Latest news with #swamp
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Video: Trump shows off alligator-dodging skills as he tours new 'Alligator Alcatraz' ICE detention facility
Alligator Alcatraz, the controversial new ICE detention center in Florida, is now open. President Trump toured the site on Tuesday with Kristi Noem. The controversial detention facility was spearheaded by state Republican leaders and garnered its nickname due to its location: it sits about 37 miles from Miami in the middle of a swamp surrounded by snakes and alligators - and in an area of the state that is prone to hurricanes. Democrats railed against the facility and environmental groups have sued to try and stop its opening. The $450 million-per-year detention facility, which will be able to hold up to 3,000 undocumented immigrants, was built in just seven days. There are only tents and trailers - no brick-or-mortar buildings. It was constructed on land belonging to Miami-Dade County and seized by state officials over local leaders' objections. It sits next to an 11,000 foot airstrip. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the runway is to quickly fly immigrants out of America.
The Independent
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
DHS secretary praises Florida's 'Alligator Alcatraz' plan as agency expands immigration detention
The Homeland Security secretary is praising Florida for coming forward with an idea that's been dubbed 'Alligator Alcatraz' because it would house immigration detainees in a facility being built in a Florida swamp. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the department has been looking to expand immigration detention capacity, and she has been reviewing contracts 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 as her Latin America trip wound down late Thursday. She said the department has been reaching out to states or companies who aren't regular ICE contractors to see whether they're able to 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,' she said. Noem said Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier brought this particular idea to the department. 'They were willing to build it and do it much quicker than what some of the other vendors were. And it was a real solution that we'll be able to utilize if we need to,' she said. Noem said they evaluated the contract and it 'made sense.' As the Trump administration has dramatically ramped up immigration enforcement around the country as part of its mass deportation effort, the number of people in ICE detention has swelled. ICE detention facilities are currently holding more than 56,000 immigrants in June, the most since 2019. Florida officials have dubbed the facility that they're building in the remote and ecologically sensitive wetland about 45 miles (72 kilometers) west of downtown Miami as 'Alligator Alcatraz." The facility located at an isolated Everglades airfield surrounded by mosquito-, python- and alligator-filled swamplands is just days away from being operational. The detention facility is the latest effort by Florida to assist in President Trump's mass deportation agenda. Noem said some of the ICE detention contracts put in place under her predecessor, Alejandro Mayorkas, were for 10-15 years. 'That's insane to me. If we do our job correctly, we shouldn't be doing this 15 years from now,' she said. The detention contracts were among a range of subjects Noem spoke about with the Associated Press during an interview in Guatemala City on the tail end of her four-country tour through Central America. Noem made stops in Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Guatemala. Here are some of the other highlights of the conversation: Signing security agreements Noem said that President Trump 'encouraged' her to visit countries in Central America that have historically been points of origin for many migrants to the United States and 'get more security agreements or to finalize ones' where discussions had already started — and to 'get them across the finish line.' She praised Honduras for being 'much more of a partner' than in the past and said that they had signed a safe third country agreement with Honduras, calling it a 'big win from this trip.' She said Guatemala on Thursday also agreed to be a safe third country. The agreements expand the Trump administration's efforts to provide the U.S. government flexibility in returning migrants not only to their own countries, but also to third countries as it attempts to ramp up deportations. 'We've never believed that the United States should be the only option, that the guarantee for a refugee is that they go somewhere to be safe and to be protected from whatever threat they face in their country," she said. 'It doesn't necessarily have to be the United States.' Noem said those agreements were something the administration has been working on 'for months' but they weren't happening 'until we came here.' 'We've been putting a lot of pressure on them to finalize those agreements,' she said. 'And both of those countries did, which is great.' Both governments denied having signed safe third-country agreements when asked following Noem's comments. Noem had said Thursday that 'politically, this is a difficult agreement for their governments to do.' Both countries have limited resources and many needs making support for asylum-seekers from other countries a tougher sell domestically. There are also the optics of two left-of-center governments appearing to help the Trump administration limit access to U.S. asylum. Noem also signed an agreement with Guatemala on Thursday that establishes a Joint Security Program under which U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers would work with the Guatemala government to improve border security in Guatemala. Under the agreement, CBP officers will be stationed at the country's international airport and possibly other airports in the future to assist the Guatemalan government in identifying travelers who might be involved in terrorism or other crimes or pose a threat to Guatemala by smuggling contraband or currency in or out of the country. 'America's strongest partners' Noem said both Costa Rica and Guatemala want to partner with the United States. 'Guatemala and Costa Rica, I feel like, are competing for this a little bit. They both want to be America's strongest partners,' she said. Costa Rica specifically wants U.S. help in its efforts to screen every person or package coming into the country, she said. Noem said Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves isn't asking the U.S. to pay for the technology or equipment but instead wants help negotiating with private companies to get Costa Rica what it needs. The partnership is different in Guatemala, though. There, Noem said, the government wants American help in going after drug cartels. Speaking of her talks with Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo, she said he had specific requests during their meeting Thursday designed to help Guatemala target cartels. 'He wants us to help support him in going after them because they're seeing a big increase in drug usage here in this country,' she said. She said Panama, which is home to the economically crucial Panama Canal, has been a 'priority of this administration.' The country is also a key part of the migration route from South America to the United States. In recent years, hundreds of thousands of migrants have traversed the treacherous Darien Gap connecting Panama and Colombia. Although that traffic started to fall last year under the Biden administration and dwindled to nothing after Trump took office, Noem said during her time in Panama they discussed how to sustain that drop. But she was critical of Panama when it came to information-sharing: 'That country has worked with us, but it hasn't been our greatest partner I would say as far as sharing information."
CBS News
6 days ago
- CBS News
Body camera video shows police rescue man from Massachusetts swamp after 7 hours
Police body camera video shows the successful rescue of a young man who was stranded in a swampy area of Somerset, Massachusetts on Sunday. This was a tall task for police, working in difficult terrain to bring the 19-year-old home before the heat wave. Time was against police who pushed through thick swampy reeds and waist deep wetlands. The wild scene played out on police body cam video as officer Brenan Cardoza rushed to rescue a young man stranded in the swamps for about seven hours. But there was a sigh of relief from the 19-year-old when police reached him. "Muddy, nasty area where you wouldn't want to be," said Officer Cardoza. "It was difficult to see, I had to call out for the gentleman. We were able to basically talk back and forth to each other, that was able to get me going in the right direction toward him." His family told police he went for a walk without his cellphone, then somehow got lost. The 19-year-old's cries for help are what neighbors heard who also called police. Drone used to locate man While offers were on the ground, Officer Paul Trenholme had a viewpoint from the sky using a drone, playing a pre-recorded message on a speaker to pinpoint the lost young man's location. A 19-year-old man was rescued by Somerset police officers after seven hours in a swamp. CBS Boston "I sent the drone back out and I let the individual know that we had officers in the woods, to keep calling out and that just played over and over and then as he called out our officers were able to pinpoint and triangulate his position and locate him," said Officer Trenholme. Investigators found him disoriented and dehydrated. It was a great outcome for a challenging rescue mission. "Used the drone in quite a few search and rescue missions. Thankfully, this was successful. Lately they have not been successful," said Officer Trenholme. "We didn't do anything that any other police officer wouldn't have done," added Officer Cardoza. The drone also helped officers, and the young man find a safe path out of the woods towards home. Officers say when you're out walking, don't forget your cellphone, stay hydrated, and always tell people where you're going.
The Guardian
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Bedevil was Australia's first feature film by an Aboriginal woman. Thirty years on, it's still pioneering
Tracey Moffatt's triptych horror movie, Bedevil, opens with a story about a swamp haunted by the ghost of an American GI, who – legend has it – drove in one day and never emerged. The celebrated Indigenous artist brings this setting to life with a trick plucked from the expressionist playbook: using intentionally artificial sets to create jarring, surreal environments. Like the rest of the film, the effect is intoxicating. The reeds, logs and water look authentic but behind the swamp the background glows with a bright synthetic green. It's ghostly: partly real and partly not. A feeling that the air is thick and vaporous, twisted in all sorts of terrible ways, permeates each of the film's three chapters, which are tonally similar but narratively connected only through the inclusion of supernatural elements. Each chapter features locations that are vividly hypnagogic, as if etched in the space between wakefulness and sleep. The second presents a house next to railway tracks used by ghost trains – and the spirit of a young girl. The landscape is dotted with rock-like formations that look unnaturally flimsy, almost like papier-mache. The final instalment follows a 'doomed couple' who haunt a warehouse. With its creamy backdrops it evokes the paintings of the Australian artist Russell Drysdale, whom Moffatt has referenced in other works. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Bedevil belongs to a long history of under-appreciated Australian films, neglected despite its milestones: it was the first feature film directed by an Australian Aboriginal woman. It received some international attention, screening at the 1993 Cannes film festival, and was championed by critics including David Stratton. But there's a feeling all these years later that this production hasn't been given its dues. To be fair, Bedevil was never going to be everybody's cup of tea and it certainly doesn't fit into a conventional box – it's not the kind of genre flick that's played at repertoire cinemas for midnight movie fans. Moffatt creates a kind of horror that has nothing to do with gore and jumpscares. It's abstract, enigmatic and cerebral in all sorts of compelling ways, including its strange relationship with time. A National Film and Sound Archive curator summarised it well: the film, perhaps alluding to the stories of the Dreaming, 'challenges the linear time frame of Western storytelling in order to suggest the ongoing presence of entities interwoven throughout the landscape that supersede all human characters and players'. We see this play out in various ways. In the first chapter, a seven-year-old Aboriginal boy, Rick (Kenneth Avery), falls into the swamp, gasping and reaching out for help. Soon we're introduced to that boy as an adult man, played by the late Uncle Jack Charles, and then again as an 11-year-old, played by Ben Kennedy. Each timeline seems to blend, diffuse, liquefy; there's no centre holding it together. Further complicating things are dramatic changes in style and tone. At different points the film becomes a faux-documentary: Charles speaks to an unseen interviewer about the swamp, commenting on how he 'hated that place' and bursting into uneasy laughter. Moffatt then cuts to a well-off white woman who reminisces about the 'swamp business' before segueing into a bizarro sequence of cheerful music and sun-kissed images of sand, surf and community facilities, taking the tone of a tourism commercial. Maintaining an ironic touch, Moffatt interrupts a menacing section of the second chapter with a kitschy outback segment like a cooking show involving the preparation of a wild pig ('marinated overnight with juniper berries, wine and fresh herbs') and yabbies. It's an audacious touch – so crazy it works. And it feeds into a feeling that part of the 'horror' comes from never being entirely sure what the director is playing at. Every time I watch this deeply peculiar film, its meaning slips through my fingers – yet I keep coming back, squinting through that thick, twisted air, trying to make sense of it. Bedevil is streaming on SBS on Demand in Australia and Ovid in the US. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here
The Herald
03-06-2025
- Automotive
- The Herald
How to get your Ford Ranger Raptor properly stuck in the mud
The solution was as clear as mud. Here I was with a Ford Ranger Raptor on its belly in a swamp unable to move a centimetre, and having a deep ponder about how life can blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday, as the Baz Luhrmann song Sunscreen goes. Before this somewhat embarrassing incident I'd previously driven the second-generation Raptor in various off-road playgrounds including rocky trails and Namibian sand dunes, and the burly 4x4 had felt near invincible in tackling them. It's Ford's most off-road-focused bakkie with a towering ground clearance, fat all-terrain tyres, fancy position-sensitive Fox suspension and every traction-enhancing trick you can think of. And it's got a belter of a V6 turbo petrol engine. Tested with a V box, the big bakkie soared from 0-100km/h in a hot hatch-like 6.7 seconds, making it the quickest bakkie we've yet tested by quite a margin. Back to our swamp quandary. I hadn't intended to go off-roading that particular evening while on a camping trip. I was making an innocuous U-turn on a gravel road in the campsite, and as my arc took me into a veld the Raptor suddenly bogged down in a swamp hidden in the grass. Just bad luck. A few metres away cars were parked in the same veld on solid ground. I engaged 4x4, low range and Mud mode. I wrenched the steering from side to side to try to gain extra traction as I pressed the throttle. Nothing. The Ford did as it was designed and all four wheels were turning with the front and rear differentials locked, but there was zero traction. The quagmire was so slippery the bakkie was going nowhere.
