The name for Florida’s migrant detention center, Alligator Alcatraz, is a nod to the facility’s remote location atop an idle airstrip in the Florida Everglades teeming with alligators and pythons.
The first detainees arrived at Alligator Alcatraz on July 2, the Miami Herald reported, despite environmentalists’ efforts to halt the project.
Gov. Ron DeSantis and President Donald Trump have dismissed worries for the ecosystem. During a June 27 Boca Raton press conference, DeSantis told NBC 6 South Florida politics reporter Hatzel Vela that the facility has “zero impact” on the Everglades.
“Any sense that somehow this is going to have any impact at all on the overall Everglades,” DeSantis said, “is there’s zero impact.”
Alligator Alcatraz’s initial capacity is up to 3,000 detainees with room to expand. The housing facility, an aluminum frame structure, includes more than 158,000 square feet of space, said Kevin Guthrie, Florida Division of Emergency Management executive director. About 600 migrants were at the facility as of July 9, WPLG Local 10 reported.
Environmental groups Friends of the Everglades and Center for Biological Diversity filed a federal lawsuit June 27, arguing that the state bulldozed over federal rules for assessing environmental harm for the site situated within Big Cypress National Preserve, which neighbors Everglades National Park.
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