July 1, 2025
The decision has shifted the focus of Trump’s cabinet, who had to rush approval for the facility’s use.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says President Donald Trump is “very excited” to visit the new controversial and popular immigrant detention center known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” NBC News reports.
The facility was created by state Attorney General James Uthmeier and secured national attention — and controversy — as DeSantis labeled it a continued effort to align Trump’s anti-immigrant crackdown with state protocol ahead of the president’s July 1 appearance. “When the president comes tomorrow, he’s going to be able to see the facility,” DeSantis said during a news conference.
While Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is scheduled to take the trip with Trump, the decision has shifted the focus of Trump’s cabinet, which had to rush approval for the facility’s use. Noem said the task has the team working at lightning speed. “Under President Trump’s leadership, we are working at turbo speed on cost-effective and innovative ways to deliver on the American people’s mandate for mass deportations of criminal illegal aliens,” she wrote on X.
“We will expand facilities and bed spaces in just days, thanks to our partnership with Florida.”
A video circulating on the Elon Musk-owned social media app shows just how fast the Trump administration has worked to make sure the facility is open and running to host violent immigrants. However, reports claim the administration has locked up more immigrants without violent records or illegal status, according to data from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse project.
The video shows how, in just seven days, the Sunshine State was able to build the federal prison facility with 3,000 beds. The approval is now in the hands of Trump’s Department of Justice.
The price tag for the facility to run for one year is $450 million, in addition to the massive pushback from Democrats, immigration and environmental advocates, and Native American groups that marked the territory as a sacred ancestral homeland, according to NPR. Alligator Alcatraz is located directly across from the Tamiami Trail — the home of 19 traditional Miccosukee and Seminole villages. In a statement, Miccosukee Chairman Talbert Cypress said, “The landscape has protected the Miccosukee and Seminole people for generations.”
As the groups have labeled the project as “inhumane,” environmental groups, including Big Cypress National Preserve and Friends of the Everglades, filed a federal lawsuit on June 27, stating that it “threatens the Everglades ecosystem.” “This site is more than 96% wetlands, surrounded by the Big Cypress National Preserve, and is habitat for the endangered Florida panther and other iconic species,” Friends Executive Director Eve Samples said in a statement.
“This scheme is not only cruel, it threatens the Everglades ecosystem that state and federal taxpayers have spent billions to protect.”
However, it doesn’t seem to faze Republican leaders, who look at Alligator Alcatraz as a win. The national attention has spurred a boost in campaign contributions in addition to the Republican Party selling “Alligator Alcatraz” merchandise.
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