Donald Trump made the deportation of millions of people the centerpiece of his electoral campaign. For months and months, he spoke of a "massive invasion", of criminal gangs, thieves, murderers, and rapists, fueling the myth that many foreign countries were emptying their prisons and psychiatric centers to send all inmates to the United States. Once in power, while implementing the most restrictive policies to detain tens of thousands of people, questioning the rights of states, and maneuvering to destroy so-called 'sanctuary cities', he has maintained the same rhetoric. But accompanied by an unprecedented level of dehumanization, frivolity, and cruelty.
At least 10 immigrants have died in ICE custody, the agency that organizes raids and is detaining people across the country with hooded, heavily armed agents who often do not identify themselves while forcibly putting foreigners into vans. At least two of the deaths were suicides. As reported by The New York Times this Sunday, during the four years of the Biden administration, an average of seven deaths per year occurred in ICE custody. Five of the 10 people were detained in Florida, including Isidro Pérez, a 75-year-old Cuban who emigrated to the United States in 1966, almost 60 years ago, and who died with chest pains while detained at the Krome Service Processing Center in Miami.
The stories that are known every day are pure terror. Adults detained while abandoning their minor children on the street. Internments for days or weeks without knowing what has happened or informing families. Deprivation of basic rights, including lawyers or consular assistance, not to mention a hearing before a judge. Pressures to sign self-deportations, secret flights to prisons in El Salvador. Or cases of Asians who have been deported to countries like South Sudan. In that environment is framed the visit that President Trump made this Tuesday to what has festively been dubbed Alligator Alcatraz, a center that Florida is improvising on the grounds of an almost abandoned airfield to house thousands of immigrants in tents and cages. A prison that will be "guarded by alligators and patrolled by pythons for illegal immigrants who thought they could manipulate the system."
The name is designed to attract the attention and enthusiasm of the president, who a few weeks ago promised to reopen Alcatraz prison in San Francisco, despite being abandoned for decades and turned into a tourist center. Those surrounding the president, or seeking his attention, know that by combining the idea of Alcatraz, a prison famous for not allowing escapes, with predators, success is guaranteed. Just as three months ago, the star project was Guantanamo Bay, loaded with enormous symbolism. Even if that means trivializing what NGOs denounce as little more than a concentration camp. "Mr. President, in 2018 you suggested putting alligators in the Rio Grande to prevent crossings in Texas. Is this a dream come true for you?" a local journalist asked Trump this Tuesday. "There is only one way in and... the only way out is a one-way flight", celebrated the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, on Monday while showing the facilities to journalists and praising local reptiles as the best method to deter detainees from attempting to escape.
Everything has been done very quickly. The Florida government announced early last week that they had obtained federal approval to build a detention center at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, an isolated 39-square-mile airstrip located within the wetlands of the Big Cypress National Reserve, next to Everglades National Park. The facilities will mainly consist of tents and prefabricated structures, not buildings. Currently, there are 1,000 available beds, but they could double this same week, and it is planned to open with 5,000 beds, half of its maximum capacity, in the first half of July.
"It's an amazing site (...) Detainees must be taught not to run straight into reptiles," Trump stated on camera this Tuesday. "And you know what? Their chances increase by about 1%. That's not good," he added during the visit alongside Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, his former presidential rival, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem, whose department is posting montages on social media of alligators and crocodiles wearing ICE caps and catchy songs. Their agency, leading Trump's administration's offensive against illegal immigration, aims to reach a daily quota of 3,000 arrests. And for that, they also need to double the current number of beds nationwide, reaching 100,000. By mid-June, ICE had over 56,000 people detained, according to a Bloomberg analysis, but the agency only has funds to accommodate around 41,500.
The Florida Republican Party is already selling insulated cup sleeves and t-shirts with the slogan Alligator Alcatraz. "If you bring people here, they won't go anywhere, because good luck getting to civilization," DeSantis said. "The security is incredible, both natural and otherwise." In reality, alligator attacks on humans are rare. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, cited by The Washington Post, estimates that "the likelihood of a Florida resident being seriously injured during an unprovoked incident with an alligator is approximately one in 3.1 million," and it is estimated that between 1948 and 2022, there were 453 incidents of unprovoked bites in the state, 26 of them fatal.
According to Homeland Security, the facility will cost about $450 million per year, although much of that amount will be reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), always vilified by Trump's MAGA universe and transformed into something very different through its budget. Political groups, the Democratic Party, environmental organizations, and even Native American tribes oppose the project, with little success so far. DeSantis hopes that Alligator Alcatraz will be the first of several immigrant detention centers managed by the state. According to a document obtained by Bloomberg News, DeSantis has proposed a second camp near Jacksonville, in northeast Florida.