iran abided by until Trump discarded the agreement at Netanyahu's urging. It was Netanyahu who commissioned the 1996 Clean Break report advocating the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, upon which US neocons based the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This month's war on Iran was reportedly inspired by Restoring Deterrence: Destabilising the Iranian Regime, a study by the British academic researcher Barak Seener, published by a rightwing think tank in London. The belief that we can neutralise an adversary by installing 'our sonuvabitch' is a dangerous, recurring delusion. In 1982 Israel and the US attempted to impose the soon-to-be slain Maronite militia leader Bachir Gemayel to lead Lebanon. In 2003 the US groomed Ahmad Chalabi , a corrupt banker who propagated the myth of Saddam's WMDs, for Baghdad. Now Israel dreams of restoring the Pahlavi dynasty, 46 years after the late Shah and his family were driven out by Islamic revolution. The Shah's son, Reza Pahlavi, now aged 64, visited Jerusalem with his mother Farah Diba at the invitation of the Israeli Likud cabinet minister Gila Gamliel in 2023. 'The Iranian people love Israel, and they want the Ayatollah regime to be replaced,' Gamaliel told the Jerusalem Post in March. Trump harbours the same fantasy: 'It's not politically correct to use the term 'Regime Change,' but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime Change??? MIGA!!!' he posted on Truth Social. On June 23rd Reza Pahlavi predicted at a press conference in Paris that the Tehran regime would fall this year. Israel's heritage minister, Amihai Eliyahu of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, said , 'The fact that we are co-operating with the opposition in Iran today is a blessing.' After an estimated 800 Iranians and 30 Israelis were killed, Trump blithely congratulated his Israeli allies and the country he had just bombed for their 'Stamina, Courage, and Intelligence'. Hours later he lashed out at both for apparent ceasefire violations, saying they 'don't know what the f*** they are doing.' Trump flew to The Hague, where he was feted by royalty and fawned over by Nato's secretary general. Thirty-one of Nato's 32 member states – only Spain's socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, objected – caved in to Trump's long-time demand that they devote 5 per cent of GDP to defence. And those extra hundreds of billions had better be spent on US hardware. There was not a squeak of criticism for Russia's assault on Ukraine, because Trump hates it when you insult his buddies. He denounced corruption charges against Netanyahu as 'a witch hunt'. Trump directed his venom at 'FAKE NEWS CNN, TOGETHER WITH THE FAILING NEW YORK TIMES' for reporting preliminary findings by the US Defence Intelligence Agency that 12 days of sound and fury had delayed Iran's nuclear programme by at best a few months. CIA director John Ratcliffe flew to Trump's rescue, insisting that Operation Midnight Hammer set back Iran's nuclear programme by years. We segued from the verge of a third world war into farce, with Trump, Netanyahu and Iran's supreme leader all claiming victory. Trump and Netanyahu must learn there is no such thing as a quick fix in the Middle East. We've come full circle to the original dilemma: negotiations or a new forever war.
Irish Times
3 hours ago
- Irish Times
Wall Street gets the chills in New York's ‘hot commie summer'
Wall Street is, to put it mildly, not keen on the prospect of a socialist mayor of New York. It's 'officially hot commie summer', said billionaire money manager Dan Loeb. 'Socialism has no place in the economic capital of our country,' said hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, warning an exodus of wealthy taxpayers could cost New York up to $10 billion. Young people will get a 'refresher on the outcome of Marxism', said Bitcoin billionaire Tyler Winklevoss. 'Suicide by mayor,' said investment strategist Jim Bianco. Their target? Zohran Mamdani , the democratic socialist now favoured to become New York's next mayor. READ MORE Mamdani's plans include rent freezes, free childcare, free buses and public grocery stores, funded by tax hikes on the wealthy. Much of his wish list requires state approval, and Governor Kathy Hochul has already rejected proposed tax hikes. Still, the symbolism alone has unnerved the moneyed classes. Billionaire doomsaying isn't new. Investors made similar threats about leaving New York when Bill de Blasio ran in 2001, only to stay put once he was elected. Mamdani is clearly further left, and his rhetoric is fierier. Nevertheless, for all the talk of leaving for Florida or Texas, New York still offers what they can't: density, talent, infrastructure and prestige. Wall Street may squirm in this ideologically hostile summer, but flight may be harder than fury.
