Trump Tours ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Migrant Detention Site

President Donald Trump last Tuesday, July 1, 2025, toured a new migrant detention facility in the Florida Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” located at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, approximately 50 miles west of Miami.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and other state officials accompanied Trump at the site, which is designed to house between 3,000 and 5,000 detainees. “We had a request from the federal government to do it, and so ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ it is,” DeSantis said. “Clearly from a security perspective, if someone escapes, there’s a lot of alligators you’re going to have to contend [with].”

The temporary facility includes FEMA trailers, soft-sided shelters, portable air conditioning units, barbed wire fencing, over 200 security cameras, and more than 400 security personnel. Utilities such as water, power, and sewage are being provided through mobile systems. Officials said the site was constructed in just over a week, and detainees could begin arriving as early as Wednesday.

During a roundtable, Trump told the press, “I looked outside and that’s not a place I want to go hiking anytime soon. We’re surrounded by miles of treacherous swampland and the only way out is really deportation.” He added, “We’d like to see them in many states,” referring to similar detention facilities.

The facility is estimated to cost $450 million annually. DeSantis said Florida will initially cover the expenses and later seek reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security.

Secretary Noem addressed individuals in the country illegally, saying, “If you don’t self-deport, you may end up here … and never get the chance to come back.” DeSantis echoed this sentiment: “Why would you want to come through ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ if you can just go home on your own? I think a lot of people are going to make that decision.”

The project has sparked widespread criticism from immigrant rights groups, environmental advocates, and tribal leaders. “We’ve been down this road before with Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County in Arizona where he had a tent city,” said Thomas Kennedy, policy analyst at the Florida Immigrant Coalition. “The fact that we’re going to have 3,000 people detained in tents, in the Everglades, in the middle of the hot Florida summer, during hurricane season—this is a bad idea all around that needs to be opposed and stopped.”

Maria Asuncion Bilbao of the American Friends Service Committee described the facility as “a theatricalization of cruelty.” Kennedy criticized the language used by officials, saying, “When we talk about people as if they’re vermin … there’s nothing about this detention camp that is not cruel and inhumane.”

Protests have taken place at the site since construction began, including during Trump’s Tuesday visit. Phyllis Andrews, a retired teacher from Naples, said, “I have a lot of immigrants I have been working with. They are fine people. They do not deserve to be incarcerated here.”

Betty Osceola, a member of the Miccosukee Tribe and environmental activist, said the facility is being built on land sacred to her community. “I was particularly upset when they said, ‘Nobody lives out here, it’s not going to inconvenience anybody.’ What about me? What about the tribe?” she asked. “This is the drinking water aquifer for 8 million South Floridians, not just the Miccosukee Tribe. This is our ancestral territory. I come out here to pray. This is our home. We are standing up for our home.”

The governor’s office has dismissed environmental concerns, stating the facility will have “zero impact.” DeSantis said, “I think people are just trying to use the Everglades as a pretext just for the fact that they oppose immigration enforcement.”

Despite this, several environmental organizations have filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court seeking to halt construction. Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity argue the project violates environmental laws and threatens protected habitats near the Big Cypress National Preserve. “Putting aside whether intractable political gridlock over immigration reform constitutes an ‘emergency,’ it does not give license to the state and federal governments to simply disregard the laws that govern federal projects affecting environmentally sensitive lands, essential waterways, national parks and preserves, and endangered species,” the groups wrote.

The Dade-Collier site, originally planned in the 1960s as a futuristic jetport, has long been controversial. A federal report in 1970 warned that building an international airport there would “inexorably destroy the South Florida ecosystem and thus the Everglades National Park.”

Now repurposed as a training airfield, the runway and surrounding land were recently targeted by Florida officials for emergency use. A proposal to purchase the land for $20 million was met with resistance by Miami-Dade County officials, who cited a recent appraisal valuing the property at $190 million.

As immigration enforcement escalates, federal detention numbers have surged from 39,000 in January to over 56,000 by mid-June. Trump’s administration continues to face legal and logistical challenges in carrying out his pledge to deport up to one million people annually.

U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whose district is near the site, said in a statement, “Trump and Republicans badly need this wasteful, dangerous, mass misery distraction.”

Construction at the site continues as lawmakers in Washington debate funding. The Republican-led Senate passed a bill this week to increase immigration enforcement spending. Trump has urged the House of Representatives to finalize the measure before Independence Day.

“There is only one road leading in and the only way out is a one-way flight,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. “It is isolated and surrounded by dangerous wildlife in unforgiving terrain.”