TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — The new immigration detention center at an isolated airstrip in the Florida Everglades that President Donald Trump visited on Tuesday was heralded by Republicans as a potential model for other states to aggressively ramp up detention and deportation efforts.
Trump, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other officials toured the facility, which was built by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration in a matter of days and is expected to receive its first detainees Wednesday.
The site can currently house 3,000 people in dormitories corralled by chain-link fences and topped with barbed wire, and state officials say it can be expanded to ultimately house 5,000. Protesters have decried the facility as an inhumane makeshift prison camp, but supporters have embraced it as an innovative” and “cost-effective” way for the federal government to operationalize enough detention space to carry out Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
“We’re surrounded by miles of treacherous swampland and the only way out is, really, deportation,” Trump said, adding, “This is an amazing thing that they’ve done here.”
Dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by state officials, the facility is located at an isolated airfield about 45 miles (72 kilometers) west of downtown Miami and is surrounded by swamps filled with mosquitoes, pythons and alligators.
To Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and other state officials, locating the facility in the rugged and remote Florida Everglades is meant as a deterrent, and naming it after the notorious federal prison, an island fortress known for its brutal conditions, is meant to send a message. It’s another sign of how the Trump administration and its allies are relying on scare tactics to try to persuade people in the country illegally to leave voluntarily.
State and federal officials have touted the plans on social media and conservative airwaves, sharing a meme of a compound ringed with barbed wire and “guarded” by alligators wearing hats labeled “ICE” for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Republican Party of Florida has taken to fundraising off the detention center, selling branded T-shirts and beer koozies emblazoned with the facility’s name.
Here's what to know.
It took just days to build
Florida officials raced to erect the compound of heavy-duty tents, trailers and temporary buildings in eight days, as part of the state’s muscular efforts to help carry out Trump’s immigration crackdown. The center is estimated to cost $450 million a year, with the expenses incurred by Florida and reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a U.S. official said.
Inside, rows of bunkbeds are surrounded by chain-link fencing, where migrants could be housed for days, weeks or months. Officials say detainees will have access to medical care, 24/7 air conditioning, and a rec yard, as well as support from attorneys and members of the clergy.
The facility is meant to help the Trump administration reach its goal of more than doubling its existing 41,000 beds for detaining migrants to at least 100,000 beds.
The site's remote location is meant to be a deterrent against illegal immigration and a motivator for detainees to self-deport.
“You don’t always have land so beautiful and so secure. You have a lot of bodyguards and a lot of cops that are in the form of alligators. You don’t have pay them so much,” Trump said.
Backers call it a ‘one-stop shop’
To help speed up the processing of detainees, DeSantis is offering up members of the state's National Guard to be “deputized” as immigration judges to hear their cases, as a way to loosen another chokepoint in the country’s long-overburdened immigration court system.
“I hope my phone rings off the hook from governors calling and saying, ‘How can we do what Florida just did?’” Noem said.
“I would ask every other governor to do the exact same thing," she added. "This is unique because we can hold individuals here. They can have their hearings, to get due process and then immediately be flown back home to their home countries.”
It won't be the only one
DeSantis said Tuesday the state is moving forward with building another makeshift detention center for migrants at a National Guard training facility called Camp Blanding, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) southwest of Jacksonville in northeast Florida.
State officials have opened a bid for contractors on that site, which is expected to hold another 2,000 beds, with plans to start construction there after the July 4 holiday.
The state is pouring significant resources into the makeshift facilities and hiring private contractors to help build and supply the sites, even as a recent report suggested that Florida has thousands of vacant beds in county jails and detention centers that already exist. According to a state report shared with The Associated Press, as of March 28, 2025, there were more than 7,500 vacant beds available to sublet to ICE for use as immigration detention beds.
Florida is using emergency powers to build the site
State officials have commandeered the land using emergency powers, under a years-old executive order issued by DeSantis during the administration of then-President Joe Biden to respond to what the governor deemed a crisis caused by illegal immigration.
Relying on the emergency order, the state has fast-tracked the project, in what critics have called an abuse of power.
“Governor DeSantis has insisted that the state of Florida, under his leadership, will facilitate the federal government in enforcing immigration law,” a DeSantis spokesperson said in a statement.
“Florida will continue to lead on immigration enforcement.”
It's drawn hundreds of protesters
Hundreds of immigrant advocates, environmental activists and Native Americans defending their ancestral homelands have thronged to the airstrip to protest.
In Big Cypress National Preserve, where the airstrip is located, 15 traditional Miccosukee and Seminole villages, as well as burial grounds and ceremonial sites, remain.
Worries about environmental impacts have also been at the forefront, prompting the Center for Biological Diversity and the Friends of the Everglades to file a lawsuit Friday to halt the detention center plans.
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Associated Press writer Gisela Salomon reported from Miami. Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Kate Payne, The Associated Press
