Florida Proposes 'Alligator Alcatraz' to House Detained Migrants and Speed Up Deportations

Florida is looking to strengthen its position as a national leader in immigration enforcement.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier told Fox Business that he is proposing to build a new 1,000-bed immigration detention center on a 30-square-mile property in the Everglades owned by Miami-Dade County. He has dubbed the facility, which would be the largest of its kind in the state, “Alligator Alcatraz.” 

“If somebody were to get out, there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Only alligators and pythons are waiting,” he said during an interview with Fox News correspondent Danamarie McNicholl on Tuesday. 

Uthmeier said in a video posted on X that the site could be ready in as little as 30 to 60 days and serve as a three-in-one immigration enforcement facility, capable of housing detainees, processing legal cases, and serving as a deportation hub. The identified land for the project is an old airport facility with a landing strip already in place to potentially fly people directly out of the facility for deportation. 

Uthmeier’s proposal, which would require local, state, and federal approval to move forward, is the newest attempt to increase immigration enforcement by not only supplying more beds to house detained migrants but also by expediting the deportation process. 

One of President Donald Trump’s top priorities since taking office in January has been to “complete the largest deportation operation in American history.” The immigration crackdown has led to an influx of nearly 30 percent more detained migrants since January. As of June 1, 51,302 migrants are being housed in detention facilities. This has caused overcrowding in the country’s existing local jails and immigration detention facilities and created a bottleneck limiting the number of total possible deportations. To solve this problem, the Trump administration has experimented with unprecedented options like housing detained migrants in El Salvador and Guantanamo Bay, each riddled with controversy over due process and civil liberty violations. 

While the three-in-one facility proposed by Uthmeier could decrease the amount of time deportation proceedings take to move a migrant from detainment to deportation, it will not solve the many constitutional and due process questions that still exist. Without answering these crucial questions, optimizing for speed will only serve to erode the rights of migrants while expanding government power. 

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