As President Donald Trump toured the new Florida Everglades migrant detention center known as "Alligator Alcatraz" on Tuesday, protesters gathered at the controversial facility's entrance decrying what they called its potential environmental harm and the "cruelty for cruelty's sake" behind its concept.
Chanting, "Alligator Alcatraz, we say No!", the loud but smaller than expected crowd of demonstrators — who were vastly outnumbered by the media throng on Tamiami Trail — held up signs with messages such as "Communities, Not Cages," and "Hands Off Our Everglades."
The 5,000-bed tent-building site, which opened Tuesday after hasty construction that started last week, will house suspected undocumented immigrants arrested under Trump's sweeping deportation campaign.
It will also be used to process their cases — Trump on Tuesday said qualified National Guard members can serve as immigration judges there — and sits alongside an idle airstrip that Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier says will be used for deportation flights.
Uthmeier gave the project the "Alligator Alcatraz" name to emphasize that its remote location in the middle of the hot, gator-infested Everglades will make it daunting to escape — but more important, that those unpleasant environs will serve as a deterrent to illegal immigration.
Protesters at the site on Tuesday said the hardline immigration-policy bravado is excessive given that many of the detainees to be sent there will likely not be criminals but law-abiding and gainfully employed undocumented migrants who have been in the U.S. for years.
"The only reason they're doing this is because they want to conjure the idea of this horrible, scary, imposing Everglades Alcatraz — this toxic prison that's so scary you're going to want to self-deport," said Miami environmental activist Zac Cosner.
"That's why they're putting out this disgusting art about [detainees] being eaten by alligators. It's just about creating fear, and it's a bit sickening."
READ MORE: DeSantis fast-tracks building immigrant detention center in Everglades
Rachel Bass, an artist from Cape Coral, said that in light of so many non-criminal migrants being swept up in Trump's deportation dragnet, "it adds salt to the wound to say, 'We're just gonna stick 'em in the Everglades and let the gators handle them.
"That's insane. It's cruelty just for the sake of being cruel."
On Monday, Gov. Ron DeSantis — who has been singularly focused on making the Sunshine State the nation's most zealous partner in Trump's deportation drive — joked that Alligator Alcatraz occupants "ain't going anywhere once they are there … because good luck getting to civilization.
"The security is amazing. Natural and otherwise."
DeSantis and Utmeier also insist the detention facility will have "zero" environmental impact on that parcel of the Everglades in southwest Florida. But activists called their claim "absurd."
"It stacks up to be completely unconscionable to think you can put a 5,000-person prison camp, with the waste and the traffic and the noise and the impact on wildlife like the Florida Panther, and assert the surrounding environment couldn't be obliterated. That's why they shut down plans to build the Everglades jetport her in the 1970s."
Environmental advocacy groups including Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity have filed suit in federal court in South Florida to block Alligator Alcatraz's operation. They claim its construction has not met the criteria of federal guidelines such as the National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.
DeSantis argues the facility — which sits on a tract of Miami-Dade County-owned land the state has now expropriated amid "significant concerns" voiced by Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava — is a necessity to address what he calls the "emergency" of illegal immigration in Florida.
The governor's opponents say DeSantis greatly exaggerates that "crisis" in order to curry favor with the Trump voters he covets for his own presidential aspirations.
'Political stunt'
Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki blasted Trump's visit Tuesday, calling the project "a political stunt."
"'Alligator Alcatraz' is the kind of corrupt abuse of power we've come to expect from Florida Republicans, and Trump's visit underscores the fact that this project is a political stunt," she said in a statement.
Fried's counterpart, Florida Republican Party Chairman Evan Power, said Trump is "doing what [former President Joe] Biden never would — securing our border and keeping Americans safe."
He said the project has "immense public support," noting the RPOF has sold thousands of "Alligator Alcatraz" themed shirts, hats, and gear.
"Americans want swift deportations and a secure border, and now they're proudly wearing their shirt and hat to show it," he said in a statement.
A Change.org petition demanding a halt to the project collected nearly 11,000 signatures. The petition bashes the state plan to detain and process up to 5,000 migrants at the remote detention center.
DeSantis has said Alligator Alcatraz's $450 million-a-year cost will be reimbursed to the state via funding it receives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA — which critics complain is supposed to be used for more urgent purposes such as post-hurricane aid.
Environmental concerns
Even some Trump supporters at the site on Tuesday expressed environmental concerns.
"We have only one Everglades, we have to protect it at all costs," said Trump voter Chaunce O'Connor, a Miami advertising employee. "Therefore, whatever environmental precautions they say they're taking for this project, they need to double them — and make sure this facility isn't here for the long run, that it's temporary."
That said, O'Connor said he backs the policy spirit of Alligator Alcatraz: "Every country has immigration laws and should enforce them. Sadly, if people weren't violating those laws, we wouldn't need this out here in the first place."
Another Trump supporter, Bob Kunst — a Miami Beach resident who says he's a registered Democrat but has split with the party on issues like immigration — said liberals in the U.S. have brought controversies like Alligator Alcatraz on themselves.
"They encouraged letting millions of people into the country illegally, which is a slap in the face to everyone who came in legally," Kunst said, holding a sign that read "We Love 'Daddy' Trump."
"Why would they play that stupid game?"
As for the complaints of cruelty, he added, "They'll be in air conditioning, they'll get three meals a day, and the ones that are bad will get flown out — what's the problem?"
As he departed for Florida on Tuesday, Trump joked that Alligator Alcatraz's detainees will have to "learn to run zig-zag" in order to escape the surrounding wildlife.
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