“We’re surrounded by miles of treacherous swamp land, and the only way out is really deportation.”
By Jackie Llanos for Florida Phoenix
President Donald Trump urged additional states to build immigrant detention centers following his tour Tuesday of the 3,000-capacity tent and trailer Everglades facility the DeSantis administration built in eight days.
The president took the opportunity to press Congress on his giant tax and spending cuts package, saying its passage is necessary to heightened federal immigration enforcement. The Senate passed the megabill with a tie-breaking vote from Vice President JD Vance during Trump’s appearance in the Everglades, and the Trump administration expects its final passage before Independence Day.
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Continuing the DeSantis administration’s portrayal of the controversial detention center as inescapable, Trump applauded the location at the Miami-Dade Collier Training and Transition Airport.
“It’s known as Alligator Alcatraz, which is very appropriate because I looked outside, and that’s not a place I want to go hiking anytime soon but, very soon, this facility will house some of the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet,” Trump said. “We’re surrounded by miles of treacherous swamp land, and the only way out is really deportation.”
Another detention center to come
During a roundtable discussion at the facility, DeSantis described the detention center as a “one-stop shop” with a runway that will allow the federal government to carry out deportation flights. The governor used a state of emergency declaration he issued in January 2023 to take over and begin the speedy construction on the land Miami-Dade County owns.
A similar center with the capacity to house 2,000 immigrants is set to open in Camp Blanding in Northeast Florida, the primary training center for the Florida National Guard, after July 4, said Kevin Guthrie, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
Photographs and videos of the Everglades detention center show metal mesh cages with bed bunks and toilets under a tent that Guthrie described as having an aluminium frame that can withstand winds of 110 miles an hour. Hurricane season opened on June 1.
“Why would you want to come through Alligator Alcatraz, if you can just go home on your own?” DeSantis said. “I think a lot of people are going to make that decision. So you’re going to have a lot of deportations that are going to be done by the administration, but I think you’re going to have a lot of voluntary, as well. So this is a force multiplier for the president’s efforts.”
Protests and praise from Trump
So far in the Trump’s quest to enact mass deportations — a move DeSantis has sought for the state to take a lead on with partnerships between state and local law enforcement and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — 71.2% of immigrants detained have had no criminal record, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse out of Syracuse University.
In protest, the Miami-Dade Democratic Hispanic Caucus placed a truck billboard on the nearby Tamiami Trail calling Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and South Florida’s Latino Republicans in Congress traitors to immigrants.
“Trump and DeSantis are locking up immigrants under inhumane conditions without even granting them due process. A detention camp without due process is a concentration camp. We will not just accept a concentration camp in our backyard,” said Abel Delgado, president of the Miami-Dade Democratic Hispanic Caucus, in a press release. “We support all legal and political efforts to block this abhorrent violation of basic human rights. We will continue our efforts to protect immigrants and protect the American Dream.”
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier received nods and praise from Trump during the roundtable.
Uthmeier, whom DeSantis appointed as the state’s chief legal officer in February after serving as the governor’s chief of staff, publicly announced the plan for the Everglades detention center on Fox News on June 18.
“You do a very good job. I hear good things,” Trump said. “I hear good things about you from Ron, too. No, you really do. He’s even a good-looking guy. That guy’s got a future, huh?”
A federal judge out of the Southern District of Florida found Uthmeier in civil contempt on June 17 over his disobedience of an order blocking a new state immigration law.
Trump told Uthmeier he should consider the backlash against the detention center from environmental groups as an honor. Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity filed a suit Friday seeking to temporarily halt the opening of the detention center. A magistrate judge assigned to the case, Eduardo Sanchez, recused himself on Monday evening.
“We filed this on an expedited basis. Friday. We rushed and congrats to the team who put together what we believe is a very compelling complaint and a motion for TRO, which should be taken up and we believe should be granted. So we would urge the court to act with all haste,” said Paul Schwiep, an attorney representing the environmental groups, during a Tuesday press conference.
The groups argue that the hasty construction of the site violates the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), requiring public input and analysis of potential harms before construction. However, DeSantis said the environmental groups lacked good-faith criticisms and were just trying to block deportations.
“I think that was a shrewd political pivot away from the environmental harm that we have legitimate reason to believe is occurring,” said Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades. “I think it’s nothing more than that, and we’ve laid out our case in court, and we look forward to the court responding.”
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In a filing opposing the halting of the detention center on Monday, Guthrie argued that the additional capacity is necessary because of overcrowding in ICE detention centers. Five people have died in ICE custody in Florida this year. Isidro Pérez, a 75-year-old from Cuba who had been in the United States for decades, was the latest person to die under detention at Krome Service Processing Center in Miami, on June 26, according to a press release from ICE.
Others with whom DeSantis has had an icy relationship in recent months also attended the president’s tour: Congressman Byron Donalds, running to succeed DeSantis; Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson; Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez; and Sarasota Republican Sen. Joe Gruters.
Kristi Noem, Department of Homeland Security secretary, and Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff, also attended.