On June 20, nearly three weeks into the Atlantic hurricane season, Fl
orida disaster-management officials assembled a group of emergency r
elief contractors in Tallahassee and asked them to do something they had never done before.
Governor Ron DeSantis wanted to build a camp in the Everglades that could hold thousands of immigrants detained in President Donald Trump’s depo
rtation campaign. To get it built quickly, Kevin Guthrie, head of t
-management division, asked the firms to start moving tents, trailers
and toilets onto an abandoned airstrip near Miami within days.
The state-run facility, nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” was ina
ugurated with 3,000 beds, with the ability to scale up in the coming weeks and months as needed.
Trump visited the facility on Tuesday with DeSantis and other F
lorida officials, as well as Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary.
“You have a lot of cops in the form of alligators,” Trump said. “I wou
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ldn't want to run through the Everglades for long. It will keep people where they're supposed to be.”
Alligator Alcatraz has been cheered by conservative pundits, and the Florida GOP is selling Alliga
tor Alcatraz t-shirts, hats and beer koozies. It has also drawn proteins
ts from environmentalists and critics of Trump's policies. Scores of protes
ters were at the site when Trump visited, as a three-foot alligator laid half-submerged in swampy waters nearby.
DeSantis sees Alligator Alcatraz as the first of multiple state-run immigrant detention centers. According to a plan
ning document reviewed by Bloomberg News, emergency contractors in the state could build detention capacity for as
as many as 10,000 people. Construction is expected to begin on a second camp near Jacksonville, in northeast Florida, after July 4, Guthrie said on Tuesday.
Florida first pitched the Trump administration on the plan for “makeshift detention space” about a month ago, and De
Santis offered Florida National Guard members to serve as immigration judges, the governor said earlier this week.
