The State of Florida started to assemble heavy tents and some trailers to build an immigration detention center in what has been called “Alligator Alcatraz.” On June 23 the center was announced by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who is billing it as “efficient” and “low-cost"—because Mother Nature will provide much of the security—in a video that includes slow-motion footage of snapping alligators. Uthmeier called the facility “the one-stop shop to carry out President Trump’s mass deportation agenda.”
The detention center will have 5,000 beds and open in early July. Operating the new detention center would cost the state approximately $450 million per year, but money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will cover construction costs. The National Guard will help run the facility.
The facility sits on a 39-square-mile airport facility, virtually abandoned, right in the middle of the Everglades. The abandoned “Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport” in Ochopee was slated to be the largest airport in the world, built in 1968, with plans for six runways and “futuristic aspirations” of planes that could carry 1,000 passengers each. The massive runway is 11,000 feet long.
