A remote and largely undeveloped airport site in the Everglades could house detained migrants in what Florida officials are calling “Alligator Alcatraz” and critics are calling an environmental threat.
With the help of federal funds, state officials plan to convert the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport and surrounding property into a detention center with more than 1,000 beds. It would hold immigrants seized as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.
Sprawling over 39 square miles and dominated by a 10,500-foot-long runway, the site is surrounded by the Everglades ecosystem and its unforgiving wildlife.
“It’s a low-cost opportunity to build a temporary detention facility, because you don’t need to invest much in the perimeter,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier (R) said in a video posted on the X social media site. “If people get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons.”
