Florida’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Opening in the Everglades
A second site is being eyed at Camp Blanding. Perhaps this site will feature amenities like black bears, the Florida panther, and water moccasins..
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has officially opened the gates (or rather, the swampy moat) to the state’s latest innovation in immigration enforcement: “Alligator Alcatraz.” Billed as the only detention center where the perimeter security is measured in teeth, not barbed wire, the facility sits deep in the Everglades, surrounded by a cast of wildlife straight out of an episode of the 1980s PBS series Wild America —minus the soothing narration and a lot more paperwork.
"Logistically, this really answers the call": @GovRonDeSantis explains how the new center will help local and state law enforcement as well as Florida residents pic.twitter.com/QrQQK2o2Ul
— FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) June 27, 2025
Florida this week started construction on a migrant detention facility the state is billing as “efficient” and “low-cost” – because Mother Nature will provide much of the security.
“Alligator Alcatraz,” as Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier calls it, is being erected on a little-used airstrip in the Everglades, the vast expanse of marshes and swamps that covers much of southern Florida and hosts a dizzying array of wildlife, from hundreds of bird species to bobcats, panthers, crocodiles and alligators.
“You don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter. If people get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons,” Uthmeier said in an announcement video that casts the facility as “the one-stop shop to carry out President Trump’s mass deportation agenda” and features slow-motion footage of snapping alligators.
The usual suspects are complaining about the environmental impacts. DeSantis has been quick to dismiss their complaints.
The makeshift site, located off U.S. 41 on a little-used airstrip, is being developed to house undocumented migrants in custody. Chopper 4 aerials taken Wednesday show rapid progress: numerous tents, portable toilets, recreational vehicles, and generators are already in place.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier unveiled the plan last week. Since then, public criticism has mounted, particularly from conservation groups concerned about environmental damage.
…”There is zero environmental impact. I’m the governor who’s poured more money into Everglades restoration than anyone,” DeSantis said. “It isn’t permanent. This is temporary. There’s no sewer being constructed. Environmental impact is zero.”
DeSantis is using his emergency powers to support the Trump administration’s deportation efforts. He is also planning to begin work on another deportation center soon.
DeSantis is relying on state emergency powers to commandeer the county-owned airstrip and build the compound, over the concerns of county officials, environmentalists and human rights advocates.
Now the state is considering standing up another site at a National Guard training facility in northeast Florida as well.
“We’ll probably also do something similar up at Camp Blanding,” DeSantis said, adding that the Florida Division of Emergency Management is “working on that.”
Perhaps Camp Blanding’s amenities will include black bears, the Florida panther, and water moccasins.
We can't have every illegal alien housed in (and filling up) our jails. So, 'Alligator Alcatraz' it is—and we're looking to set up a site at Camp Blanding as well. Florida will be a force multiplier for the federal government and continue to lead the nation in immigration… pic.twitter.com/jTClwDFEos
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) June 25, 2025
Those interested in helping illegal immigrants would do well to encourage them to self-deport. Furthermore, this “Wild America” episode covering the swamps of this nation should be shared widely, as this is the new hospitality package being offered to those who violate our immigration laws.
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Comments
DeSantis wrong, it’s literally on historic native lands and they are not happy
“Historic native lands”??
Who lives there?
Florida Man.
No one, check Google maps. I’ve flown over it in a small plane, it’s completely isolated. Great choice for a detention facility.
Native American tribes are unhappy with the “Alligator Alcatraz” migrant detention center being built in the Florida Everglades, citing concerns about its impact on their ancestral lands and the delicate ecosystem. They feel it threatens their way of life, traditional practices, and the overall environment.
Here’s a more detailed breakdown:
Impact on ancestral lands:
The Miccosukee and Seminole tribes, with historical ties to the area, view the Everglades as sacred and consider the detention center a desecration of their homelands.
Environmental concerns:
They worry about the potential for ecological damage to the Everglades, a unique and fragile ecosystem, due to the construction and operation of the facility.
Threat to traditional practices:
The tribes rely on the Everglades for food, water, and traditional medicines, and they fear the detention center will disrupt their access to these resources and traditional practices.
Lack of consultation:
Tribal leaders feel they were not adequately consulted or involved in the decision-making process regarding the construction of the detention center, despite its proximity to their land and villages.
Protests and demonstrations:
Indigenous leaders and activists have organized protests and demonstrations to voice their opposition and demand the cessation of construction.
Historical context:
The situation echoes past conflicts and occupations, such as the Alcatraz Island occupation, where Native Americans asserted their rights and protested the taking of their lands.
Indians absolutely DESTROYED every “delicate ecosystem” they lived in – so much as they were able. They would trash a place and then move on. They hunted every species to local extinction, if they were able. There are hardly worse stewards of the environment that you will ever find than American Indians. Much of Indian archaeology involves finding piles of trash they left behind … which ain’t difficult to do since they left trash everywhere they were.
“The Miccosukee and Seminole tribes, with historical ties to the area, view the Everglades as sacred”
The Navajos tried to claim the whole moon as sacred.
Bulls*t walks.
Do they have a title? Do they have a federal set-aside?
No.
Give them each another casino license and send them packing.
Everything I’ve read says Miami-Dade County owns the land.
I believe the State took over the land under emergency power a couple years ago.
The entire USA is on ‘historic native land’. That culture lost the war, our culture won the war. I got cousins on both sides. My smart Creek and Cherokee ancestors intermarriage with Scottish ancestors preserved their lands here in Alabama. My Cherokee and Creek ancestral cousins with a less pragmatic view ended up dead or in Oklahoma.
Opposing things just to oppose them is flipping stupid. There should be minimal to no environmental damage from a temporary tent city with porta potty and everything else trucked in. Maybe some small fuel spills from filling generators but placing the cool little spill containment hickeys mitigates that. They’re gonna have plenty of hands to pick up any trash before it gets carried off into the swamps.
The Dlorida tribes were special because we never defeats them, they went into the swamps and the conquerer’s were unable or unwilling to follow!
Jesus spell check is killing me
I thought you were golemtx. My precious! 😀
You wrote that like you were drunk posting, lol
gonzotx,
While the Seminole were the largest band to do so it isn’t really special or unique. Plenty of other smaller bands of larger tribal groups successfully hid, some in plain sight like my own Creek and Cherokee ancestors by intermarriage. The tribes in Florida were more/less part of the Creek Nation aka Lower Creek in FL v Upper Creek in Alabama and GA. The upper/lower business was a geographic distinction not a cultural distinction.
The Creek Nation with the rest of the 5 Civilized Tribes of the Southeast got a raw deal. They saw they couldn’t win and they assimilated so successfully that greed, jealousy drove the US Gov’t to help steal their property. Perfect example of a supposedly ‘Christian’ Nation violating the tenth Commandment ‘thou shall not covet’ along with the murdering and stealing it took to push the majority off their property and into Oklahoma.
If I may throw in an example that supports you. First, mythologies aside, humans did not evolve separately in the Americas. They came from somewhere else. There are arguments about how and when, but genetically they are related to Asians. Incidentally Asians, like all humans in Eurasia ultimately came out of Africa a bloody long time ago.
Since Native Americans came out of Asia, does that mean that China has a claim to own the Americas by blood? Of course not. Second, there are not sovereign Native American nations who rule in the Americas. The closest thing there are, are the US government set-asides [reservations], and the inhabitants are not sovereign there. Indeed, the western concept of national sovereignty that runs the world did not obtain in what is now the United States before the arrival of European colonists.
The land is owned by a modern government. It is what it is. We live with the realities that we have inherited from the past. We can’t do anything else.
Subotai Bahadur
Not just mythology but proven falsehoods. There were several migratory waves into the Americas and the tribes now claiming to be ‘indigenous’ to the Americas out fought, out effed, out competed the folks from the prior waves of pre Columbian history.
IOW these ‘indigenous’ tribes whining about being colonized and conquered by groups of later arrivals are themselves one of several of these late arriving groups who conquered and colonized those who preceded them. Even more so when we look at the lands they took from each other. As an example the Comanche of 1400 AD had far less territory than the Comanche of 1700. The strongest tribal/cultural alliances usually win throughout history across the globe. Pays to be a winner. Choose wisely.
No he’s not wrong; that place is a US Marine Corp recon training camp based out of Miami
🙄
The little used airport already exists.
How about you worry about Texas, and Floridians will worry about Florida.
Too many hall monitors and gate keepers as it is. Either you are for illegals being removed, or you are not.
I am all for removing international rapists. I believe you have justifiable reasons to want that, no matter the cost.
txfella?
So, does the perimeter include steak sauce sprinklers? Gotta make the escapees tastier for the gators.
Convicts’ uniforms to be 3-D printed.
Strains of “Poke Salad Annie” by Tony Joe White just came to mind.
Gators got your granny. Chomp, chomp chomp.
.
Leon Russell was a prophet.
https://youtu.be/9D-mKN4Qktw
Good! Fill it up.
“Where a man can hide and never be found
and have no fear of the bayin’ hounds.
But he better keep movin’ and don’t stand still.
If the ‘skeeters don’t get then the ‘gaters will.”
“Everglades”, Kingston Trio (1960)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0TtIRpG-jE
“Where a man can hide and never be found
and have no fear of the bayin’ hounds.
But he better keep movin’ and don’t stand still.
If the ‘skeeters don’t get him then the ‘gaters will.”
“Everglades”, Kingston Trio (1960)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0TtIRpG-jE
but how can they vote?–absentee?–mail-in?
Why does that hanging chaf look like the size of a gator tooth?
I don’t have a problem with this if it’s not designated tribal land. Is it?
The airport already exists. It’s not like someone is pouring concrete as we speak, on precious “Indian” land.
There would be less of an environmental impact on the site if the generators and air conditioning units (white boxes) were forgone. Less comfort = more self deportation.
If US 42 runs right past it, an escaped migrant just has to walk around to the highway and no more worries about alligators and other swamp creatures. But then they’d have to hitch a ride. Will the road near that facility become a place to pick up cheap migrant labor?
Still, it’s far away from most people including the tribes that claim to live in the Everglades, and it’s already existing developed land, so why not?
Presumably there’s gonna be some sort of minimal barriers to mitigate escape along with guards mostly focused on the limited avenues of approach and probably more State Troopers on nearby stretch of roadway. Cut off easy path to civilization and make it necessary to run/swim/wade through the alligators, snakes and such in the swamps is a good deterrent to escape. Plus not only is this in FL v that NJ facility, it’s nice and humid/hot so not gonna see sustained efforts from the same protesters as elsewhere.
Very strange. That airport has been there for decades and no one protested it. DeSantis want’s to repurpose it and suddenly protests which indicates to me “ancestral land” and “the environment” have nothing to do with it.